Is Israel 'Calm Before the Storm' or Finally Calming Down?
It’s hard to believe that Netanyahu and the more moderate members of his Likud party will want to continue pushing for the “reform.”
Editor’s note: This essay has been updated in light of Tuesday morning's effective attack on Islamic Jihad.
Amid a tumultuous 2023, at present the domestic front in Israel is somewhat calmer. Some would say that, even as a relative calm, it’s deceptive and nothing has really changed.
The tumult started back on January 4 when Justice Minister Yariv Levin unveiled a legislative initiative to “reform” Israel’s Supreme Court that actually would turn it into a pointless, powerless shell of itself. Since then TV screens around the world have been showing big protest demonstrations in Tel Aviv and many other locales—as well as a pro-“reform” demonstration on April 28.
Although demonstrations continue, presently there’s a sense that the confrontation between the two camps has cooled, a sense of a partial ceasefire. And for that mood there are two main reasons.
One is the talks on a possible compromise “reform”—that is, one worthy of the name—that are ongoing since late March. On one side are representatives of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud—largest party in the governing coalition; on the other are representatives of the two main opposition parties, National Union and Yesh Atid.
And the second reason for the relative calm in the judicial-overhaul arena is that the governing coalition has its own urgent issues. For one thing, it has to pass a state budget by May 29—or, by law, it dissolves and new elections are held. For another, the coalition is undergoing its own internal strife, with far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir threatening to bolt with his party if he keeps not getting his way.
Meanwhile, leaders of the protest movement have been hectoring those two opposition parties to abandon the talks, claiming they’re nothing but a sham enabling the coalition to mark time as it irons out the budget. They could be right. On the other hand, there are substantial reasons to posit that they’re not.
We can’t say for sure why it was that, last January—after years of championing the Israeli Supreme Court’s independence and rebuffing attempts to hamstring it—Netanyahu seemed to endorse his justice minister’s purported “reform.”
But we do know that, since that time, the so-called judicial overhaul itself—under justified criticism at home and abroad for weakening, possibly seriously weakening, Israel’s democracy—has, along with the social strife it’s engendered, spelled nothing but trouble for Netanyahu and the goals he may still hope to achieve.
On the diplomatic front, that means, most starkly, the Biden administration’s ongoing refusal—to Netanyahu’s great chagrin and frustration—to invite the Israeli leader to Washington.
The widely reported reason for that refusal is the judicial overhaul. Which, in turn, can be seen as playing hardball and taking sides in an Israeli domestic dispute. But even if it is, it’s a reality, and a bitter one for Netanyahu.
In foreign economic and financial circles, too, the overhaul is something less than a hit. That became dramatically evident last month when Moody’s—one of the world’s top three credit-rating agencies—made it the reason for lowering Israel’s rating despite being implored not to do so by Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog. The two other leading credit-rating agencies are expected to follow suit—unless something changes.
Combined with those factors is Netanyahu’s coalition’s deep and consistent downturn in Israeli polls. Most Israelis see it as doing poorly on both the security and economic fronts, in no small part because of its preoccupation with the judicial issue. Citizens will rate the government’s security performance higher after Tuesday morning’s effective strikes on the Islamic Jihad terror group in Gaza.
In light of all that, it’s hard to believe that Netanyahu and the more moderate members of his Likud party—if they have a grain of rationality left—will want to continue pushing for the “reform” even if the current negotiations on a compromise fail (and if, of course, the coalition survives in the first place).
Even in terms of simple self-interest, it doesn’t make sense for them. Expecting rationality to prevail may, of course, be overly optimistic. Only time will adjudicate.
