Protests in Israel: Benjamin Netanyahu’s unexpected twist raises questions about the government’s future

As the Israeli protest movement intensified from January to the end of March, with tens of thousands of angry citizens taking to the streets to demonstrate against the government’s plan to reform the judiciary, it seemed clear that someone would have to give in.

But for much of that time, it didn’t look like anyone was going to be Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Hardline partners in his fragile coalition government had threatened that judicial reform was the price he had to pay to stay on as head of government and there were few signs that it would jeopardize his position.

Therefore, Israel seemed to be at an impasse: protesters said the reform could catastrophically undermine the checks and balances of Israeli democracy.

Supporters of the plan, many on the right, say the judiciary has outgrown its duties over the years and has become a roadblock to important political agendas.

Then, on Sunday and Monday, the earth moved with extraordinary speed. As the protest movement mounted pressure across unions, businesses, universities and, perhaps most importantly, members of the military, Netanyahu announced that the reform would be postponed until after the parliamentary recess, allowing for negotiations with opposition leaders.

The final resolution of the Israeli crisis remains unclearand many protesters fear Netanyahu will re-table essentially the same plan if the talks fail.

Public outrage and political achievements

But this week’s rapid changes offer an object lesson in what it takes for a mass movement to translate public outrage into political results. The answer, as I wrote before, boils down to one word: influence.

“The question of social movements’ success always boils down to whether they have influence that can actually compel political leaders to do something they otherwise wouldn’t do,” said Wendy Pearlman, a Northwestern University political scientist who studies social movements in Israel. and other places.

The forms of influence are specific to each country’s circumstances. In South Africa, for example, in addition to trade embargoes, the anti-apartheid movement has been able to take advantage of the economic elite’s reliance on undeclared work, wrote Elisabeth Wood, a political scientist at Yale University, in Forging Democracy from Below: Rebel Transitions in South Africa and El Salvador (Forging Democracy from Below: Rebel Transitions in South Africa and El Salvador).

Through union organizing and strike action, they successfully lobbied the Afrikaner business elite, who then demanded change from those in political power.

In the Israeli case, amidst many uncertainties, a first question seemed to be who could create cracks in the governing coalition, Pearlman said.

Netanyahu’s government is made up of multiple right-wing and religious parties, some of them small, with only a few seats in Parliament.

They have a huge influence on the prime minister because any defection could mean the end of his rule. And until this week they had insisted that they would not tolerate any delays or abandonment of the reform.

These parties represent specific and highly ideological constituencies and are therefore relatively insulated from the pressures of mass demonstrations, Pearlman said. At first it was unclear whether the protests had much influence.

unexpected pressure

But an unexpected source of pressure arose. Some members of Israel’s military reserves, including elite units in the air force and the prestigious military intelligence service, announced they would not report for military training or operations unless the review was canceled.

The reservists argued that military service was subject to an implicit social contract: they had agreed to serve a democratic Jewish state. And so, if Israel ceased to be a democracy, as they claimed it would through reform, it would no longer have an obligation to serve.

That symbolic wording helped “legitimize why people would do something that isn’t done in the Israeli experience, which is disobey military orders,” said Yagil Levy, a civil-military relations scholar at the Open University of Israel.

The reservists’ strong social ties and active communication networks enabled them to mobilize quickly.

“There are numerous WhatsApp groups where most of the time people are having Diwali barbecues or just sharing jokes,” said Gal Ariely, a Ben-Gurion University political scientist and former reservist. When the crisis began, these networks became powerful vectors of political messages and organization.

“When these networks are activated, they reach a very broad spectrum of Israeli society,” said Jennifer Oser, a political scientist at Ben-Gurion University who studies the protests.

And, crucially, those networks had a form of influence that ordinary civil society groups lack: the power to directly influence national security.

The government “woke up in the morning and found it had no real option to attack Iran,” said Levy, a military relations expert.

The precise impact of the protests on the capabilities of the military is unclear, but senior military officials have warned the government that the military was about to scale back some operations.

In Israel on Saturday night, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant publicly warned the government that continuing the reform endangers Israel’s national security.

Netanyahu deposed him on Sunday. In briefings with Israeli news outlets, his office said Gallant should have done more to discourage reservists from protesting.

If this was meant to push the protesters back, it had the opposite effect. A few hours after the removal of the minister, protests erupted again.

In Tel Aviv, protesters blocked a highway and lit bonfires along main roads, and mobs in Jerusalem smashed through security barriers at Netanyahu’s private residence. The main union called a general strike on Monday, paralyzing many services and disrupting air traffic. Universities closed and hospitals moved into weekend hours, attending only emergencies.

“I think the last decision was key, because it was seen as a lack of judgment,” said Guy Lurie, an analyst and constitutional scholar at the Israel Democracy Institute, a think tank that opposes judicial reform.

The Israeli military is by far the most respected institution in the country, he said. And there is a strong political and social taboo against anything that puts it at risk.

“No one in the majority of Israeli Knesset members can afford to accept a situation where the military disintegrates,” Levy said. “So there was a lot of pressure on Netanyahu.”

concessions

The prime minister’s coalition partners have started giving guidance on the possibility of negotiating concessions.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, minister of national security and leader of a far-right party in the ruling coalition, said he was willing to temporarily delay the reformalthough he insisted: “No one will scare us” and promised that the project would eventually be approved.

On Monday evening, Netanyahu announced that the reform would be suspended until after the April recess of parliament. In response, the unions called off the strike.

Now members of the government and opposition parties are meeting for the first time to try to broker a mutual agreement. But with divisions so deep, it’s hard to imagine how the crisis could end quickly.