Why Israel’s Instability Matters to the US | CNN Politics

Photo of author

By Webdesk


A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. Sign up for free to receive it in your inbox here.



CNN

The images from Israel are incredible: seas of protesters are rising all over the country.

A general strike interrupts daily life and threatens to paralyze the economy.

The country’s defense minister has been fired by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The focal point of all this is Netanyahu’s controversial plan to change the country’s legal system, weaken the Supreme Court and give Israel’s parliament — the Knesset, currently controlled by his government — more say in the nomination of judges.

Recognizing the backslide, Netanyahu’s government put a month-long pause on that judicial review plan late Monday, perhaps in an attempt to cool things down without abandoning the plan.

Read updates from all Monday.

The frustration with the court extends beyond Netanyahu, but his attempt happens to coincide with his trial for corruption. Netanyahu denies any wrongdoing and any connection between the judicial changes and his trial — but not everyone takes his denials for granted.

“He has embraced this judicial reform movement — it’s actually a revolutionary movement — to try to give him the ability to … stack the Supreme Court in a way that people, Israelis in general, suspect is to protect him from the consequences of the prosecution, the trial he is now going through,” former US ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk noted on CNN on Monday.

“So it looks like it is more of a personal agenda than a national agenda that he pursues.”

Netanyahu has defended the plan, which he said in a recent interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper maintains the independence of the judiciary without allowing it to be “rampant”.

Indyk noted that other members of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition have their own reasons for wanting to review the country’s Supreme Court.

Netanyahu’s far-right allies do not want the court to protect Palestinian land rights in the West Bank, Indyk said, and religious parties do not want the court to force their Orthodox religious students to serve in the army like other Israelis.

CNN’s Hadas Gold, who covers the protests all day, takes a closer look at the judicial overhaul, who supports it and why it has caused so much controversy. Read her story.

The protests have been going on for months, but it is a general strike that paralyzed daily life and Netanyahu’s dismissal of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant that seem to have changed the situation.

“Obviously he’s lost control of the country,” Indyk said. “There has never been such a general strike, closing the ports, the airport, the hospitals, schools.”

Netanyahu has few options to pull out of the judicial overhaul plan, Amir Tibon, editor-in-chief at Haaretz newspaper, told CNN International on Monday.

“On the one hand, he has a coalition based purely on Israel’s right-wing, ultra-religious, far-right nationalist political elements,” Tibon said, noting that those elements have long sought to curb the power of the Supreme Court. whom they see as a liberalizing force in Israel that has pushed for LGBTQ and women’s rights in the country.

“On the other hand, the people who are protesting on the streets in Israel against this judicial overhaul, this is really the backbone of the Israeli economy,” Tibon said. “It’s the high-tech industry. It’s academia. A lot of people come from the high ranks of the military.”

Before his resignation, Gallant warned that the country’s military could disband if it is perceived to be slipping away from democracy.

Tibon foresaw another flare-up within a month if the judicial overhaul plan returns, and worried the Knesset could be on a collision course with the courts.

“Israel’s enemies look at it and rub their hands happily,” Indyk said. “And that also affects US national security interests because we depend on Israel to stabilize the region.”

Chairman Joe Biden, who Indyk noted has a long history with Netanyahu, “should take the ‘friends don’t let friends drive drunk’ approach, put his arm around Bibi (a common nickname for Netanyahu) and say, listen old friend, you you have to pull out and you have to do it quickly – not just for the sake of Israel, which we care deeply about. But also in the interest of American national security interests.”

Netanyahu may be angry at Americans trying to influence the judicial overhaul plan, but he has similarly become involved in domestic US politics. He actively campaigned in the US against the Iran nuclear deal during the Obama administration and became very close to former President Donald Trump, who ended it. The relationship between Trump and Netanyahu has since soured.

Attempts by the Biden administration to reinstate the deal have so far failed.

The US is subsidizing Israel’s security for billions of dollars. In addition to a 10-year agreement to provide Israel with $3.3 billion annually in funding, the US also spends $500 million a year on the country’s missile defense system. In fact, Israel is “the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid since World War II,” according to a recent Congressional Research Service report.

Like most American politicians, Biden likes to say that American support for Israel is absolute, but frustration with Israel is growing among his Democratic Party.

In fact, Democrats’ sympathies are now more with the Palestinians than with Israel, for the first time since Gallup began tracking the issue in 2001. That shift is driven primarily by young Americans — millennials born between 1980 and 2000.

Among Democratic lawmakers, there is more outspoken opposition to Israel’s policy changes.

“What Bibi is doing is alarming, appalling and dangerous to the relationship between our two countries,” said Senator Brian Schatz, the Hawaii Democrat, said on Twitter. “We stand for democracy.”

The Biden administration will convene its second virtual summit this week to promote democracy, an incredible coincidence given that it is viewing an important democracy battle. Israel has been invited to participate and Netanyahu will participate in the summit on Wednesday, although he is not on the event’s public agenda. US officials familiar with the schedule told CNN’s White House team there are no plans to change Netanyahu’s participation in the event from now on.

Ultimately, there is much more at stake than the judicial review that has defined recent events out.

“What matters is what the nature of Israel is,” former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday. “Will Israel remain a Jewish democratic state or a non-democratic… dictatorship or (become) a more religious country?”





Source link

Leave a Comment

Share via
Copy link