It\u2019s all in the timing. On New Year\u2019s Day, a little under three months since Hamas\u2019 terrorist attacks, Israel\u2019s Supreme Court issued a historic ruling. In an 8-7 decision, it struck down a controversial amendment to a Basic Law that removed the court\u2019s own power to quash government decisions on the grounds of \u201creasonableness.\u201d <\/p>\n
The decision was unprecedented: never before had the court thrown out one of Israel\u2019s Basic Laws, which act as an informal constitution, or an amendment to one. It did so, it said, because of the \u201csevere\u201d and \u201cunprecedented\u201d blow the law posed to the core characteristic of Israel as a democratic state. And so, the court will once again have the power to act against government decisions, as it did when it prevented a convicted tax fraudster from serving in cabinet. <\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think he has the ability,\u201d to respond, says Amit Segal, chief political analyst at Israel\u2019s Channel 12. \u201cPrior to the war, his allies (far-right ministers, Itamar) Ben Gvir, and (Bezalel) Smotrich would have demanded him to do so and dragged him to do it. Now they can\u2019t because it\u2019s a war and after the war, I think it will be the least of his problems.\u201d <\/p>\n
The judicial overhaul package was Netanyahu\u2019s flagship policy in his latest stint as prime minister. Having the one law from it that he managed to pass thrown out by the Supreme Court is a blow against him personally, and against his right-wing government\u2019s divisive policies. <\/p>\n
But as Segal says, he has bigger problems right now. After October 7, Netanyahu\u2019s reputation as \u201cMr. Security\u201d has been shredded. As well as overseeing the fight against Hamas in Gaza, he\u2019s fighting for his own political life: recent polling by Israel Channel 13 suggests that if an election were to be held tomorrow, he\u2019d be out of the job. <\/p>\n
And so it was left to Yariv Levin, Netanyahu\u2019s Justice Minister and the architect of the judicial overhaul plans, to say something. But all he did was assail the timing of the decision (which wasn\u2019t in the Supreme Court\u2019s gift due to the impending retirement of two judges), saying it was the opposite of the unity the country now demanded. <\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of turning this into a crisis,\u201d says Hazan, \u201cthe government is basically going to swallow this and continue trying to prosecute the war and not go back to polarizing the country.\u201d <\/p>\n
It helps that opponents of the bill also took the ruling in their stride. Benny Gantz, the leader of the National Unity political bloc who now sits in the war cabinet, said the verdict must be respected, and Israel had to avoid reopening the wounds of the past year. \u201cWe are brothers,\u201d he said. \u201cWe all have a common destiny.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
It\u2019s all in the timing. On New Year\u2019s Day, a little under three months since Hamas\u2019 terrorist attacks, Israel\u2019s Supreme Court issued a historic ruling. In an 8-7 decision, it struck down a controversial amendment to a Basic Law that removed the court\u2019s own power to quash government decisions on the grounds of \u201creasonableness.\u201d The <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":13543,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13542","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}