2023-04-28 11:54:04
The Israeli right succeeded in a show of force, Thursday, April 27, by mobilizing in the streets of Jerusalem up to 200,000 people in favor of the project to overhaul the justice system of the government of Binyamin Netanyahu. Gathered near the Knesset, the demonstrators wanted to prove that this reform, contested by a large part of the country, was not dead. The Prime Minister put it in « pause » on March 28, in order to conduct negotiations with his opposition, which for the moment appear to be at an impasse.
The crowd, sincerely angry, was made up of religious families descended from the settlements of the occupied West Bank, but also of traditional and secular Jews, conservatives, and some ultra-Orthodox mizrahim (Jews from the Near East and the Maghreb). They were certainly less numerous than those, secular, liberal and highly educated, who have been protesting against the reform twice a week since January, but their mobilization is among the largest in the recent history of the Israeli right, which very rarely meets in the streets.
As Parliament opens its summer session on 1is May, the Prime Minister let it be known in the evening that this demonstration « warm[ait] the heart “. But he was absent. The mobilization seemed as much directed against the opponents of the project as towards Mr. Netanyahu himself, who, for several weeks, has been multiplying the signals indicating that the reform cannot, for the time being, be imposed on the country.
A moderate right moves away from the radicals
His allies do not give him a receipt: “The people are asking for a reform of justice and they will have a reform of justice”, hammered the leader of religious Zionism, Bezalel Smotrich, Minister of Finance and in charge of the administration of the occupied territories within the Ministry of Defence. On the stage set up in front of the demonstrators, the Minister of Justice, Yair Levin, a member of Likud, deplored the bad faith of his interlocutors within the opposition: “For a month, they have been saying no to all our proposals,” he asserted.
Alongside them, Likud clerics and barons appealed to ” people ” against the ” lies ” of one “minority”, the elite of the universities, the media and the judiciary, acting according to them within the State to prevent them from governing. ” Shame [à eux] »shouted the crowd, which flooded the streets with Israeli flags, like its opponents. “Don’t steal our victories”, “We are not second-class citizens”, also chanted the protesters.
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