For ten weeks now, the State of Israel has been collapsing in on itself, with one of the most difficult and stormy national debates it has known since its establishment around legal reform.
On the one hand, a homogeneous and ideological coalition that tries to keep its promises to the voters, to bring its most important agenda to fruition, and to make a necessary change in the fabric of relations with the judicial authority.
On the other hand, an opposition and civil society that managed to unite in an unprecedented way against the government and mobilize hundreds of thousands of protesters to set the area on fire, the likes of which has not been seen in Israel for many years.
Demonstration in Kaplan (Photo: Ben Cohen from Phone News)
The discussion has long since left the legal field. Most of the supporters and opponents are not at all familiar with the articles of the reform and do not know the subtleties of the debate that crosses the country, but it doesn’t matter anymore.
The political floundering of the last four years has been replaced by the most fundamental question – where is the State of Israel headed, on the eve of the 75th anniversary of its establishment, and is it possible to continue playing together, by the same rules of the game?
For many years, only the fringes of the right spoke about the need to reform the judicial system, and tried to be a counter to the judicial revolution that the retired judge Aharon Barak imposed on himself.
Opinions that until recently were considered boring and sometimes ‘delusional’, found their place in the heart of the public opinion of the national camp, with the basic understanding that something must change.
Yariv Levin and Simcha Rothman cannot be accused of promoting the reform for self-interested or narrow political reasons. This has been their opinion for many years, until they captured the centers of power – the Ministry of Justice and the Constitution Committee of the Knesset.
Rothman, Levin and Netanyahu (Photo: Yonatan Zindel/Flash 90)
But something went wrong along the way, and their original ambition will no longer be achievable.
Damage control is allowed
You can continue to play the blame game as to why this happened, what could have been done differently and whether the problem is only the opposition’s unwillingness to cooperate and recognize the fact that the national camp is the one leading the legislation.
In one thing the right has already won, and that is in the fact that everyone is talking about the need to change the relationship between the Knesset, the government and the Supreme Court, and it is already clear that what was – cannot continue.
In all the polls it is clear that the citizens of Israel are convinced that the government mechanisms in the country need to be regulated, and the increased power of the High Court must be moderated immediately.
Now is the time for the coalition to take a step back and rethink.
As in the middle of a battle, even when there is a feeling of victory and the power is in your hands, a responsible commander should stop to calculate whether the price is worth the damage, and perhaps it is worthwhile to reassemble the fighters and recalculate the combat tactics.
The right-wing camp has already won public opinion and established the fact that there is a real need for reform, but if it continues with all its might now, it may lose the most important goal – securing the future of the State of Israel.
It’s difficult, there’s a lot of ego involved here and it requires a lot of courage, but specifically Rothman and Levin, who waited so many years to implement their dream, need to put it on hold a little longer, so as not to mean that their plan may go through 100%, but along the way Israeli society has deteriorated to the zero line .