Israel Is Somewhere It’s Never Been Before
By Aaron Miller and Daniel C. Kurtzer - March 30, 2023
Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s effort to weaken Israel’s democracy—and
the public’s stunning resistance—has unsettled the country.
It
took three months, hundreds of thousands of Israelis in the streets,
and a general strike that saw flights grounded at Israel’s main
international airport and the country’s embassies and consulates around
the world shuttered—but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, once
thought to be the savviest and strongest politician in the land,
stumbled badly, perhaps fatally.
It’s hard to exaggerate the
magnitude of Netanyahu’s strategic blunder in imagining he could
unilaterally—even with a Knesset majority—destroy an independent
judiciary and alter the character of the country. His preemptive firing
of his defense minister, a career military man, for daring to speak out
against the judicial reforms reinforced the impression that the prime
minister has placed his personal politics above the security of the
nation—an image reflected in the protests of thousands of Israeli
military reservists.
Should Netanyahu push forward and replace
his fired defense minister with a more compliant minister, one wonders
whether many in the Israel Defense Forces would agree to follow the new
appointee’s lead. The protests were given tremendous legitimacy as a
result of the reservists’ participation and the pressure on the prime
minister from the country’s intelligence and security chiefs.
In
the end, some members of Netanyahu’s own Likud party and the
ultra-religious parties in his governing coalition were also pressing
him to stand down. Indeed, it appeared from the diverse makeup of the
demonstrators—a veritable cross-section of Israeli Jews and some Israeli
Arabs from all sectors of the public—that the prime minister was taking
on Israeli society as a whole.
Clearly, he has ignored former
U.S. President Abraham Lincoln’s wise words: “Public sentiment is
everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing
can succeed.”
Netanyahu’s political career is by no means
finished, and his coalition shows no signs of an imminent collapse. But
his political reputation is tarnished, his coalition’s effort to effect a
judicial revolution has taken a serious hit, and he now has a trust
deficit with the Biden administration.
Israeli politics will
remain very unsettled as the full impact of what has occurred sets in.
And security challenges loom. But one thing is already clear:
Netanyahu’s abortive effort to weaken Israel’s democracy, if not
redefine the country’s character, and the public’s stunning resistance
have taken Israel to a place it’s never been before. Here are four
important takeaways from this whole drama—and what is likely to come
next.
No. 1. It’s Not Over.
Both
of us have had enough experience dealing with Netanyahu not to count
him out. He is prime minister and controls (at least most of) Likud, the
country’s largest and most cohesive political party. And he’s more
determined than any Israeli politician to stay in power and has clearly
demonstrated he’ll go to extreme lengths others would not to do so.
Although
Netanyahu has temporarily paused on pushing through his judicial
reforms, he has also made clear he’ll keep moving the bills through the
Knesset after the Passover recess ends in May. “One way or another we
will restore the balance between the authorities that have been lost,”
he said in a speech on March 27. Even before his announcement of the
reforms’ pause, the chairman of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law, and
Justice Committee—one of the reforms’ key architects—readied the
judicial appointments law for a final vote at any moment.
Israeli
President Isaac Herzog, who has tried without success to find a
compromise to end the crisis, has convened talks between the parties.
But perhaps as a sign that Netanyahu isn’t serious about compromise,
none of the key lieutenants who designed his judicial legislation plans
are involved in the negotiations.
With zero trust or confidence
in the prime minister, demonstrators are taking no chances and plan to
keep up the pressure in the streets. Indeed, a new and unpredictable
factor may well have emerged on Israel’s political scene: the creation
of a grassroots, populist movement that has already demonstrated its
durability and power. Whether it can sustain itself and organize to
effect lasting political change remains to be seen. But it’s a clear
signal not just to Netanyahu but to politicians across the board that it
has power that can no longer be ignored.
No. 2. This Isn’t the Same Netanyahu.
Perhaps
the most significant and puzzling factor in the ongoing crisis is the
apparent change in the prime minister’s persona and behavior. Long a
champion of an independent judiciary, there’s little doubt that
something has altered his former distaste for risk-taking and
recklessness. Despite his often hard-line rhetoric, Netanyahu has
historically been risk-averse and cautious by nature, especially when it
comes to either war or peacemaking. He has more often than not been
indecisive, with a tendency to temporize—taking one step forward, a step
and a half back, and then coming out somewhere in between.
Netanyahu
has always prided himself in the ability to triangulate, to read the
political real estate correctly and stay within the broad outlines of
what the public might tolerate. This has all dramatically changed.
Anshel Pfeffer, a senior columnist for Haaretz and Netanyahu biographer
who has studied him for years, argued Netanyahu’s recklessness would
never have happened to “the old Bibi” and described his current behavior
as “a flabbergasting failure” at things he is usually good at. The
former Israel Bank chief Karnit Flug, who worked closely with Netanyahu
to stabilize and grow Israel’s economy, similarly said he could not
understand how Netanyahu dismissed or ignored warnings from experts
about the economic and security dangers of pushing his judicial reform
juggernaut.
What has altered Netanyahu’s behavior can only remain
a source of speculation. Is it his ongoing trial for bribery, fraud,
and breach of trust? Or is it, as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Barak argued in a recent FP Live interview, the consequences of a quest
for absolute power that corrupts absolutely? Or perhaps it’s the
influence of Netanyahu’s closed circle of advisors and his
family—especially his son Yair—who trade in conspiracy theories and
paranoia?
Whatever the cause, Netanyahu has produced perhaps the
gravest internal crisis in Israel’s history. As Pfeffer writes: “This is
Netanyahu like he’s never been before. Gone is the risk-averse and
pragmatic prime minister who even his rivals admitted didn’t ‘play games
with national security.’ Benjamin Netanyahu at 73 is now the
pyromaniac-in-chief of a government of arsonists prepared to set the
country alight just so they can bulldoze the hated judiciary and
establish their own hegemony.” Whether he can change course remains to
be seen.
No. 3. The Occupation Remains a Tinderbox.
The
Israeli occupation of the West Bank, long seen as among the most
consequential threats to Israel’s long-term security and well-being, has
been absent from demonstration discourse. Leftists and other critics
have called out the cynicism of demonstrations that demand democracy
inside Israel but ignore the Israeli government’s fundamentally
anti-democratic policies and actions toward Palestinians and systematic
discrimination against Arab citizens of Israel.
For the
demonstrators, keeping these two issues separate has been a critical
tactic to maintain cohesion among a group that includes many
conservative Israelis, including some who live in Israeli settlements.
Merging the causes of judicial overhaul and the occupation would create
serious fissures among the demonstrators.
The question, however,
is whether the democratic impulses driving the demonstrations can carry
over into a national campaign to end the occupation or, at least,
promote equal rights for Palestinians. The Israeli peace camp went
silent after the Second Intifada (and might remain silent if another
intifada, or uprising, erupts), but this new manifestation of populist
engagement might convince peace activists to reengage.
One
hopeful sign is that some demonstrators have adopted the slogan
“democracy for all,” suggesting a possible linkage between the domestic
debate and the occupation. But this doesn’t represent the views of the
vast majority of the protestors. In fact, there were reports of
protestors carrying Palestinian flags who were attacked by other
protestors during the demonstrations.
If and when the domestic
situation calms down, the existential threat to Israel’s social and
political fabric—long-term occupation and no pathway out—may return to
the fore. Even before that, the possibility of another Palestinian
intifada looms large, born of mounting frustration and anger among
younger Palestinians. Without a serious commitment either to separation
into two states or democracy for everyone in the area, the protests over
judicial reform will seem meaningless.
Should interest in peace
revive among a significant segment of the Israeli population, there will
be difficult choices to assess. The two-state solution is at least
moribund, if not dead, given the spread of Israeli settlements and the
growth in the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank. The nascent
movement for equal rights is seen by some as a thin cover for a
one-state solution, an outcome that almost all Israelis would likely
reject. Creative thinking about peace has atrophied in recent years, and
it is hard to see what political pathway can be developed that meets
the minimum requirements of the two parties. At a minimum, then, the
slogan of “democracy for all” can serve to revive the pursuit of
creative thinking about peace.
With judicial reform at least
temporarily stymied, though, there’s a real danger that Netanyahu’s
coalition partners who are determined to annex most of the West Bank in
everything but name will intensify their efforts. Itamar Ben-Gvir,
Netanyahu’s minister of national security, stayed in the prime
minister’s coalition only after receiving a green light to establish a
national guard under his direct control, which some fear will become his
own private militia to be wielded in the West Bank or in the mixed
cities where Israeli Jews and Arabs interact. With tensions already high
in the West Bank and settler violence increasing, it wouldn’t take much
to set off an explosion.
No. 4. Netanyahu Is on Probation With Biden.
The
Biden administration is slowly adjusting to the reality that it’s no
longer dealing with the old Netanyahu. For any number of reasons—from
U.S. President Joe Biden’s deep emotional attachment to Israel; to the
domestic political downsides of feuding with Israel, especially with a
Republican Party that has emerged as the “Israel, right or wrong” party;
to the looming challenge of Iran’s nuclear program, which requires
close cooperation with Israel—the administration isn’t looking for a
sustained public fight with Netanyahu.
Still, the prime
minister’s actions are testing Biden. And anger and frustration are
building. Biden’s recent remarks about the Netanyahu government’s effort
to ram through judicial reforms, saying that it “cannot continue down
this road,” as well as his rather emphatic statement that there would be
no invitation in the “near term” for Netanyahu to visit Washington,
suggest a much tougher posture.
Yet there is still no sense that
the administration is prepared to impose specific costs or consequences
on Netanyahu’s government. The prime minister appears to be on a sort of
probation with Biden. And how the Israeli leader handles the judicial
issue and the possibility of tensions with Palestinians during the
Ramadan and Passover seasons now upon us may well impact how the United
States relates to him going forward.
The current tensions between
the Biden administration and the Netanyahu coalition are unlike any
other in the history of U.S.-Israeli relations. The two countries have
had deep differences over policy, usually related to the Palestinian
issue or Lebanon, but never before doubts about the values they have
always said they share. Israel’s existence as its region’s only
democracy—however imperfect—has been the fundamental foundation upon
which support for it has rested, both in Washington and in the mind of
the U.S. public at large. It has resulted in extraordinary bipartisan
support for Israeli governments regardless of personalities or policies.
Should
that foundation collapse and Israel slide toward illiberalism, the
special character of the U.S.-Israeli relationship would change. Even
before the judicial reform debate, serious doubts existed in Washington
about the presence in the Israeli coalition of convicted racists and
self-proclaimed homophobes. That these individuals were given positions
overseeing finance, security, and the occupation only added to the
problem.
In this respect, resetting the bilateral relationship
won’t be easy even if the judicial reform crisis is resolved, because
the issue has now become one of trust and the need for a minimum of
comity. Nasty comments by Israeli politicians—reminiscent of the Obama
years—don’t help. The onus for rebuilding trust will rest entirely with
Netanyahu. He created this coalition, he supported the legislation that
prompted the domestic crisis, and he still has not taken forthright
action to change course. Given the prime minister’s current mindset and
his dependence on his current coalition partners, that will be more
easily said than done.