The tumultuous reform was aimed at “strengthening the balance of power” and would increase the representation of politicians on the committee that approves judicial appointments, as well as the ability to overturn decisions by the country’s Supreme Court by majority vote in parliament. Another point of the plan, which has already been approved, in turn denies the State Prosecutor General the right to declare a current prime minister unfit for office. Given that Netanyahu has been accused of corruption and abuse of office in Israel, the prime minister’s opponents see the move as personally beneficial to Netanyahu. But the whole plan as a whole is a threat to the democracy of the Jewish state.
At the same time, there is a strong demand for such a reform in the conservative part of Israeli society, which is represented by the majority of the current government. Among the voters of the latter, there is a widespread opinion that the national judicial system has simultaneously usurped too much political power and turned into a closed and uncontrolled radical liberal club, whose members, guided by their own ideological considerations, actively influence political decisions. Accordingly, the desire of conservative politicians to change the situation, which most of them promised to the voters before the last election, is also understandable.
A separate issue, of course, is about the factors that lead to the contradictions being resolved on the streets (Netanyahu’s personality, the long political crisis, the orientation of Israeli conservatives and liberals towards different US political forces, etc.), but if we look more broadly, Israel has become just another country, where irreconcilable disagreements have arisen between the adherents of two different views – about what the state’s judicial system should be and what is understood by its independence. The traditionally conservative point of view – judges are independent and uninfluenced in making decisions, but within the framework of national laws and interests. The liberal globalist – judiciary also significantly influences political decision-making. Regardless of future developments in Israel, it is clear that this country will not be the last in which the issue of judicial powers becomes the cause of widespread political passions.
