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What happened: The government is planning to move ahead with components of their judicial reform, starting with restricting the Supreme Court’s ability to invoke “reasonableness” as grounds to block government decisions.

• The Constitution, Law and Justice Committee has been meeting this week to discuss such an amendment, whose initial version reads: “All courts of law, including the Supreme Court, will not discuss and will not issue warrants against the government, the prime minister, a minister or an elected figure regarding the reasonability of their decisions.”
• If this first stage is successful, the plan is then to proceed to legislating a second – and even more contested – reform element: the restructuring of the Judicial Selection Committee.
• Meanwhile, Prime Minister Netanyahu this week confirmed that he will not be advancing a Knesset override of Supreme Court decisions, one of the more controversial reform proposals. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he said: “It’s out… I’m attentive to the public pulse, and to what I think will pass muster.”
• Hardline cabinet colleagues reacted to Netanyahu’s comments and to the apparent new reform strategy.
  • National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir called it a “surrender to those who burn the Ayalon” (a reference to the Tel Aviv highway which is a frequent site of anti-reform protest) and  “a victory for violence.”
  • Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar seemed to contradict the prime minister in suggesting that the override remained an option.
  • Likud MK Tally Gotliv said “the reform is dead,” and that the coalition had “lost not because we were not right, but because we did not know how to govern.”

Context: With compromise talks with the opposition having broken down, the coalition is pressing ahead unilaterally with partially revised elements of its judicial reform programme.

• However, due to public protest and international pressure the current version appears substantially more limited than the original proposals of Minister Levin.
• In recent weeks there has appeared a split within the ruling Likud Party over the extent of pushing ahead with controversial reforms. At this point it appears the more moderate version supported by the prime minister is prevailing.
• Despite this, at the first Constitution, Law and Justice Committee meeting last Sunday, Deputy Attorney General Gil Limon said that if successful, the amendment would mean that “In the absence of the grounds of reasonability, elected officials’ obligation to act reasonably will disappear, creating a possible black hole and a serious blow to the basic values of Israeli democracy.”
• National Unity Party Chairman Benny Gantz also attended the meeting, though not a committee member. “This is a bill that we will not accept under any circumstances,” he said. “This is a bill to launder corruption, which removes all restrictions on the government. We cannot hold negotiations on a regime coup in instalments.”
• Netanyahu is thought to be prevailing on Levin and Committee chair Simcha Rothman to work to soften the current reasonableness amendment. At issue is which public officials and which areas of government work the court might be able to restrict on the grounds of reasonableness.
• Former President of the Supreme Court Aharon Barak distinguished between policy questions, over which the court should not exercise the doctrine, and administrative decisions, such as the appointment of ministers or other officials, over which it should. The current wording of the amendment makes no such distinction.
• The scale of the protest movement and the reaction of the financial markets to the reform agenda have caused significant international embarrassment and the expense of much political energy. Relations with the US, in particular, have suffered as the Biden Administration has offered unusually stern public criticism. This was the main explanation why Netanyahu chose US media to announce there would be no Knesset override.
• The latest suggestion for reforming the Judicial Selection Committee could be based on a proposal by Prof. Daniel Friedman (who served as justice minister in Olmert’s Kadima led government). He proposes the restructured committee would consist of an equal number of coalition and opposition representatives, that would outnumber the judges (thereby removing the veto power), and force the politicians to reach a compromise between them.
• It’s thought Minister Levin is now reconciled with the scaled back version of the reforms, but it remains unclear how other coalition partners will respond, including the ultra-Orthodox who had been promised an override clause as part of their coalition agreement.

Looking ahead: The Constitution, Law and Justice Committee will meet weekly to progress the reasonableness amendment with aim of passing it into law by the end of the July (ahead of the Knesset’s summer recess).

• The second vote, to elect a coalition member of the Judges Selection Committee is due to take place in the next two weeks. However, the committee is not expected to be convened until it is restructured, which may not happen until October.
• The protests will continue this weekend for the 26th consecutive week throughout the country. Protest organisers have also called for a demonstration outside Ben Gurion Airport on Monday.