Israeli Lawmakers Move to Rein In Judges as Protests Rock Jerusalem

Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Jerusalem for a second straight Monday as Israel’s far-right government pushed forward with a divisive plan for a judicial overhaul that critics say will weaken and politicize the country’s courts and undermine its democratic foundations.

Demonstrators, many of them arriving in convoys from across Israel, blocked highways to the city, then gathered near Parliament, where legislators were preparing for the first phase of voting on two bills aimed at curbing judicial oversight and giving politicians more influence over the courts.

Following hours of stormy debate, both bills passed a first, nonbinding reading after midnight with a majority of 63 in the 120-seat Parliament. Forty-seven members voted against. Ten members were absent.

As members of the governing coalition celebrated, opponents of the judicial overhaul said the day would be marked as a dark one in the annals of the country.

“Members of the coalition — history will judge you for this night,” Yair Lapid, the leader of the opposition and a centrist said on Twitter “For the damage to democracy, for the damage to the economy, for the damage to security, for the fact that you are tearing the people of Israel apart and you simply do not care.”

One bill would change the makeup of a nine-member committee that selects judges to reduce the influence of legal professionals and give representatives and appointees of the government an automatic majority. The change would effectively allow the government of the day to choose judges.

The other bill would strip the Supreme Court of its power to strike down basic laws passed by Parliament. After a first reading, bills must go back to committee for further discussion, then return to the floor for two more votes before they can become law.

Israel’s New Far-Right Government

That process can take weeks or months. But a deeply split Israel is already in turmoil over the plan, with opponents alarmed at the speed with which it is moving forward, just weeks after the governing coalition — the most right-wing and religiously conservative in Israeli history — came to power.

Supporters of the changes say that they are needed to curb the influence of an overreaching judiciary that has granted itself increased authority over the years. They also say that the measures would shift power away from an unelected bureaucratic elite — the judiciary — in favor of elected officials who reflect the will of the people.

Critics say the proposed overhaul would place unchecked power in the hands of the government, remove protections afforded to individuals and minorities and deepen divisions in an already fractured society. They also fear that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is standing trial on corruption charges, could use the changes to extricate himself from his legal troubles.

Mr. Netanyahu denounced the protesters on Monday, accusing them of “thuggish” behavior.

“In a democracy, the people vote in elections and the representatives of the people vote here in the Parliament,” he said. “That is called democracy. Unfortunately, the protest leaders are trampling democracy. They do not accept the results of the election, they do not accept the decision of the majority.”

The attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara, has barred the prime minister from any involvement in the new legislation because of a conflict of interest. Mr. Netanyahu denies any wrongdoing and says he does not have any personal interest in judicial change.

Mass protests have been taking place on Saturday nights in Tel Aviv for seven consecutive weeks and have spread around the country. Last Monday, about 100,000 protesters filled the streets around Parliament and the Supreme Court in Jerusalem, according to estimates in the Israeli news media, though organizers put the number at more than double that.

In the morning before the vote, small groups of protesters sat down outside the front doors of some coalition lawmakers’ homes in a bid to block them from leaving for Parliament. They were removed by the police. Outside Parliament, protesters from the medical profession set up a mock triage station for “casualties of the judicial reform.” Inside the plenum, as debate began, some opposition lawmakers stood and wrapped themselves in Israeli flags in protest. Ushers removed the flags.

The coalition leaders pushed for a quick first vote on the bills, rejecting a plea from Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, to pause the legislative process and allow room for national dialogue and compromise. The president, a mostly ceremonial figure, has little executive power, but his voice is meant to be unifying and carries moral authority.

Mr. Lapid, the opposition leader, had asked for a 60-day hiatus in the legislative process as a condition for any negotiations. The politicians driving the process have expressed some willingness to talk but have so far refused to halt their work even for a day.

“We won’t stop the legislation now, but there is more than enough time until the second and third readings to hold an earnest and real dialogue and to reach understandings,” Yariv Levin, the justice minister, told the Yediot Ahronot newspaper on the eve of the initial vote.

Critics have dismissed the government’s position as disingenuous, arguing that once the bills have passed a first vote, only cosmetic changes will be possible.

“There is no dialogue here — it’s a trap,” Merav Michaeli, leader of the center-left Labor Party, said on Monday, urging other opposition leaders to refuse to negotiate once the bills had passed the initial vote. “There is nobody to talk to. There is no good will about talks, no good faith,” she added.

Many Israelis, including some of those protesting, agree that some kind of judicial change is needed, but opinion polls suggest that a majority want it to be the result of dialogue and do not support the government plan in its current form.

The domestic tensions have also drawn the attention of the United States. In a rare intervention in Israeli political affairs, President Biden, like Mr. Herzog, has called for efforts to reach a consensus.

The American ambassador to Israel, Thomas R. Nides, over the weekend told The Axe Files, a CNN podcast, “We’re telling the prime minister, as I tell my kids, pump the brakes, slow down, try to get a consensus, bring the parties together.”

He said that he had told Mr. Netanyahu, “We can’t spend time with things we want to work on together if your backyard’s on fire.” He was referring to the U.S. support that Israel is seeking on issues such as curbing Iran’s nuclear program and Mr. Netanyahu’s ambitions to establish diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia.

Amichai Chikli, an Israeli cabinet minister responsible for relations with the Jewish diaspora, responded bluntly to Mr. Nides in an interview with Israel’s public broadcaster, Kan. “I tell the American ambassador, ‘You pump the brakes,’” he said, adding, “Mind your own business.”

Working relations between Israel and the United States remained on track, however.

On Monday, the Israeli prime minister’s office announced that Israel had informed the United States that in the coming months it would hold off retroactively authorizing any more Jewish settlement outposts that were erected without government permission in the occupied West Bank, beyond the nine such communities that were authorized last week.

The announcement, a week after Israel said that it would approve the construction of 10,000 housing units in the settlements, came amid a broader U.S. effort to lower tensions between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Most countries consider all Israeli settlement in the West Bank a violation of international law.

On Monday, the United Nations Security Council issued a formal statement condemning Israel’s settlement plans, with U.S. support. The presidential statement came in place of a harsher measure: A planned vote on a draft resolution against settlement activity that would likely have put Washington in the awkward position of imposing a veto.

Mr. Netanyahu’s office criticized the statement as “one-sided,” among other things for belittling “the evil of antisemitism, which has resulted in the slaughter of millions.”

“The statement should never have been made,” Mr. Netanyahu’s office said, “and the United States should never have joined it.”