A tyranny of the majority threatens to emerge in Israel

Protesters fear that the reforms the cabinet wants to implement will harm democracy and harm public opinion ultra-right make it easier for the government to implement controversial plans. To what extent are these concerns justified?

The most criticized reform concerns the rule of law. A majority of parliament should soon be able to pass laws that the Supreme Court finds unconstitutional. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the reform was necessary “to restore the balance of power”. The court has interfered too much in decision-making in recent decades, according to some Israelis.

But experts are skeptical. The reform makes possible “a tyranny of the majority”, according to Erwin van Veen, researcher on the Middle East at the Clingendael Institute. “If the Supreme Court opposes a law or a decision, parliament can say: we will do it anyway. Then the legislature will replace the judiciary.

Worrying, agrees the Dutch-Israeli anthropologist (UvA) Erella Grassiani. “Half plus one will soon be able to make decisions that go directly against basic minority rights.”

It is no exaggeration to think that the new government intends to do so. Although Netanyahu says his government is there for all citizens, Palestinians and LGBTI people in particular often suffer greatly from his ultra-Orthodox coalition partners. “Lhbti people have long enjoyed support from the more liberal parts of politics, but now they have barely a voice in government,” Grassiani says.

And Israel “was already a country that treats its minorities very badly,” says Van Veen. “In 2018 declared the government of Israel as a Jewish nation-state, with Arabs as second-class citizens. Moreover, expropriation in the Palestinian territories has so far taken place in stages, but some parties in the new government want more speed and will advocate for larger-scale annexation.”

Grassiani, who is co-founder of a platform of Israelis in the Netherlands who oppose the occupation of Palestinian territories, sees this with regret. “For the average Palestinian in Israel, the current government is, above all, another step in the wrong direction, the next step down a corridor that has been going on for decades.”

The two-state solution, in which Israel and the Palestinians live side by side in peace in their own states, seems further away than ever. Van Veen thinks other countries should recognize this reality and act accordingly. “The Netherlands is still focused on a two-state solution, but Israel put that idea aside much earlier. Israel has hardly given the experiment a serious chance of proving Palestine to be a functional state.”

“Israel has long track record of violations of international law, the rights of Israeli Arabs and the rights of Palestinians. But the Netherlands rarely, if ever, attaches concrete consequences to this.”

Even now, he and Grassiani expect the Netherlands not to take a stand, ‘not even with more abuse’. The Netherlands isn’t such a big international player, but minorities in Israel shouldn’t expect to pressure other countries either, Grassiani says.

Van Veen agrees. “The United States is an important factor, but it will not backfire on Israel. President Joe Biden is strongly pro-Israel. In the United States, conflict is a political minefield where you have nothing to gain as a hard-line president. “

Another question is how the Muslim countries neighboring Israel will behave. Along with a number of countries in the region, Israel has had a good turn in recent years better (business) relationships. Van Veen expects normalization to stop “if the Israeli government makes the lives of Palestinians even more difficult than they already are.”

Grassiani thinks otherwise. “The relationship was built at a time when there was already strong oppression of Palestinians. It was not an objection then and will not be now.”