2023-07-22 20:39:33
Before a crucial vote in parliament, several hundred thousand people across Israel protested against the planned weakening of the judiciary. Channel 13 estimates that around 170,000 people gathered in the center of the coastal city of Tel Aviv on Saturday evening, and 85,000 in Jerusalem. According to media reports, there were isolated cases of violent clashes with the police. Resistance to the government’s plans is also growing in the military.
Organizers of the protests put the number of participants across the country at more than half a million. It would be one of the biggest protest days since the regular demonstrations began in early January. Altogether, Israel has around 10 million inhabitants.
Israel’s right-wing government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to introduce a core element of the judicial reform, which is also highly controversial internationally, to parliament on Sunday. However, the final adoption of the law is not expected before Monday afternoon. The law is part of a larger package that critics see as a threat to Israel’s democracy. For months, the project has divided large sections of Israeli society.
Protest signs in Tel Aviv read, for example, “Netanyahu the enemy of democracy” or “Save our homeland”. Many Israelis in the metropolis are afraid that Israel could change fundamentally with the reform. The protest movement is the largest in Israel’s history and encompasses broad sections of society.
According to organizers, a day-long protest march with tens of thousands of people reached Jerusalem on Saturday. Hundreds of demonstrators began the approximately 70-kilometer hike from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on Tuesday. According to the organizers, the kilometer-long protest march has been getting bigger and bigger in the past few days. According to estimates by Channel 13, it grew to more than 70,000 people by Saturday. Your plan is therefore to spend Sunday night in front of Parliament. For more than six months, the project has divided large sections of Israeli society. Thousands regularly take to the streets.
Negotiations on a compromise have so far been unsuccessful. According to media reports, efforts should continue in the background. The law is part of a larger package that critics see as a threat to Israel’s democracy.
The country’s highest court should no longer be able to judge a decision by the government or individual ministers as “inappropriate”. Critics fear that this will encourage corruption and thus the arbitrary filling of important posts and layoffs. The Netanyahu government, on the other hand, accuses the judiciary of interfering too much in political decisions.
Meanwhile, pressure on Israel’s government has also increased from within the military. More than 10,000 reservists would no longer appear on duty if the government’s controversial judicial restructuring were not stopped, their “Brothers in Arms” protest movement announced on Saturday evening, according to media reports in Herzliya. According to the reports, this could significantly affect the operational readiness of the military. The military initially declined to comment.
On Friday, more than a thousand Air Force reservists had already threatened to refuse service. Defense Minister Xoav Galant then announced that he was trying to reach a “consensus”. According to media reports, he is trying to postpone a vote scheduled for Monday on a key element of his government’s controversial plans.
More than 100 of the country’s top ex-security chiefs expressed their support for the possible draft evaders in a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu on Saturday, urging him to stop the legislation. Netanyahu is “personally responsible for the serious damage inflicted on Israel’s military and security,” the letter said.
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