For the eleventh Saturday in a row there have been protests in Israel against the controversial judicial reform of the right-wing religious government. According to Israeli media, a quarter of a million people took to the streets across the country – most of them in Tel Aviv. There were also protests in Jerusalem and Beersheba.
Signs read “No to dictatorship” and some demonstrators chanted: “Israel is not yet Iran.” Occasional clashes broke out between demonstrators and supporters of the reform. Opposition leader Jair Lapid wrote on Twitter that he condemned the “extreme increase in violence”. You will not silence the demonstrators. There were also occasional arrests.
Massive protests against the government’s proposed law have been going on for more than two months. In the future, Parliament should be able to overrule decisions of the Supreme Court with a simple majority. Critics see the separation of powers in danger and warn of a national crisis. The coalition wants to push through core elements of the reform by the end of the month.
Resistance is also stirring in the Israeli army
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately rejected a compromise proposal presented by Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Wednesday. It is unbalanced and only cements the current state. The opposition backed the proposal. “It’s not perfect, but it’s a fair compromise that allows us to live here together,” said Lapid. In a civil war there are only losers.
Herzog emphasized that the proposal was intended as a basis for talks. The protest movement is one of the largest in the history of Israel, a country of around 9.4 million people, and involves broad sections of society. There is also increasing resistance from the army. Hundreds of elite officers from the military reserve announced that they would no longer report for duty as of Sunday.