Israel is facing an unprecedented
existential crisis, and it is not the Iran nuclear program or a third
Palestinian Intifada. It is not even a barrage of inaccurate Hamas missiles or
an indictment by the International Criminal Court. All these threats
notwithstanding, for the first time since its inception, Israel is talking
openly about an imminent civil war due to a government bent on steamrolling the
state’s institutions. It is clear a lethal conflict is brewing within Israel’s
borders.
اضافة اعلان
Benyamin Netanyahu’s toxic Cabinet
of ultra-religious, ultra-nationalist, homophobic, misogynist, openly racist,
and isolationist ministers is less than a month old. Yet it is already drawing
fire from politicians and activists from the left and center, with them calling
it “fascist” and “authoritarian”.
Former Prime Minister and decorated
war hero Ehud Barakeven called on every Israeli to “join the fight” against
this government’s “illegitimate” actions. This call revolved around ‘a coup” by
becoming “involved in street battles” to oust Netanyahu. Incidentally, the same
kind of acidic rhetoric uttered by Netanyahu back in 1995 got then Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin killed by a Jewish zealot belonging to the far-right
that dominates today’s government.
What triggered this unparalleled
diatribe was the government’s intent to implement Minister of Justice Yariv
Levin’s reform plan for judicial reform. Nothing like this has ever happened in
Israel’s short history. Basically, the plan limits the powers of the judiciary,
particularly
Israel’s High Court, and makes the legal opinions of the
government’s legal counsel “non-binding”. In the words of Deputy Attorney
General Gil Limon, if the reforms pass, “government won’t be above the law; it will
be the law.”
According to the Jerusalem Post, the
plan seeks to amend laws to include the Override Clause, which gives the
Knesset the ability to override High Court of Justice rulings and change the
makeup of the Judicial Appointments Committee so that the coalition or people
of its choice will have an automatic majority. It also seeks to cancel the
“legal unreasonableness” clause, which the High Court sometimes uses to cancel
government appointments or decisions deemed “extremely unreasonable”.
For the first time since its inception, Israel is talking openly about an imminent civil war due to a government bent on steamrolling the state’s institutions. It is clear a lethal conflict is brewing within Israel’s borders.
The far-right coalition basically
wants to appoint judges whose ideological and political agendas are similar to
or are in line with the ones it holds.
No wonder the move has been called a
coup. Even the conservative
Jerusalem Post warned of a civil war, saying, “the
thought that this latest experiment in Jewish sovereignty will be in jeopardy
because of internal discord should shake us all at our core.”
The response to this attempt to
“change the state’s DNA” came last Saturday when between 80,000 to 100,000
Israelis gathered in the center of Tel Aviv to denounce the government’s
attempt to strip the judiciary of key powers. Smaller protests and sit-ins took
place on Monday, and others are planned for next weekend.
A defiant Netanyahu retorted that voters
had approved his judicial reform plan when they headed to the polls for the
fifth time last October and gave Likud and once-fringe far-right parties their
vote. But in reality, Netanyahu and his future coalition partners had not
talked publicly about their intentions for the judiciary during the election
campaign.
If the Knesset passed the so-called
reforms, then
Israel’s democratic secular system would have come to an end.
Netanyahu’s loose-cannon partners want to change the Basic Law and laws regarding
Jewish immigration (the Law of Return), stripping Israelis (read: Arabs) of
their citizenship, and executing Palestinians involved in killing Israelis.
They will go as far as adopting laws regarding segregation and termination of
all means of public activities on the Sabbath, among others.
This kind of “demolition derby” of
the state’s legal foundations will resurrect former US Secretary of State John
Kerry’s warning that Israel can choose to be a
Jewish state, but it will no
longer be a democratic state. The irony here is that this Israel that Netanyahu
and his radical partners seek to create is not one envisioned under the Abraham
Accords or by
Israel's founding fathers. How can an openly racist, anti-Arab,
fundamentalist, fascist entity claim to be at peace with its Arab
neighbors?
The caveat here is that a beleaguered Netanyahu may choose to export the crisis in order to deflect Israeli public opinion and postpone internal strife. He could do so by inventing a confrontation with Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Another irony is that this will be a
purely domestic crisis of Israel’s making. No one can blame the Palestinians,
Iran, or any other party for Israel’s looming woes.
The caveat here is that a
beleaguered Netanyahu may choose to export the crisis to deflect
Israeli public opinion and postpone internal strife. He could do so by inventing a
confrontation with Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The extremists in his camp may even
push him to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran. One thing is true; the
crisis in Israel is serious, and a self-serving Netanyahu is not in a position
to rein in his partners and avert an open war with almost half of the Israeli
society.
With so many genetic contradictions
in the very fabric of the political players, Israel is on the verge of
imploding from the inside.
Osama Al Sharif is a journalist and political
commentator based in Amman.
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