Tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in cities across Israel in a spontaneous outburst of anger after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu abruptly fired his defense minister for challenging his judicial overhaul plan.
Protesters in Tel Aviv, many carrying blue and white Israeli flags, blocked a main road late Sunday and lit large bonfires as police battled protesters who gathered outside Netanyahu’s private residence in Jerusalem.
The unrest deepened a months-long crisis over Netanyahu’s plan to overhaul the judiciary, which has sparked mass protests, alarmed business leaders and former security chiefs, and raised concerns among the United States and other close allies.
Netanyahu’s resignation of Defense Secretary Yoav Gallant was a signal that the prime minister and his allies will continue with the overhaul plan this week. Gallant was the first senior member of the ruling Likud party to speak out against it, saying the deep division threatened to weaken the military.
But as crowds of protesters flooded the streets well into the night, Likud ministers began to be prepared to slam the brakes. Culture Minister Micky Zohar, a close confidant of Netanyahu, said the party would support him if he decided to interrupt the judicial review.
According to Israeli media, the leaders of Netanyahu’s coalition will meet on Monday morning. Later in the day, the grassroots protest movement said it would hold another mass demonstration outside the Knesset, or parliament, in Jerusalem.
Israeli protesters block a highway in Tel Aviv, Israel, Sunday, March 26, 2023 (Ohad Zwigenberg/AP)
‘Red line’
Netanyahu made the decision to fire Gallant after the former Navy admiral warned on Saturday that the overhaul plans posed a “clear, immediate and tangible threat to the security of the state” and called for them to be stopped.
“For the sake of our country, I am willing to take any risk and pay any price at this time,” Gallant said in his televised address.
When announcing Gallant’s resignation, Netanyahu’s office did not name a replacement or provide any other details. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided tonight to fire Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Shortly afterwards, Gallant, 64, wrote on Twitter: “The security of the State of Israel has always been and always will be my life’s mission.”
As protesters poured into the streets, police used water cannons to push them back from Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem, while in Tel Aviv — where hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets since the beginning of the year — protesters lit a large bonfire on a main street. motorway.
Clashes were reported in Tel Aviv as police moved in to clear the highway and put out the fires.
Opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz issued a joint statement condemning Netanyahu’s moves.
“State security should not be a card in the political game. Netanyahu crossed a red line tonight,” they said, calling on the Likud party to have no hand in “crushing national security.”
Netanyahu’s nationalist-religious coalition has plunged into crisis over bitter divisions exposed by its major judicial reform plans (Nir Elias/Reuters)
Adding to the pressure, the head of the Histadrut Labor Federation, the umbrella organization for hundreds of thousands of public sector workers, said he was “surprised” at Gallant’s removal and promised a “dramatic” announcement on Monday.
Israel’s consul general in New York said he was resigning because of the resignation. Israel’s research universities announced they would stop holding classes due to legislative pressure, and called for an immediate freeze.
‘Constitutional Crisis’
The unrest comes at a critical time in the passage of the legislation, with a bill giving the executive more control over the appointment of judges expected to be submitted to the Knesset for ratification this week, where Netanyahu and his allies have voted 64 of them. check the 120 seats. .
Netanyahu and his allies say the plan — which also aims to give parliament the power to overturn Supreme Court decisions — will restore balance between the judiciary and executive and curb what they see as an interventionist court with liberal sympathies.
But critics say the laws will remove Israel’s system of checks and balances and concentrate power in the hands of the ruling coalition. They also say Netanyahu, who is on trial on corruption charges, has a conflict of interest.
“What the government wants to do is not correct or fix or modify the justice system so that it becomes more just. Exactly the opposite. They want to take control of the justice system,” said Ofer Cassif, an Israeli politician and Knesset member for the left-wing Hadash party.
“I think we should refer to the situation not as a judicial overhaul, but as a coup,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Netanyahu wants to turn Israel from an ethnocracy – because Israel has never been a democracy in my opinion, because this state is based on a Jewish supremacy, so it cannot be considered a democracy from the first place – but it will be under the coup which the government wants to continue will turn Israel into a full-fledged fascist dictatorship.”
How, and even if, the hitherto unscheduled vote will proceed has been called into question by the wave of protest sparked by Gallant’s removal and growing divisions within the coalition.
Rapid legal and political developments have catapulted Israel into uncharted territory, said Guy Lurie, a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem-based think tank.
“We are at the beginning of a constitutional crisis in that there is disagreement over the source of authority and legitimacy of various governing bodies,” he told the Associated Press news agency.
