“We haven’t given up yet,” the man in the megaphone shouted. “This is not over. We will stay the night and continue to fight.”
It was Monday evening in Gan Sacher, the park in Jerusalem which had transformed two days earlier into a tent city to house the thousands of protesters who had marched from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to stop the judicial reform. It was the first tent-city protest since social justice demonstrators pitched tents along Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv in 2011 to decry the rising cost of living.
Earlier that day, the protesters had taken to the streets with the hope that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would slam the brakes and stop the final votes on the controversial Reasonableness Bill at the Knesset.
At one point, as the protesters blocked roads near the parliament and throughout the capital, it seemed that the coalition was having second thoughts. MKs were seen dashing throughout the Knesset plenum holding last-minute consultations. Some held out hope that the vote would be postponed.
It wasn’t to be. The bill passed and the coalition celebrated its first victory since embarking on a journey to overhaul Israel’s judicial system in January.
That night, as the defeated protesters returned to Gan Sacher, Justice Minister Yariv Levin – the champion of the judicial overhaul – was busy celebrating the moment at the Knesset. He was wrong to do so. While he might have succeeded in finally passing one bill, the fact that so many Israelis feel like they have lost, ultimately means that the entire country has lost.
From the moment that Netanyahu decided to plow forward with the overhaul and reject a compromise, the judicial reform became a lose-lose situation for Israel. There is a significant percentage of the country – from the Center and the Left – who feel like they have lost the Israel they spent their lives building and defending. For them, the democratic character of the country has been altered and Israel is no longer the country they once cherished.
The same would have happened had the bill somehow been stopped. Then too, a significant percentage – mostly from the Right – would have felt cheated. They would have felt like their votes for the right-wing parties which championed the reform in the last election did not count.
That is why, no matter the outcome and no matter where you stand on the political spectrum, when so many people feel like they have lost, ultimately everyone has lost.
And while the law that passed is not – on its own – the end of Israeli democracy, it is enough to give the feeling that the country is starting to collapse. There are the financial institutions – Moody’s, Morgan Stanley, and others – who are issuing pessimistic reports about Israel; doctors who are striking; hi-tech workers who are looking to relocate overseas; the IDF chief of staff who is warning that the military’s readiness for war is not what it should be; and Israel’s international standing in Europe and the United States which has sustained a severe blow.
WHY DO all this for a bill that even prominent right-wing legal experts admit will not change much, since the Supreme Court still has other ways to strike down future government decisions?
Why did Netanyahu let this happen?
The answer remains a mystery similar to the question of how Netanyahu failed to predict what would happen earlier this year when Levin unveiled the overhaul. Netanyahu is an experienced politician and is known for thinking multiple steps ahead of his rivals. How did he not realize that Levin’s plan would spark a protest the likes of which this country has never seen?
Imagine, for example, that the coalition had never announced the original slew of laws, but had just brought the Reasonableness Bill, the one that passed on Monday. Would there have been a protest? That is doubtful and if there had been, it would have been a one-off and might have included just a few hundred people.
The reason this bill sparked days of protests was because after Levin showed his whole hand in January, everyone knew that the Reasonableness Bill is just the beginning. How did Netanyahu not understand this?
It was telling to watch him on Monday in the Knesset plenum. On his right, was the solemn-looking Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and on his left, Yariv Levin. At one point, Gallant leaned over to Levin and pleaded that he “give something” that can be used to stop the protesters, the mass refusal of orders in the IDF, and the national hemorrhaging. Levin responded and Gallant again pleaded. In the middle sat a stoic and quiet Netanyahu, barely moving except to read something on his iPhone.IT WAS a symbolic illustration of what many in Likud have only said behind closed doors – Netanyahu did not want this headache but because of his political weakness and dependency on the far-right, he was dragged into it. He preferred to bury the judicial overhaul back when talks were initiated at the President’s Residence in March. But due to his weakness and corruption trial, he had no choice but to let the legislation continue. That is what Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and Levin wanted and that is what they got.
Did Netanyahu originally hope that the laws would help his corruption trial? Possibly. But when the protests began, it became clear fairly quickly that he wanted the whole thing to go away. The problem was that he couldn’t. The golem (Levin, Ben-Gvir, and Smotrich) turned, as the saying goes, on its creator.
Can Netanyahu stop them now? That remains to be seen. On the one hand, he set the end of November as the deadline for talks with the opposition and as Israelis know, when talks begin they are easy to drag on under the pretext that they are advancing slowly and more time is needed.
He can also hope that something happens over the next few months that will shift the conversation away from the judicial overhaul. Progress, for example, on the Saudi track would give him such a reprieve but that appears unlikely for the time being.
Here is another option that the government should consider: With a legislative win under its belt, the coalition could play the gracious winner and decide to establish a committee – with public representatives from all parties in the Knesset – that will sit for a defined period of approximately six months and start to draft a constitution.
If Netanyahu signs off on such a move and gets the ultra-Orthodox and even Smotrich on board, it will be hard for Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid to say no, especially if all of the participants agree ahead of time that each has a veto right over the final product.
Doing this could conciliate all sides. On the one hand, it would buy Netanyahu time and allow him and his government to focus on getting the economy back on track, on quelling the protests in the IDF and on rehabilitating ties with the White House.
For Lapid and Gantz it would be hard to reject if it means a significant pause in legislation; and the haredim would also likely come on board if they know that they will have a veto right on the final product. They are anyhow concerned that their participation in the latest legislation is going to come back to bite them when the opposition returns one day to power.
If this or something similar happens, it will also provide Netanyahu with an even greater personal accomplishment: it is a way to fix his legacy. With a few decisions, Netanyahu can go from the prime minister who brought down Israel’s democracy to the one who saved it.
It is ultimately up to him.