What’s Happening in Israel? Protests and Strikes Over Netanyahu’s Judicial Overhaul

JERUSALEM—Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets across the country in recent months to demonstrate against a judicial overhaul planned by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

On July 24, the ruling coalition pushed through the Israeli parliament, called the Knesset, the first in a series of laws the coalition wants to pass to limit the power of the court system. The legislation passed without any opposition support after talks to forge a compromise collapsed. Opposition lawmakers walked out of the room, boycotting the vote.

Netanyahu, the country’s longest-serving prime minister, now in his sixth term, brought the judicial legislation back from defeat after his government first tried to pass a different package of bills in March. He postponed the effort after mass protests and a general strike paralyzed the nation, but he said in June that he would pass the overhaul in a modified form.

The law’s passage marks a pivotal juncture for Israeli society, setting up a potential showdown with the country’s Supreme Court, the institution whose power the law was designed to curb. It presents a decisive moment for thousands of military reservists who have said they would quit, and for business, union leaders and medical professionals who have threatened mass work stoppages.

Israel’s largest labor union, Histadrut, said it was preparing for the possibility of calling a general strike, and some protesters were pressing it to make such a move. However, the union decided against declaring a general strike immediately after the first bill was passed.

A day after the first bill’s passage, doctors and medical workers in Israel went on strike.

The overhaul has divided the country, sparking concern from key allies such as the U.S. and raised questions about its military readiness amid a growing threat from the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group along its northern border. Analysts warn the country could be headed for a constitutional crisis.

Here is what you need to know.

Why are people in Israel protesting?

In a country of nine million people, up to half a million Israelis have come out every weekend to protest against Netanyahu’s planned overhaul of the country’s judiciary.

Demonstrators and the country’s political opposition say the plan would weaken Israel’s already frail system of checks and balances and undermine democracy and protections for minorities. They also say the overhaul would deal a fatal blow to Israel’s democratic character.

The debate over Israel’s top court is partly explained by ambiguity in the country’s legal system that dates back to its founding. Israel doesn’t have a written constitution. Instead, the court bases its decisions on British common law, evolving Israeli precedent and a series of basic laws, which provide quasi-constitutional powers.

The struggle over the Supreme Court has also become a proxy for deeper rifts in Israeli society. The protests have pitted liberal, secular Israelis—who view the court as a guarantor of human rights—against the ultra-Orthodox and religious and political conservatives who deem the court an obstacle to their policy goals.

What are the judicial changes at the center of the crisis?

Netanyahu’s entire coalition of 64 lawmakers voted on July 24 in favor of a law that takes away the Supreme Court’s ability to nullify government decisions it finds “unreasonable in the extreme”—a concept they said was nebulous and allowed liberal judges to overturn the will of an increasingly right-wing electorate.

It is the first in a series of laws the coalition wants to pass to limit the power of the court system. Next up is a bill that would give lawmakers more power to select judges—a move that is more contentious than the bill passed on Monday. It could be voted on in the fall.

Netanyahu in June told The Wall Street Journal that he would drop what is viewed as the plan’s most controversial part outside of Israel, which would have given the national legislature the power to overturn rulings by the Supreme Court.

What is known as the “override clause” would allow parliament to strike down Supreme Court decisions regarding legislation with a majority of 61 lawmakers. The proposals would also require a supermajority of justices to strike down parliament laws. Critics say the proposed changes would practically end judicial review over parliament, as nearly every parliamentary coalition in Israeli history has 61 or more seats.

Why did Netanyahu push through the judicial overhaul plan?

Netanyahu in March suspended the overhaul plan and started compromise talks with the opposition after mass protests. But in late June he said the sides had failed to reach an agreement and that he would move forward with his own revised plan.

The longtime leader hasn’t historically been an advocate for changing the judiciary, but he was under intense pressure to pass it from members of his coalition, widely viewed as the most right wing, nationalist and religious in the country’s 75-year history.

The debate over the judicial legislation has cast a light on Israel’s societal divide over what it means to be both a Jewish and a democratic state. The state was founded and controlled in its early decades by secular socialists of largely Eastern European descent. They envisioned a culturally Jewish but socially liberal democratic state.

Over recent decades, an alliance between various segments that have come to represent the Israeli right—religious Zionists, settlers, the ultraorthodox and Jews of Middle Eastern descent—has grown in both numbers and power. Netanyahu’s Likud party, which is itself secular, has united those segments on the right into a political powerhouse.

What’s next?

Nongovernmental organizations and others have filed petitions asking Israel’s highest court to overturn the law, which is akin to a constitutional amendment that does away with the court’s power to strike down government decisions it determines are extremely unreasonable.

Rejecting such a quasi-constitutional law is something the Supreme Court has never done, but is now under public pressure to do.

It is unclear when the court will respond to the petitions. The next step will be a preliminary hearing in front of a justice, and the court could then decide to take the case to an extended bench of justices to make a final determination. Scholars said they believe the court won’t dismiss the case out of hand.

Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a leader of the country’s ultranationalist right, said that if the court strikes down the law, that would be “an attempted coup.”

Will this affect the relationship between Israel and the U.S.? 

Netanyahu moved ahead with the judicial overhaul despite repeated warnings by the Biden administration, including one only hours before the vote, when President Biden issued a public statement, saying the measure was “becoming more divisive, not less.”

Biden administration officials were quick to insist after the measures passed that the U.S.-Israel relationship remains “ironclad,” as White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre put it. She didn’t directly answer questions about whether there would be tangible consequences for Israel, describing Biden as a lifelong friend of Israel.

Biden is unlikely to try to punish Netanyahu by seeking to cut aid to Israel, a move that Congress would likely not support anyway, analysts said. But the Israeli government isn’t likely to entirely avoid paying a price for the vote.

“It will give fodder to those in Congress, especially on the left who want to pressure the Biden administration to reconsider the relationship,” said Carmiel Arbit, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank. “I don’t think it will threaten the relationship, but it will chip away at it over time.”

This explanatory article may be periodically updated.

—Shayndi Raice, David S. Cloud and Ari Flanzraich contributed to this article.

Write to Dov Lieber at [email protected]