Last week, in the face of overwhelming protests and pressure from the Biden Administration, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government announced a delay in its plans to reshape Israel’s judiciary. Netanyahu took office in December as the leader of the most right-wing government in the country’s history. The proposed legislation would give the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, the ability to override court decisions. Both Netanyahu and members of his coalition have reasons for wanting to weaken the judicial system: Netanyahu is facing corruption charges, and appears to have turned to the parliament for protection, whereas his partners dislike the Court’s more liberal rulings, and what they claim is its bias against Israeli settlers and Orthodox Jews.
To talk through what has happened in Israel over the past several weeks, and what it means for the future, I recently spoke by phone with Ilana Dayan, an Israeli journalist and the anchor of “Uvda,” a weekly investigative news program. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed how Netanyahu and the protesters are preparing for the next battle over the judicial overhaul, whether secular Israelis should try to compromise with their religious brethren, and whether Israel’s treatment of Palestinians laid the seeds of this current conflict.
Do you view the Prime Minister’s willingness to delay this overhaul as a real victory for the protest movement, or is the same situation just going to arise again in a few months?
That’s certainly the biggest question. And I’ll tell you something about Netanyahu. People say, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Netanyahu is the weakest and the strongest he’s ever been. In one sense, there’s no question that he’s arriving at this pause, or suspension, of the reform the weakest he has ever been. The fact that he notified Yoav Gallant, the defense minister, that he was removing him from his position, effectively firing him, but never sent him an official letter, because he’s under immense pressure to let Gallant stay on, is one sign that Netanyahu’s the weakest he has ever been.
Last week, when he notified Gallant, rage erupted in Israel like I had never seen before. I’m not sure that people in America understood what happened here last Sunday. This was nothing like other demonstrations. This was pure rage and frustration—authentic and almost without boundary. It was spilling into the streets. And Netanyahu realized his miscalculation. Between Sunday and Monday, he realized that he had to stop the legislation. But it took him until Monday at 8 P.M. because of another weakness—his weakness within his own coalition. How do we know? Because he was forced to allow Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security, to have a private force, or private militia, which would be subordinate to Ben-Gvir, rather than to the police.
The third piece of evidence is, of course, President Biden’s statement on Tuesday night, which was something almost never heard before from an American President. When asked whether Mr. Netanyahu would be invited to the White House, he simply said, “No.” And then he said, “Not in the near term.”
So why is Netanyahu also stronger than he’s ever been?
Because he still has sixty-four [of a hundred and twenty] members of the Knesset and none of his partners in the coalition have any alternative. In that sense, Netanyahu is stronger than ever. For the first time ever, he has coherence to his coalition. It is a full-on right-wing and homogenous coalition. From that perspective, he’s presumably stronger than ever. He doesn’t need, in terms of hands in the Knesset, any partner from outside. You can see this even with the members of his Likud Party who, in the past, had said that they thought the legislation should be put on hold. Now none of them, not even Gallant, have said that they will vote against the legislation if and when it is up for voting.
What circumstances do you think Netanyahu hopes will change in the next few months, and what circumstances do you think might change?
There’s no way that Netanyahu or any of his associates—his advisers, his counsel, his family members—had any idea that this was how Israel would look after his reform was launched on January 4th by the minister of justice. Netanyahu also couldn’t imagine the protests, the magnitude of the protests, the economic implications, the diplomatic implications. The liberal camp is all of a sudden awakened, which it hasn’t been for decades. The tech sector threatened to pull money, and conveyed to the government that the Israeli economy would not be the same if this reform was indeed executed, if the legislation was completed. The other thing that happened was what you might call the fighter-pilot effect, which involved fighter pilots, who are in the military reserves. Many of them are guys over forty who still fly military planes. They are the ones who said, “We will not report to duty when this legislation is completed.” That was the leverage.
So what do you think Netanyahu is hoping will change?
The conventional wisdom is that he’s trying to gain time. When his defense minister publicly declared that there’s a clear and present danger to the security of the state of Israel because of what’s happening within the reserves, Netanyahu had no choice but to hold the legislation. It was not a calculated move. It’s the result of a miscalculation. He was up against the wall. And, by the way, according to reports, he spent the first part of Monday persuading the mastermind of the reform, Yariv Levin, the minister of justice, not to resign, and the second half persuading Ben-Gvir, his extreme-right-wing coalition partner, not to resign and dismantle the coalition. So it’s not like Netanyahu did something he wanted to; he did something he had to.
Are you concerned that in a few months the conditions will be different, and that he will succeed in pushing the plan through?
The minister of justice said that he would make a great effort to pass the legislation in the Knesset’s next session and the right would organize mass protests in support. From the protest side, the big question is: What do we do now? There are video clips circulating within the protest movement featuring a lawyer who was one of the leaders of the opposition in Poland in 2017, when a similar process was launched there. And she’s cautioning us, “Be very vigilant all the time.” Because in Poland the protesters took a break in 2017, and the government came back with a similar program later. They caught the opposition off guard and passed the legislation that they wanted. And so this clip is cautioning Israelis.
One option for the protest movement is to wait and see whether the conversations now taking place between representatives of the different parties in the Knesset go somewhere. At the same time, some people on the left of center are cautioning the protest movement, “Don’t make the same mistake that the right made.” The right came to this reform intoxicated by power. Yariv Levin and his partners were leading this reform. They were certain that it would happen in an instant—nice and easy and quickly. It didn’t happen. The Orthodox partners were sure that they could get the budgets they wanted and exemption from military service. They came with so much appetite and so much sense of power.
And so you see people on the left of center saying something that the President, Isaac Herzog, already said, which is, essentially, “If one camp wins, everybody loses.” If one camp runs over the other one, the other camp will be much more frustrated than it was at the beginning of this crisis. In the case of the protest movement, if the protest movement wins, then the right wing will feel that it keeps winning elections but is still losing its grip on the future of the state of Israel. It keeps winning on the ballot and losing in the streets. Then they would be out in the streets. They already are. This frustration will be laid over a much deeper and ancient frustration against the ruling hegemony, against liberals, against the courts. And that is dangerous.
A lot of liberal commentators have said that this government is a threat to Israeli democracy, that the whole future of the country is in doubt. If you view the right wing as a true existential threat, it seems that maybe you want them to be crushed, no?
I disagree. This is true only if you look at it from a theoretical point of view. In theory, you are correct. In theory, democracy is a zero-sum game. Either you are a liberal democracy or you are not. Either you keep the independence of the judiciary or you don’t. Either you have the protection of civil rights and human liberties, the way only liberal democracies have, or you don’t. But this is not the case, Isaac, when it comes to Realpolitik, and even more so when it comes to the fabric of Israeli democracy. Israeli democracy was never perfect. The Law of Return, the control in the West Bank, the way that the Jewish majority has dealt with the Arab minority for seventy-five years—we have our imperfections to begin with, but we somehow managed to keep it all together. It somewhat held together, until it didn’t.
What I’m trying to say is that, when you dive into the details, of course you can strike a compromise. Everybody knows that. Even in the Israeli-Palestinian context, everybody knows that. One day, we will get there, God willing. Practically speaking, there will be imperfections in any compromise, but there will have to be compromise.
Here is an example. One of the wagons pulling the train of reform is the need for the Orthodox citizens of this country to be exempt from military service. It doesn’t matter why and how it started, but there’s a fight. And, for them, the main cause for grief is that the Supreme Court time and again has struck down legislation [that grants extensive exemptions from military service]. They want an override clause that would enable any future coalition to throw out such a ruling.
A liberal democrat or a secular Israeli might perceive it as a zero-sum game: either they join the military or they don’t; either they get drafted or they don’t. I believe that, if some kind of exemption is legislated, and we end the crisis with this group and understand their way of life, we, as liberals, have to respect their needs. This is an inequality I can live with.
You mentioned the imperfections and the problems with Israel’s democracy, specifically settlements and the way the Arab minority is treated. To what degree are those problems intricately related to what we see now? There’s the practical aspect of the settlers not liking the Supreme Court because they see it as anti-settlement, or they think it’s too nice to the Arab minority, even if that’s not the case. But, in a larger sense, is this particular crisis those foundational flaws coming home to roost?
I really don’t know. It’s possible to link what’s happening now to much bigger problems that Israel has, but the nexus that you are trying to create—I’m not sure that I will sign on to it, mainly because I view it a bit differently. That so many of us can unite around the idea that Israel is a liberal democracy, albeit an imperfect democracy, committed to human rights and human beings—that is, the protection of minorities—is important. I was meeting this morning with a senior official within the Israeli security establishment, and he told me that the way the Iranians see it, they don’t have to apply any external energy, because Israel is destabilizing itself. This is happening from within. What I’m trying to say is that this crisis is not a derivative of our other problems, but it might amplify our other problems.
As someone who’s observing from a distance, I find it hard not to notice that the people most enthusiastic about exacerbating the other problems are also the ones perpetrating this crisis.
I have given you what I think are the major reasons. The sentiment among settlers, among the people supporting the right wing, is that the Supreme Court has not been seeing them, has not been ruling in favor of them, and I can understand where it comes from. Doesn’t mean that I agree. I can prove them wrong on part of the issues, but I can understand.
Right, but the Supreme Court has also made a lot of decisions that the Arab minority views as being bigoted, no?
Of course. And it has legitimized many of the means that the Israeli military uses to confront the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. You can see it as part of the problem, as part of the imperfections of Israeli democracy. But you can also see it in another way, if you look from my perspective as a Zionist and as an Israeli who understands that, one day, we’ll have to find some answer for the fourteen or so million people living here between the sea and the river. That is one part of me. But the other part realizes that we are still threatened, that we are still dealing with many enemies who don’t want to see us here. They’d rather have us somewhere else. An independent judiciary is the most effective tool that we have in the international arena to indicate that, if we are crossing lines or, God forbid, committing international crimes, there’s someone here to check it.
I asked that question because, if you do think that the other flaws in Israeli society are intricately related to what we’re seeing now, it suggests that the protest movement in the long term is going to have to change gears and start focussing on other things.
I disagree. Because many Israelis who go out in the streets disagree as to the solution for the Palestinian conflict.
I meant in the long term, but go on.
Even in the long term. A colleague I have worked with for thirty-six years has voted for right-of-center parties. But she doesn’t miss any demonstration. She’s out there. She’s seventy-one years old, and she goes out to protest every Saturday night. Why does that make sense? Because in terms of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the difference between right wing and left wing is the risk-management formula. The right wing is willing to take a chance on the demographic problem. The left wing is willing to take a chance on the security problem. This is roughly speaking. So, both sides have different risk-management formulas. I understand that. I know what you’re trying to tell me. But still, from the point of view of the Israelis, you can either take one risk or another risk on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Whereas on the issue that we are dealing with today, it’s like you alluded to before: either you sign on to Israel being a liberal democracy or you don’t.
How much is this very urgent crisis simply about Netanyahu wanting to avoid going to jail? What does Netanyahu want out of this? Why is he pushing his country to the brink?
The conventional wisdom is that he allied with those who see this reform as the most important thing for Israel because he wants to take revenge on the court system—because of his indictment, or because he thinks that at the end of this reform he can somehow appoint an attorney general who will reconsider the indictments or perhaps halt the trial altogether. This is why he associated himself with the main architects of this reform, who have other interests.
I also think that, because Netanyahu is such a sharp politician, he identified the sentiment within his own base. But he miscalculated the reaction of the opposition and of many Israelis, many of those who voted for him, who see this reform not as something to die for or to break this country and the fabric of this society for.
There’s no question that he feels betrayed by the court system, that he truly believes that he doesn’t deserve his indictments, that he thinks that there was injustice, that he wants this trial to be over and done with, and that he wants to get off the stage of history without this pain of a criminal conviction. But now it goes so much deeper than Netanyahu. This is what I’m trying to say. The genies are out of the bottle, and it has become much deeper than any legal patch or constitutional reform. ♦
