For the 27th week in a row, tens of thousands of Israelis gathered on Saturday evening, July 8, in central Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities to demonstrate against a controversial judicial reform championed by the government.
The demonstrators were more numerous than in recent weeks, according to the organizers who put forward the figure of 180,000 demonstrators in Tel Aviv. The Israeli media also gave rising figures, (around 150,000 demonstrators), two days before the introduction, Monday, in the Knesset of an important provision of the reform.
The police do not provide estimates of the number of demonstrators, of whom around 100 were dispersed with water cannons on Saturday evening after blocking the Tel Aviv urban highway, according to a journalist from Agence France-Presse.
A new day of mobilization announced on Tuesday
After unsuccessful attempts to negotiate with the opposition after the announcement at the end of March of a “pause” in attempts to legislate on reform, the government is relaunching the offensive in Parliament on Monday, with the examination in first reading of a bill to nullify the ability of the judiciary to rule on the “reasonableness” of government decisions.
This provision affects in particular the appointment of ministers. In January, it forced the Israeli Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, to dismiss the number two in the government, Arié Dery, convicted of tax evasion, following the intervention of the Supreme Court.
“We must act on what Netanyahu’s government is doing to our country and to the Israeli dream. If the Netanyahu government doesn’t stop, it will learn in the coming days what will happen when we get angry,” historian and essayist Yuval Noah Harari said at the opening of the Tel- Aviv. A day of national mobilization was announced for Tuesday by the organizers.
“We will not be able to live as we wish”
For Amit Lev, 40, a high-tech executive, “if we don’t stop what is happening now, there will be no turning back.” The bill that will be introduced on Monday “aims to prevent the judiciary from criticizing government decisions that do not fall under any other law”, he worries. “If this law passes we will not be able to live as we wish,” said Nira, a 59-year-old physiotherapist, saying she worries about the future.
Formed at the end of December with the support of far-right parties and ultra-Orthodox Jewish formations, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to pass a justice reform aimed at increasing the power of elected officials over that of magistrates. The executive believes the reform is necessary to ensure a better balance of power, but critics see it as a threat to Israeli democracy and its institutional safeguards.
Demonstrations against the judicial reform bill have followed one another without interruption every Saturday evening since January in what is considered one of the largest protest movements in Israel’s history.
