MPs vote to curb court clout

ISRAELI MPs voted yesterday to limit the Supreme Court’s ability to strike down government actions, delivering on a long-sought goal of the country’s ascendant right-wing movement.

The measure was pushed through despite months of massive civil unrest, international condemnation and pleas from business and security leaders to seek consensus in a bitterly divided society on the verge of chaos.

MPs methodically voted down 140 amendments, just as they had shouldered through more than a thousand objections in a week of preliminary manoeuvring and more than six months of nationwide protests.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – just hours after leaving the hospital where he had an emergency pacemaker implanted – sat calmly through the voting as shouts of derision rained around him, occasionally leaving for consultations.

He took several phone calls, including from Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who was working feverishly to broker a last-minute compromise.

But in a dramatic and contentious parliamentary session, with shouts of “Shame!” chanted by demonstrators outside the Knesset and opposition members inside, the prime minister’s coalition of right-wing, religiously conservative and ultranationalist parties stood steadfast. Soon after opposition members had left the chamber in protest, they voted 64-to-0 to change Israel’s Basic Law, stripping the Supreme Court of some of its powers of judicial review – a first victory in a more expansive push to rein in the judiciary, which has long been in a thorn in the side of Israel’s right wing.

In allowing the vote, Netanyahu brushed past a remarkable and growing chorus of entreaties from business and security leaders, including a rebuke late on Sunday from US President Joe Biden, who told Israeli media, “It doesn’t make sense for Israeli leaders to rush this”.

Hi-tech leaders warned that Israel’s reputation as an open and innovative start-up incubator was at risk. The Israel Business Forum, a federation of 150 of the country’s largest companies, shuttered malls, law firms and gas stations. More than 10 000 military reserve pilots, cyber experts and other service members pledged to skip their training duties if the coalition pushed the legislation through.

Netanyahu was scheduled to meet after the vote with the army’s chief of staff amid warnings from top generals that Israel’s defensive readiness could be impaired if enough reservists follow through on that threat.

Hopes for a last-minute deal rose and collapsed several times during the day. Herzog – who has warned that Israel is at risk of “civil war” – met with Netanyahu at the hospital after returning late on Sunday from a visit to Washington. Netanyahu also talked to opposition leader Yair Lapid yesterday, according to Israeli press reports. But Lapid said shortly before voting began that hopes of a compromise had collapsed.

The country’s largest labour federation, which saw its own compromise proposal rejected out of hand by Netanyahu’s Likud party on Sunday, has said it may call a general strike. Bankers warned that deposits and investments had already begun to flee the country. Following yesterday’s vote, the shekel and the Tel Aviv stock exchange plummeted.

Organisers of demonstrations that have drawn tens of thousands of Israelis into the streets week after week since January, said passing the bill would unleash even greater fury.

Protesters, some of whom have been camping in the July heat of central Jerusalem for days, poured into the parks and plazas around the Knesset after yesterday’s vote, joined by throngs getting off trains from Tel Aviv.

Police used water cannons and horse patrols to disperse crowds that tried to block roads into the Knesset compound throughout the day. They dragged demonstrators out of roadways, including military veterans and reservists who linked arms inside of PVC pipes as they lay on the hot pavement.

The proposal to overhaul the judiciary has split the country since it was launched as a surprise initiative just days after Netanyahu’s new right-wing government took office in late December. Yariv Levin, the justice minister, introduced a package of Knesset bills that would give the ruling parties more power to override Supreme Court decisions and select judges.

The initial package included bills that would stop the court from blocking politicians convicted of crimes from serving in top government jobs. The judicial standard of “reasonableness” that has given the court that authority was the power stripped from the court by yesterday’s vote.

Without a written constitution, the courts have used the “reasonableness” doctrine to block certain controversial decisions and appointments. Earlier this year, in a case that infuriated conservatives, the court forced Netanyahu to fire a key political ally, ultraOrthodox party leader Aryeh Deri, from his twin appointments as health and interior minister.