Concern among Israeli Arabs, excluded from the debate on judicial reform

The debate around the justice reform project continues in Israel, but without the Arab minority really feeling concerned. The latter even fears that this new text will contribute to accelerating “the violations of its rights”, in particular by promoting the occupation of the Palestinian territories.

While hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been demonstrating since January against this project led by the right-wing government of Binyamin Netanyahu, Israeli Arabs, who represent 20% of the country’s population, have been absent from large rallies. Some have joined protests in Haifa, a mixed Jewish-Arab city in northern Israel, calling for equal rights.

In the small northern town of Majd al-Krum, Samira Kanaan Khalaylah says the Arab community was “already sidelined before the reform was announced”. “The situation after the changes in the law will be unfavorable to us,” adds the 57-year-old woman, for whom the current government is the “worst ever”.

The Arab minority, descendant of the population that remained in Israeli territory after the first Arab-Israeli war, has always had a limited influence in politics, only one Arab party having been part of a government coalition since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. The current protest movement is led by militants and army reservists, many of whom refuse to highlight the plight of the Arab minority or the Palestinians, fearing it will harm their cause in the eyes of the Jewish majority in Israel.

On the sidelines of the movement, concern is spreading to the Arab community, the majority of whose members define themselves as Palestinians.

Lawyer and former Arab MP Youssef Jabareen worries about potential threats to Arab citizens and their elected officials if the government assumes “authoritarian powers”.

“With the reduction of the power of justice, the right will have more power and will be able to put forward its projects,” he says.

For the Haifa-based organization Musawa, which defends Palestinian rights, the new law will aggravate “violations of the rights of the Arab minority” and promote the occupation of Palestinian territories, considered by the UN to be illegal under of international law.

The reform, carried by the coalition associating far-right parties and ultra-Orthodox Jews, aims to increase the power of elected officials over that of magistrates.

It is considered necessary by the government to ensure a better balance of powers, but its critics see it as a threat to democracy.

Binyamin Netanyahu and his allies have already passed on July 24 an important clause in the bill which limits the possibility for the Supreme Court to invalidate a government decision by judging its “reasonableness”.

Among the coalition’s allies are ministers accustomed to racist remarks who advocate the annexation of the occupied West Bank.

“The far right wants to overturn rare Supreme Court decisions against settlement projects,” Jabareen adds. Léa Tsemel, a lawyer who defends Palestinians accused of “terrorism” by Israel, believes that the Arab minority was already not protected by justice before the announcement of this reform.

She cites Supreme Court rulings in favor of the government against Palestinians or Israeli Arabs, such as the Nation-State Law passed in 2018, qualifying Israel as a Jewish state and downgrading the status of the Arabic language from its official language status.

The Supreme Court also approved the “return” of homes in East Jerusalem, occupied and annexed by Israel, to Jewish organizations that held property deeds, resulting in the eviction of Palestinian residents. “It is of course not ‘reasonable’,” she said, referring to the clause passed by parliament in July.

NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have argued that Israel’s legal and political system could be considered apartheid against Palestinians, which Israel denies.

For Musawa director Jaafar Farah, despite reservations about the Israeli justice system in general, there was “hope in Palestinian society that the court would intervene in the face of unreasonable government decisions”.

For him, this reform “will reinforce institutional corruption” and affect both Jewish and Arab citizens.

The legislative process is suspended until the end of the parliamentary recess on October 15, but opponents of the reform have promised not to give up.