The Knesset’s winter session, which ended early in April, was dominated by the return of the government’s controversial judicial reform and the upcoming summer session promises more divisive legislation.
Despite the fact that the country is still at war and 59 hostages remain in captivity in Gaza for more than 500 days, it appears that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is more determined than ever to push through a radical political agenda, removing the gatekeepers of Israeli democracy and replacing them with people he considers more loyal.
The first year of Netanyahu’s government in 2023 was dominated by efforts to shift the balance of power away from the judiciary to the executive. Opponents of the radical reforms claimed the measures would undermine Israeli democracy by weakening the traditional system of checks and balances, and hundreds of thousands took part in weekly protests. In response to the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023 the coalition suspended the judicial overhaul legislation, as it urged the country to unite around the war effort.
Pushing out the key independent gatekeepers critical of the government
But in recent months the coalition renewed the legislative drive while acting against key independent gatekeepers critical of the government. Ronen Bar, the head of the Israel Security Agency (ISA) Shin Bet, was dismissed (pending a High Court ruling on the move) and efforts are also underway to replace Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara.
Justifying the decision to remove Bar, the prime minister said he had lost confidence in him since the events of October 7th.
Bar wrote that his dismissal was an attempt to interfere with the ISA’s ability to perform its job in a nonpartisan way for the benefit of the citizens of Israel and not for anyone’s personal benefit. He accused the cabinet of attempting to prevent the “pursuit of truth” regarding the events that led to the October 7 massacre and the ISA investigation into the affair known as Qatargate, in which senior advisors in the Prime Minister’s Office are suspected of receiving payments from Qatar, a hostile state with close ties to Hamas.
The attorney-general described the decision to sack Bar as “fundamentally flawed,” but the real bombshell was a letter that was written by Bar himself, which was appended to her statement.
Bar made several accusations against Prime Minister Netanyahu in the letter, including a demand by the prime minister that Bar make implicitly illegal use of the Shin Bet and its powers against Israeli citizens, and that he act to get Netanyahu out of testifying in his corruption trial. Bar wrote that he surmised that it was his refusal to accommodate Netanyahu’s wishes about his trial that spurred Netanyahu’s decision to expedite his removal from office.
Bar has accepted personal responsibility for the failures related to the Hamas attack but the Shin Bet report into the events of October 7 reportedly included a recommendation for a state commission of inquiry that would also examine the role played by the political echelon, a move fiercely resisted by Netanyahu, who has refused to accept any personal culpability.
A few days after Bar’s dismissal, the cabinet approved a no-confidence motion against attorney general Gali Baharav–Miara and after the vote, Justice Minister Yariv Levin called on her to resign, saying “substantial and prolonged differences of opinion” prevented effective cooperation between the government and its chief legal adviser. “A way to restore trust no longer exists,” Levin said in a statement. “This situation seriously harms the functioning of the government and its ability to implement its policy.”
However, the attorney general has refused to step down and any step to remove her is likely to face administrative hurdles and an appeals process that could delay it for months.
The return of judicial reform
At the center of the legislative onslaught in the winter session was the bill changing the system of appointing judges, increasing political control over the process, a key element of the right wing coalition’s judicial overhaul.
After a marathon debate the measure passed 64-0 following a boycott by opposition lawmakers and will go into effect when the next Knesset is elected.
The new legislation reduces the influence of justices and removes members of the Israel Bar Association from the selection panel. The judges selection committee will now be comprised of three supreme court justices, the justice minister and another minister, one coalition Knesset member and one opposition lawmaker and two civilian representatives who are lawyers – one chosen by the coalition and one by the opposition.
Demonstrations were held outside the Knesset and elsewhere across Israel against the measure, the culmination of eight days of consecutive protests. Critics described the bill as an attempt by the government to seize control over the judiciary.
Justice Minister Yariv Levin argued that the measure was an attempt to address a longstanding constitutional imbalance that granted excessive power to the judiciary. “When you vote for the Knesset and discover that your vote has been taken by the courts; when you elect a government and discover that its ability to govern has been taken away from it – it is predictable that in a case such as this, at the very least it would be given – via its elected officials – the ability to influence the election of judges,” he said.
Opposition party Yesh Atid, along with pro-democracy NGOs, petitioned the High Court against the legislation, and opposition leaders published a joint statement saying they would repeal the law when the next Knesset takes office.
A bill was also passed granting the government de-facto power to appoint the next ombudsman of the judiciary, who is responsible for hearing complaints against judges. Levin, the architect of the judicial overhaul, also tried to postpone the appointment of Isaac Amit as Supreme Court chief justice. After he failed, Levin refused to recognize Amit’s appointment and will not cooperate with him, leading to deadlock on pending judicial appointments and other key decisions.
Netanyahu, addressing the Knesset, denied democracy was under threat. “Democracy isn’t in danger; rule by bureaucrats is. The deep state is. A small group of bureaucrats who are fighting to retain control over the levers of state power. In a democracy, the people are sovereign; that demands that their votes at the ballot box gain expression in terms of policy,” he said.
The war on KAN and Army Radio
The Knesset summer session will likely be dominated by another key element of the government’s radical agenda: the reform of public broadcasting, spearheaded by Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, who has both the KAN public broadcaster and Army Radio in his crosshairs.
Karhi seeks to cut funding to KAN and privatize its news section, effectively closing it down. He is also working together with Defense Minister Israel Katz to close Army Radio.
Another bill expected to be advanced in the summer session, after the measure passed its preliminary reading in the Knesset, will impose an 80% tax on any donation from foreign governments to civil society organizations. Many NGOs, especially human rights organizations, receive the bulk of their financing from donations from abroad and receiving only 20% of these funds would effectively shut them down.
There is no doubt that the election of Donald Trump for a second term as US president provided a tailwind for Netanyahu.
He was the first foreign leader invited by Trump to visit the White House and came back from Washington impressed by the president’s attack on what Trump terms the “Deep State” and his moves to limit the influence of the judiciary. For Netanyahu, this was a model to be copied.
In a telling social media post, Netanyahu compared himself to Trump.
“In America and in Israel, when a strong right wing leader wins an election, the leftist Deep State weaponizes the justice system to thwart the people’s will,” he wrote. “They won’t win in either place! We stand strong together.”
While the focus remains for now on the judicial overhaul, opposition lawmakers have already expressed concern that the coalition could make a major effort ahead of the next election, which has to be held at the latest by October 2026, to ban Arab parties and/or Arab Knesset members from standing by changing the legal definition of what constitutes support for terror and, in parallel, limit the Supreme Court’s authority over the Central Elections Committee.
A bitterly divided country, already at war for a year and a half, could be facing even more challenging times ahead. ■
