Israel needs true leadership, not opportunistic posturing

For as long as I can remember, optimists have hoped for the normalization of relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors. There has indeed been progress. Despite the chronically unsettled business of a Palestinian state, first Egypt in 1978, then Jordan in 1994 and, just under three years ago, the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco agreed either to normalize or proceed to normalization (with Sudan still half in, half out). But I hesitate to describe these steps as full normalization because the treaties with Egypt and Jordan have resulted in a notoriously “cold peace” and many people across the region remain hostile to the idea of accepting Israel as a normal state.

Recent moves by the current Israeli coalition government, formed last December and containing a large number of ministers from the religious and settler far right, have unexpectedly complicated the situation. This has once again highlighted the ambiguities in Israel’s relationship with its Palestinian citizens, the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and the wider Arab and Muslim worlds in a way that many Israelis, Israel’s neighbors and indeed Israel’s friends in the US and Europe find disturbing.

The immediate issue at stake is the legal accountability of ministers and the status of Israel’s Supreme Court and the senior legal officers in the Israeli government system. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his closest allies in government propose to table a variety of bills that would, among other things, dramatically raise the threshold for charges of misconduct against ministers, make appointments to the Supreme Court effectively a matter for the sitting government and significantly reduce the court’s powers to review government actions and laws considered to have constitutional status.

Disputes about the relationship between the courts and governments are not confined to Israel, of course. This has been a long-standing feature of the US system, for example, with conservatives criticizing a Supreme Court dominated by liberals (as it was for decades until recently) and liberals, with a complete lack of self-awareness, resenting the appointment of conservative justices. In the UK, there has been growing concern, even from inside the legal profession, of the increased activism of the courts since the 1980s, with the scope of judicial review massively expanding over the last 40 years. The same is true for the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. In the Middle East and North Africa, the dynastic nature of judicial appointments in Egypt and the obvious corruption and suborning of successive chief justices in Iraq, for example, have been the target of those who want to see the rule of law independent of political or group pressures.

But in Israel, this is all combined with a widespread suspicion among the opponents of the new government — who broadly speaking represent younger, secular Israelis — that this current effort is less about restoring an appropriate balance between the legislative, executive and judicial arms of government than a power grab by what The Economist has recently described as a bunch of “religious zealots, Jewish supremacists and homophobes.” These ministers are abetted by an entirely opportunist prime minister who has abandoned his normal caution in order to ensure that any legal proceedings against him will fail and to please some very rich and politically radical Likud supporters.

That is why we have seen massive demonstrations in Jerusalem and particularly Tel Aviv in recent weeks, which have succeeded in blocking main roads, the approaches to Ben Gurion Airport and government buildings. There have been some counter-demonstrations, too, which have threatened violence. That is why President Isaac Herzog, several former and current heads of the military and Shin Bet, and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (who seems — though it is still not entirely clear — to have been sacked for his pains) have all warned of the dangers of civil unrest and appealed to Netanyahu to back down.

Netanyahu has indeed agreed to postpone Knesset votes on most of the bills in question for a month or so, until after Passover. But he has made no commitment to withdraw them, has accused his opponents of being an extremist mob and — to keep National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir inside the coalition — has agreed to offer him control of a new national guard, which some are interpreting as essentially an official settler militia.

Dangerous times, then. We are also perhaps seeing the glimmer of a new arrangement for interstate relations involving Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, the other states of the GCC, Syria and perhaps in due course Iraq — but excluding Israel, at least for the time being. And the relationship of Israel with its single most important supporter, the US, has become even more frayed than it was under President Barack Obama, whose relationship with Netanyahu was famously frosty. President Joe Biden made it clear in public the other day that the latter would not be invited to visit the White House any time soon. That in itself is remarkable.

But take a step back. The current crisis has its roots in the very foundation of Israel. In 1948, the first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, made the momentous decision to destroy the Altalena, a ship bearing French weapons destined for the Irgun militia of Menachem Begin. In doing so, he accepted that Jews would fight and, if necessary, kill other Jews, something that in Jewish law is regarded with particular horror. He did so to ensure that Israel would not become a militia- or faction-dominated state, as so many of its Arab neighbors did.

Instead, Israel prided itself on being a state of law on the European model. And European influence was strong until the early 1970s, a period when politics were dominated by left-leaning Ashkenazim — European Jews — through their political parties, Mapai, Mapam and then Labor. In the 1970s, particularly after the trauma of the 1973 war, right-wing parties, disproportionately supported by the Mizrahim — Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, who resented Ashkenazi dominance — began their long march through the institutions. This has continued until today. It was reinforced by an influx of Jews, many extremely hostile to socialism, from the former Soviet Union after 1990.

As a result, Israeli public opinion has shifted radically to the right. Netanyahu’s electoral success — he is now the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history — reflects not just his political skill but also this profound demographic shift. It also reflects the fact that Ben Gurion seems to have been resistant to a written constitution. This allowed the Supreme Court, dominated by largely secular and liberal judges, to gradually define what laws had constitutional status and which did not. And this has seemed increasingly out of step with Israel’s changing political complexion.

Many of Netanyahu’s supporters and allies take a very hard line toward Palestinians and indeed toward anyone they regard as compromising Israel’s absolute right to pursue its own interests, regardless of the cost. And over the last 30 years, the settler movement, which has grown in numbers as settlements have been allowed to mushroom across the West Bank, has combined with increasingly assertive Haredim (ultra-Orthodox) and Hardalim (Haredi nationalist) movements not simply to assert a form of Israeli religious exceptionalism, but also to embed its influence inside key institutions of the Israeli state, including the Israel Defense Forces.

Do they form an absolute majority? Maybe not. But they are certainly cohesive and determined. Recent polling suggests a majority want Netanyahu to think again. But his opponents are a disparate lot. There are secular-lite traditionalists like President Herzog, who has been seeking to broker a compromise. There are conservative traditionalists who vote Likud but worry about the future of the country. There are business people who want stability. There are leftists who simply loathe Bibi. There are unideological professionals who simply worry about the economy and social cohesion, especially when IDF reservists are refusing to report for routine duties in protest.

The one thing there is not is a unified peace movement. That died with the Second Intifada and the construction of a dividing wall that made Palestinians literally invisible to most Israelis. Just because you are secular, live in Tel Aviv, go to the beach and work in tech does not mean you worry about the future of the Palestinians or want a two-state solution.

So, Netanyahu may calculate he has time on his side. Take a break, give everyone a breather, come back to the bills in a month or so and the heat will have gone out of the issue. Even if he has to make minor concessions, he has the votes in the Knesset and, at a stroke, he and his allies can remake the Supreme Court in a way that unshackles the Israeli right for generations. There will be an economic hit. But everyone will simply have to get used to the new reality. And they will.

The first problem with this is that Netanyahu may well underestimate the opposition and overestimate the solidity of his own support. The second is that, even if Netanyahu succeeds, it will not be a victory worth celebrating. There will certainly be new energy in the talk on the right about Israel’s sacred right to the entirety of Jerusalem and the West Bank and to the strict application of the Torah not just to the private behavior of true believers, but to secular Israelis and public life in general. There will be more assaults on Christians in the Old City and on Palestinians everywhere. The settler violence in Huwara in February will cease to seem an outlier. And Palestinians — encouraged by Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran — will respond.

There will be constant talk of the need to reduce Palestinian numbers and encourage emigration. And there will be even more bellicosity toward not just Iran but also any of Israel’s neighbors who seem lukewarm about welcoming a triumphalist, rigidly Orthodox and intolerant Israel into their midst. But Israeli society will remain deeply split. The relationship with the US will become and stay more difficult. And Israel’s more benign neighbors will move on. That will not be good news for Israel — or its friends.

The best solution would be for Netanyahu to genuinely commit himself to finding a consensual and cross-party response to significant concern about judicial overreach. He needs to do so with sensitivity, something for which he is not renowned. He needs to recognize that he needs to heal the deep divisions the crisis has caused in Israeli society, something he has never done before. And he needs to avoid making dangerous promises — like control of a personal militia — to his more belligerent allies: that would undermine Ben Gurion’s achievement in the Altalena affair at a stroke.

This is a time for true leadership, not opportunistic posturing. Otherwise, the only real beneficiaries will be Israel’s enemies in the region, who are also the enemies of moderation and peace. And the only normalization we shall see is Israel as a state becoming more like the worst of its neighbors and Israeli religious extremists becoming more like their Islamist cousins.

• Sir John Jenkins is a senior fellow at Policy Exchange. Until December 2017, he was corresponding director (Middle East) at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, based in Manama, Bahrain, and was a senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. He was the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia until January 2015.