QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial reforms and his sacking of Israel’s Minister of Defense. A general strike today has shut down the country’s main airport and has been joined by many commercial chains and professional unions.
The ruling Netanyahu government has sought to pass a law reforming the country’s Supreme Court. Under the new plan, new judges would be appointed by a government-appointed commission. Many protestors have perceived this as a slip into authoritarianism.
Protests have been held across Israel for the past weeks, including in regions which traditionally back Netanyahu’s Likud party. Armed forces reservists have threatened to resign en mass. Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, called on the government to halt the reform.
Instead of relinquishing, Netanyahu appeared on a TV broadcast on Thursday night and doubled down on his plans, saying “Until now my hands were bound. Now I am getting involved.”
Netanyahu is facing trial for corruption. Until recently, the country’s attorney general had the prerogative of deciding whether the prime minister was fit to hold office. However, on Thursday, the Likud-dominated parliament passed new legislation leaving the decision of whether a standing prime minister is unfit for office to a 75% majority in parliament.
The prime minister also summoned fellow Likud member Yoav Gallant, the country’s defense minister, to his house in Jerusalem. Gallant was set to address the media that night, as he had been meeting with members of the country’s armed forces, who overwhelmingly reject the reform plan. Observers think he was set to break ranks with his party. On Sunday, however, Netanyahu fired Gallant, sparking a new bout of protests that night.
According to the Israel Democracy Institute study from two weeks ago, a third of all of Israel’ secular Jews had demonstrated or signed petitions against the government’s plans. That number has since grown. However, the protests have also laid bare divisions among Israel’s Jewish population. ‘Only’ about 60% of Israelis oppose the reforms. From its inception, the country has been divided between Zionist European Jews and later Middle Eastern arrivals, as well as between a liberal, secular wing and a die-heard religiously conservative minority. It is also divided over the occupation of Palestine, with liberals generally favouring the status quo and conservatives favouring further expansion into the West Bank.
Netanyahu’s government – a marriage between secular conservatives and the ultra-Orthodox – has long wanted to reign in the country’s Supreme Court, which they see as exceptionally liberal and elitist.
Yet, as a recent opinion peace in the Daily Beast argues, “Israelis are trying to save a democracy that never existed.” The country has repeatedly been called an apartheid state by human rights groups for its unequal treatment of the indigenous Palestinian population. As the article points out, Israel’s ‘liberal’ Supreme Court has given “a green light to Israel’s continued transfer of citizens to occupied territory and to the siege on Gaza.”
Netanyahu’s current cabinet is the ‘most right wing ever’, according to observers. Under the current government, settlement construction and armed incursions into the West Bank have accelerated. 80 Palestinians have already been killed this year, the highest rate in two decades. Only last week, Israel’s Finance Minsiter, Bezalel Smotrich, called Palestinians a “fictitious” people. Such acts have gone largely unprotested by Israeli Jews.
The demonstrations in Israel have largely been flamed by nationalism and Zionism. Palestinian flags were quickly discouraged and replaced by a sea of Israel’s blue-and-white standard. After Jewish settlers went on a rampage in the Palestinian town of Huwara last month, burning down houses and killing at least one person, at least some Israeli protestors started chanting “where were you in Huwara?” at anti-riot police. But serious reckoning with the country’s past is still a long way off.
“It’s clear that we will be the first to be harmed by any erosion of civil rights,” Aida Touma-Suleiman, a Palestinian lawmaker with Hadash, an Israeli socialist party, “but most of us can’t identify with the protests, which are full of nationalistic and militaristic messages. It still keeps Arab citizens on the margins.”