New Chapter of Apartheid, Occupation Looms
Ahead of the vote and after, thousands of protesters in Al-Quds blocked the roads leading to the Knesset, with police using water cannons to remove them. Thousands more gathered in Tel Aviv, with protests expected throughout the night.
MPs passed the bill by 64 votes to zero, after opposition lawmakers left the parliament in protest when compromise talks broke down.
The new law eliminating the supreme court’s ability to block the regime’s decisions it deems unreasonable.
It’s part of a package of bills proposed by the cabinet earlier this year, which is seeking to overhaul the judicial system in the illegal entity.
There were deep divisions within the far-right coalition regime’s ranks leading up to the vote, with war minister Yoav Gallant reportedly calling for last-minute compromise talks with the opposition.
However so-called justice minister Yariv Levin and extremist security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir refused the proposal, according to Haaretz.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid accused the coalition of abusing its power, and said he would petition the supreme court against the new law.
“This is a complete breaking of the rules of the game,” Lapid said. “This is a sad day, a day of our home’s destruction, of needless hatred, and look at the coalition celebrating,” he added.
Demonstrators shut off streets near the Knesset building earlier on Monday, with some chaining themselves to one another.
Footage shared on social media showed firefighters using electric handsaws to break up the human chain, while police officers were seen forcefully removing others. Two protesters were hospitalized after water cannons struck them in the head and neck, Haaretz said.
At least 19 people were arrested in the Al-Quds protest, according to police.
Avi Dabosh, a leader of the protest movement that has been bringing people to the streets in their hundreds of thousands in recent weeks, was defiant following the vote.
Dana Olmert, a lecturer at Tel Aviv University, has been an active member of the protest movement for months.
“Today the first fascist law proposal passed,” she told Middle East Eye from Tel Aviv.
According to Olmert, the regime intends to use the law to remove anyone that stands in its way.
“It feels like the first step on the way to a police coup,” she said.
“There is deep, strong feeling of desperation and grief but also an expectation that the supreme court will reject this decision,” she added, suggesting a constitutional crisis may be on its way.
“I hope that the court won’t step back and they cancel this. Meanwhile we continue to protest in Jerusalem (Al-Quds) and Tel Aviv. I believe this will continue all night.”
As the bill’s passage looked inevitable, there was a sharp decline in the stock market and the shekel weakened compared to the dollar.
Scores of petrol stations and shopping centers, among other businesses, were shut on Monday after the Israeli Business Forum decided to suspend business activity over the judicial overhaul. The forum represents some of the entity’s biggest corporations and banks.
“We call on the prime minister to fulfill his duty and to understand the magnitude of the disaster that may occur,” it said.
Israel has entered a new chapter in its history, said veteran political commentator Meron Rapoport. “We don’t know what it will look like, but it will definitely be dramatic,” he told Middle East Eye.
After the clear disagreements between ministers over the bill, where Gallant was seen having a heated exchange with his colleagues, the Netanyahu regime has emerged victorious but weakened, Rapoport said. Netanyahu, he noted, “looked torn between different powers”.
Rapoport believes that the consequences will begin piling up: further protests and strikes, businesses refusing to pay taxes, and a loss of support from the United States.
U.S. President Joe “Biden set aside his dignity to give an interview with local Israeli media to call for the reforms to be stopped, and they didn’t,” he said. “It may lead to the Americans removing their protection from Israel.”
With domestic issues so turbulent, the Zionist regime may turn the screw on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as a distraction, Rapoport warned, “deepening the occupation, the apartheid, and the demolitions”.
Yet the regime nonetheless is in a crisis of legitimacy, where swathes of the population believe it is fundamentally leading the illegal entity to the precipice.
Poll results reported by broadcaster Kan found that 46 percent of Israelis opposed the change, while 35 percent were in favor and 19 percent undecided.
Demonstrations and strikes have taken place regularly since January in a bid to force the regime to halt its judicial plan.
Protesters were given a boost recently after hundreds of reservist soldiers joined their calls.
On Friday, more than 1,100 air force reservists, including over 400 pilots, said in an unprecedented letter that they would suspend their volunteer reserve duty if the plan was not scrapped.
Earlier on Monday, Netanyahu was discharged from hospital following an operation to fit him with a pacemaker.
He was admitted to Sheba Medical Centre near Tel Aviv on Saturday night after doctors said a heart monitor had detected “temporary arrhythmia”.
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