After months of mass protests in israelthe first Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paused this week your project judicial reform. Even so, made concessions to the most conservative sectors of the ruling alliance, which He threatened to dissolve it if he gave in to the demonstrators, and which in turn generated new claims from civil society.
Netanyahu assured that paused to the parliamentary process of vote on his controversial reform for “prevent a civil war through dialogue”. The mentioned reform was going to tilt judge appointments almost entirely as an attribute of government on duty, while allowing legislators will overrule decisions of the highest court with a mere simple majority.
The decision of the government leader was not without concessions to the most conservative sectors of the alliance that placed him as prime minister, since figures such as the head of the National Security portfolio, the far-right Itamar Ben Gvir, threatened to resign if they drop the reform. After declining his position to resign, Ben Gvir announced in a statement on Wednesday something that had been denied him at the time of forming the government: the creation of a National Guard whose objective will be to “combat terrorism, nationalist crimes and restore governability” In Israel.
So, the leader of the Otzma Yehudit party (Jewish power) would be in charge of a force of 2,000 soldiers that will depend directly on him. The creation of this force, which must be approved tomorrow by the Council of Ministers, led in turn to Hundreds of people took to the streets again to protest in all the country.
“If this is approved, It’s an extremely heavy political influence.” the promotion director of the organization of ex-Israeli soldiers Breaking the Silence (BtS) told Télam, Ori Givati who explained: “And it’s not that the other forces don’t have it, but this is another level of danger because we are giving a private militia to a ministera force that is separated from the other forces of security”.
Besides, former member of the Security Forces (IFD), which worked in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and critic of the occupation, characterized the minister as “a settler from Hebron”. “We’ve known him in BtS since we started. Documented participating in attacks or inciting violence against Palestiniansagainst civil society. He is a leader of the settlers and we all know of his violence. We saw it in Huwara (a West Bank city), where They burned the whole town and Ben Gvir supported them,” assured.
“This guy is the one they are giving the private militia to” added Givati and sentenced: “Netanyahu is giving a lot of power to a person who openly supports violence and that’s very dangerous.”
Ben Gvir had already suggested on different occasions the possibility that the border policein charge of security in the settlements and in constant tension with the Palestinians, Join the new National Guard. So much the palestinian governmentwith headquarters in the West Bank, as the Hamas leaderswith control of the Gaza Strip, they rejected the adconsidering that it could affect Palestinian territory.
This and other aspects, such as budgetary issues and the chain of command of the new force, must begin to be defined by the cabinet starting tomorrow’s meeting. Even when there is uncertainty about the scope of its operationsFor Givati, Netanyahu’s concession “sends a very clear message to the settler movement, to the soldiers in the West Bank and to the Palestinians” which is about the “legitimacy and authority of Ben Gvir”, beyond the fact that he was already in charge of a ministry. “This will affect the legitimacy that settlers and soldiers in the West Bank have for violence against Palestinians.”he detailed.
This occurs while For the first time in the country, “a coalition formed solely and exclusively by far-right parties” governs.pointed out to Télam the professor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and activist Claudia Kedar. Within the coalition, the doctor in history characterized Netanyahu’s party, the Likud, which is also the largest in the government, as “historically liberal right-wing, but which is taking the far-right and non-liberal path”, while “Religious Zionism, of the extreme right, broke a record in the last election and has 14 seats, when they have never had anything like this.”
Another demand that the coalition settler leaders had conceded to reach the government and that less than two months after its formation they managed to obtain the transfer of administrative functions over occupied territories in the West Bankwho moved to the finance minister, the settler from the Religious Zionism party Bezalel Smotrich and that they were taken from the holder of the Defense portfolio, Yoav Gallant.
gallantwho is also a deputy from Netanyahu’s Likud party, he was removed by the prime minister for speaking out against the reform. However, the announcement was not formalized and remains in office.
According to Kedar, who has participated in the demonstrations against Netanyahu’s judicial reform, “their main promise was that they were going to rebuild personal securitythat there were to be no more acts of terror. They played on people’s fears.” To this we must add that “In the opposition there is almost no left, because the left has been shrinking and weakening. There is almost no counterweight,” the researcher considered.
Anyway, stressed that the government alliance has 64 of the 120 seats in the Knesset (parliament), that indicates that “society is very divided and it’s not that most of the population is far-right or right-wing.” That’s why the Likud-led administration faced an “unprecedented” process of protests, said Kedar and pointed out the “diversity” of the demonstrations: people who even define themselves as “right-wing” attend at the same time that “you begin to see more religious people” or entrepreneurs linked to “startups” or high-tech companieshe explained.
“Never in the history of Israel were so many people protesting. Israelis don’t have that culture of going out and protesting. We see that the quantity and intensity, because it’s already 13 weeks, are growing,” he said. “I don’t see any chance of this movement going away., unless there is total repression or they are prohibited. The population understands that It is not a reform, but rather an attempt is being made to change the system of government unilaterally. We are talking about the end of Israeli democracy,” he said.
In addition, he warned that the demonstrations are turning quite violent and that, despite the massiveness, the Arab population living in Israel has not adhered, because “they don’t feel part of it and perhaps because they believe that It will give the government an excuse to delegitimize the protest”.
Source: Ambito
