Joe Biden said on Tuesday that the Israeli government, faced with a large protest movement against its justice reform project, since put on “pause”, could not “continue on this path”. “They can’t continue on this path and I think I’ve made myself understood,” the US president said on the sidelines of a visit to North Carolina, adding that he had no plans to invite “short term” Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the White House.
The “pause” announced by Netanyahu after the start of a general strike and the emergence of tensions within the majority was met with skepticism by protesters as well as several political commentators. For Nahum Barnea, columnist for the daily Yediot Aharonot, the Prime Minister “knew how to turn a bitter defeat into a draw with nice words”. “Whatever he says, few people believe him, I believe the trust in him is not great including [on the right],” he wrote.
Referring to the bill on the composition of the commission responsible for selecting judges, one of the most contested aspects of the reform, their two parties warned in a joint statement that they would “immediately” leave the negotiating table if this text “is put on the program of Parliament”. For the government, the reform aims to rebalance powers by reducing the prerogatives of the Supreme Court, which the executive considers politicized, in favor of Parliament. Its detractors believe, on the contrary, that the reform risks leading to an illiberal or authoritarian drift.
