Israeli protesters have little faith that judicial negotiations will provide solutions
Members of Israel’s antigovernment protest movement have little faith that the political dialogue over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s contentious legal reforms will succeed and they anticipate a return to mass demonstrations, analysts say.
In an effort to stave off “civil war”, President Isaac Herzog is convening meetings between the government and the opposition to try to strike a compromise on the legal overhaul, which, opponents say, threatens Israeli democracy. But Dahlia Scheindlin, an analyst with Washington think tank the Century Foundation, tells The National that “there are very high expectations of a very spectacular failure of these negotiations,” and that there is “less than zero trust between both sides”.
“Protesters feel jittery,” she says of the Israelis she had spoken to. “They are certain that the government is not negotiating in good faith … the overall problem of the overhaul package has been kicked down the line, probably very briefly.”
On Monday, Mr Netanyahu was forced to pause the reforms, which were on the brink of being approved, after 700,000 Israelis took to the streets and the country’s main trade union launched a general strike.
The government said it would revisit the plans when parliament returned for its summer session at the end of April, and that it would use the intervening period to find a compromise.
Joshua Hantman says that he is “not confident this period of negotiations will go anywhere”, and that the protests were likely to continue “albeit with less energy”.
“If the talks fail and the government goes back to its extremist position, people will be back on the streets again,” Mr Hantman, an analyst at the Number 10 Strategies communications and polling firm says. The strike “scared the hell out of a lot of people”, he says, adding that such an event “has not happened since the British Mandate”.
Monday’s reversal by the government poses a particular problem for the embattled Israeli Prime Minister. Abraham Diskin, a research fellow at the Kohelet Policy Forum, the right-wing think tank whose ideology was the basis of Mr Netanyahu’s planned legal reforms, told Bloomberg that “given what happened lately, politically and personally, there’s no question that [Mr Netanyahu] lost confidence”.
Polls released by Israeli television channels on Monday showed the Prime Minister’s ratings had taken a pounding.
Mr Hantman says they were “particularly shocking,” because for the “past five election cycles we’ve seen almost a cult of personality around the prime minister”. “That seems to be breaking now,” he says. A further “lack of trust between the scattered groups that make up the protesters,” will also make finding a compromise on the reforms harder, says Ms Scheindlin.
“It is important to remember that these demonstrations are really not about the politics, and therefore opposition leaders are not seen as their spokespeople and representatives,” she says.
For now, fundamental questions remain, and there is little hope that Mr Herzog’s efforts can produce answers.
“Most people recognise that some type of reform is needed,” says Mr Hantman. “But this wasn’t a reform, it was a revolution.”