The Israeli Supreme Court on Monday invalidated a key provision of the highly controversial judicial reform promoted by the Prime Minister.A decision which comes in the middle of the war between the Hebrew state and Hamas.Before the terrorist attack carried out by the Palestinian movement, the project had sparked one of the largest movements in Israeli history.
This is a major setback for Benjamin Netanyahu. Already singled out on the international scene for the Israeli offensive led by Tel Aviv against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Prime Minister of the Hebrew State was inflicted with a real snub by the Supreme Court of his country. On Monday January 1, the institution invalidated a key provision of the very controversial judicial reform promoted by its government. The project triggered one of the largest protest movements in the history of Israel, since eclipsed by the war and the terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas on October 7 on Hebrew territory.
A “historic” decision
With this decision, the Supreme Court brings the subject back to the forefront. The invalidated measure provided for removing from the judiciary the right to rule on the “reasonableness” decisions of the Israeli government or Parliament. Eight of the Court’s 15 justices voted to invalidate the measure. A hard blow that the government of Benyamin Netanyahu hastened to denounce. The Minister of Justice, Yariv Levin, accused the organization of “assume all the powers”.
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The number two in the government and architect of the reform also castigated a decision rendered “in the middle of war, which goes against the unity necessary in these days for the success of our combatants on the front.” An accusation widely echoed in the ranks of the government, and in particular by the Likud of Benjamin Netanyahu, who judged “regrettable that the Supreme Court decided to publish its verdict at the heart of a social debate in Israel while soldiers from the right and the left fight and risk their lives.”
For his part, the leader of the opposition, Yaïr Lapid, welcomed this decision allowing the institution to fill “faithfully fulfills its role in protecting the citizens of Israel.” That “ends a difficult year of conflicts that tore us apart from within and led to the worst disaster in our history“, he wrote again on X (formerly Twitter), in reference to the attack carried out by Hamas on October 7. The Movement for the Probity of Power, which had filed the appeal against this clause, welcomed a decision “historical”.
“Fundamental laws” which serve as the Constitution
Supreme Court says it has authority to strike down fundamental law “in rare and exceptional cases in which Parliament exceeds its authority”. Because in Israel, these fundamental laws serve as the Constitution. Before October 7, tens of thousands of people demonstrated almost every Saturday across the country against the text. The coalition government, bringing together right-wing, far-right parties and ultra-orthodox Jewish groups, assured for its part that the text aimed to correct an imbalance, by strengthening the power of elected officials over that of magistrates.
Israel has no Constitution, nor the equivalent of an upper house of Parliament, and the doctrine of “reasonableness” has been used precisely to allow judges to determine whether a government is overstepping its prerogatives. In January 2023, the Supreme Court invalidated the appointment of Arié Deri, a close friend of Benjamin Netanyahu, as Minister of the Interior, arguing that he had been found guilty of tax fraud and was therefore not “reasonable” that he sits in the government. Critics of the reform accuse the Prime Minister, on trial for corruption, of wanting to use this reform to soften a possible judgment against him, which he denies.