The Decibel - The hard-line plans of Israel’s new far-right government

Episode Date: January 13, 2023

Israel’s new far-right government is looking to overhaul the country’s justice system – going so far as seeking to create a law that would allow parliament to override the Supreme Court. If the changes happen, it could have implications on rights for the LGBTQ community, asylum seekers and also exacerbate tensions with the Palestinians.Josef Federman is the News Director of the Associated Press for Israel, the Palestinian territories and Jordan. He explains why this is happening now and what these proposals signal about the direction the country is headed.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

And how would you, I guess, characterize the mood in the country right now? It feels pretty tense. When you hear people talking about civil war, when you hear ministers calling on police to crack down on people, there's a lot of potential for trouble. Joseph Betterman is the news director of the Associated Press for Israel, the Palestinian territories, and Jordan. He spoke to us from Jerusalem. And the big test, I think the first test we're going to see this weekend, Saturday night, a very large demonstration is planned in Tel Aviv. And we're going to see how the police behave. Are they going to go out and start using water cannons? Are they going to arrest people?

Or are they going to let this thing pass peacefully? Israel's new far-right government is led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his sixth term in the job, even though he's facing corruption charges. And the mood is tense because Netanyahu's government has proposed some big changes, including overriding the country's Supreme Court. I'm Maina Karaman-Wellms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Joseph, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. Thanks for having me on again.

So Israel's new government was sworn in just over two weeks ago on December 29th. And since then, there have been a number of controversial changes and incidents that have happened as well. But just to give us kind of one key example, maybe, can you tell us what happened this week? The government already, one week into power, has announced plans for a massive overhaul of the legal system. They think the legal system is too liberal. It has too much power. And they want to move power back into the hands of Parliament and the prime minister.

That's where most of the action is. That's translated already into a few things. The new police minister or the national security minister who's in charge of the police has already announced a ban on displays of the Palestinian flag. He has ordered police to act much tougher against demonstrations, which we've already begun to see. And you see very heightened, charged rhetoric between both of the sides to the point where some of the opposition members are accusing Prime Minister Netanyahu of dragging the country towards civil war. So just in two weeks, lots of fireworks. And this new government is being called the most far-right government in Israel's 74-year history.

So what makes this government so extreme? Well, you have to start with Prime Minister Netanyahu. He leads the Likud government. I'm American. I think in American terms, the Likud is sort of Israel's version of the Republican Party. So you're already starting on the right wing conservative world outlook. But in this government, the Likud is the moderator. They are the most moderate element of the government. So he has joined forces to, the way it works here, you need to control the majority of seats in parliament. And to get that majority, he needed to align himself with ultra-Orthodox religious parties that have a very conservative social agenda, and ultra-nationalist parties affiliated really with

the far, far right of the West Bank settlement movement. Can you give me an example of the partners we're talking about here? So you're saying that he's aligned himself with more ultra-Orthodox partners further to the right. Who's an example, I guess, of one of the more extreme figures here? Yeah, I think the poster boy for this whole thing is the new national security minister who I already mentioned. His name is Itamar Ben-Gvir. And he's a well-known figure in Israel because he's had so much trouble in the past. He was sort of beyond the pale in the past. He is known as a real extreme kind of provocateur connected to the settlement and nationalist movement. He has a long police record.

He's been arrested dozens of times over the years. And in 2007, he was even convicted. He was convicted of incitement and supporting a Jewish terrorist group. Even on the campaign trail last year, or I think before we went to the campaign trail, there was an incident where he pulled into a parking lot in Tel Aviv and the Arab attendant told him he was not parked properly and wanted him to move his car and it turned into an incident where he started screaming at the attendant and literally pulled out a gun and brandished a pistol but that's the kind of ideology that he brings to the table. His partner, the actual leader of his party, which is called Religious Zionism, is also

another very hardline settler leader who also is very outspoken in his animosity toward LGBTQ rights. And as another example, about a decade ago, maybe a little more than a decade, Jerusalem has an annual pride parade, and his partner, his name is Bezalel Smutrich, showed up and did a counter protest and brought donkeys with him. He called it the wild beast parade to send a message to the protesters. Now, he later apologized. He later apologized for that, but that's still something that everybody remembers about him. And as a national security minister, this is the first person ever to hold this role.

He is responsible for the National Police Force. That gives him influence. He's giving orders to the police on how to handle these demonstrations that we're expecting to see this weekend. He's also in charge of a paramilitary force called the Border Police. The Border Police are the force that's often on the front lines when there are clashes and confrontations with Palestinians both in Jerusalem and in the West Bank. So Ben-Gvir has two very important roles here. He's in charge of the National Police dealing with Israeli unrest, demonstrations, disturbances,

but also this paramilitary force that deals with the Palestinians. So there's great potential on both sides for things to escalate and even to become violent. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I just want to ask, you said a settler leader there. Could you just explain for an audience that maybe isn't so well-versed in this, Joe, when you're talking about settler, what does that mean? Yeah, so Israel captured what's known as the occupied territories. It captured the West Bank. It captured East Jerusalem. It captured the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East War. And when you

talk about settlers, really you're talking mostly about the West Bank because the West Bank is, technically, it's not sovereign Israeli territory. It is occupied territory in the eyes of most of the world. Israel says it is disputed territory. You can choose which term you prefer, but it is not sovereign Israeli territory. But in the meantime, Israel wants to keep large chunks, if not all of this territory, and over the past 50 plus years has been settling its own people there. And it's reached the point where there are now roughly half a million Israelis living in the West Bank in settlements. Now, the Palestinians want the West Bank as the heartland of their own state. And they say that Israel keeps on building these settlements. It makes it harder and harder when you have about two and a half to three million

Palestinians, but you have half a million Israelis living among them in dozens and dozens of settlements spread across the territory, it makes it very hard to ever divide up that territory and create an independent Palestinian state. All right. So there's a lot of there's a lot of controversial moves that this this this government is potentially putting forward here. But one of the most controversial is a plan to overhaul the country's justice system. Can you explain what that means? Sure. I think you want to start with Prime Minister Netanyahu himself. Netanyahu has a very tortured relationship with the country's justice system right now. He has been on trial for over two years on corruption charges. It's a very slow-moving trial. And he believes the entire system is biased against him.

He believes he is the victim. He calls it a witch hunt, a conspiracy, whatever word you want to use, but that the system has been out to get him. And he and his allies, and he has appointed a justice minister who's very close to him, want to just overhaul the entire system and they want greater control over who the judges are and what authority the judges are. The most controversial thing they want to do, they call it an override clause. They want to give parliament the power to overturn any Supreme Court decision that they don't like with a simple majority. So now that they have the majority in Parliament, if they pass this, they will be able to basically

push through their agenda without any pushback from the justices. I mean, that seems very like a big drastic move there because they would essentially be going over the Supreme Court. And just so we in Canada can understand, because we have a Supreme Court too, does the Israeli Supreme Court work like ours where it's an independent court that has kind of final say over things? Yes. So there have been many decisions over the years that the Israeli right wing doesn't like. About a decade ago, Israel has an issue with African migrants, people who have made their way through Egypt, escaping conflict, looking for job opportunities, maybe hoping to make their way to Europe or whatever.

But there are roughly, I think, about 40,000 migrants, mostly from Eritrea, from Sudan, a few other African countries. And Israel and especially the Israeli right wing, does not want them here. And they have been trying for years. Now, because of international law, because they've applied for refugee status and so forth, you can't just round people up and deport them back to their countries of origin. It's more complicated than that. So about a decade ago, Israel opened a detention facility. They decided they would round people up and put them in this detention facility indefinitely. The Supreme Court intervened.

They decided you could not do this. And eventually that facility was closed. So that's the type of thing that they would be able to override. I'm curious, what does the Israeli public think about this? Well, that's really the root of what we talked about when we started. You don't see much of a debate anymore about the Palestinians and the territories and the settlements. What you do see is a huge debate now over this judicial overhaul because the critics, and there are many, say, you know, you're demolishing a system of checks and balances. You're demolishing a very fragile democracy. And that's why you see people.

It's not just human rights groups. It's not just civil society groups. They were kind of leading the charge when this is more theoretical. Now you see Yair Lapid, who a month ago was still prime minister. He's now the opposition leader. He's leading the charge. Benny Gantz, who's a former defense minister, as you know, a month ago, he was the defense minister. He's a former military chief of staff. He is no pushover. He is a very, you know, tough law and order career soldier. He's the one who accused Netanyahu of dragging the country to civil war.

What do these potential changes to the justice system, what do they signal about the direction that Israel is heading? If you speak to Netanyahu and you speak to his justice minister, what they say is, nobody elected these Supreme Court justices. Why should they be telling us what to do? We're elected leaders. And the people, the people who have been elected, and then the politicians who speak for the public, we should have the final say. But the critics, and like I say, it's really across the board, you hear comparisons. They say you're turning this country into Poland. You're turning this country into Hungary or

Turkey. And what you've seen, if you look at those types of countries, they still have democratic elections, but the power under very authoritarian leaders over the past decade, two decades, has shifted. And what you see is subservient judges, a weak judiciary. You see weak media and a weakened opposition. And people are worried that that type of thing is going to happen here as well. We'll be back in a minute. Okay, so we've been talking about some of the potential changes to the justice system. Let's look at the laws that could be overturned here.

One of the big concerns is around LGBTQ rights. What's happening there? So Israel has a pretty good track record of LGBTQ rights. They do not have, again, there's a lot of power. It's complicated because there's a lot of power it's complicated because there's a lot of power in the hands of ultra-orthodox very conservative parties but for the most part Israeli society is relatively tolerant there's no same-sex marriage but there are sort of civil unions and you know key institutions the government even the military is very open when it comes,

you know, to gay soldiers. But what you've heard are voices, and you see it actually in the guidelines of this new government. So there was a minister who basically was calling for discrimination. She said, well, if a doctor is religious and he doesn't, if something goes against his religious views, he shouldn't have to treat gay patients, for example. And this type of language, now Netanyahu has said he will never allow this to happen. He, to his credit, you know, he has a strong record when it comes to LGBTQ rights. He says he won't let it happen, yet he allowed that language to go into these guidelines. So this is written down then?

This is literally written, not to the point where you're talking about doctors, but yes, it's more general language, but yes, if something goes against somebody's religious views, and another lawmaker, for example, said, well, if a hotel owner doesn't like same-sex couples, he doesn't have to let them in his hotel, for example, if that goes against his religious views. This is a big test, I think, for Netanyahu,

because ultimately what he's been saying is, I'm the boss, I decide what's going to get passed. But they're going to push him as far as they can. And he's allowed it, at the minimum, to seep into the guidelines. I imagine all this stuff is probably sounding pretty scary for a lot of people there. Of course. So you hear minority groups, whether it's migrants, whether you speak to LGBTQ, the Palestinian minority of Israel, Israel, about 20% of Israel's population are Arab citizens of the country. People are worried that their basic civil rights are going to be eroded. How exactly would this judicial overhaul affect Israel's relationship with the Palestinians?

Do we have a sense of that? Really, the main issue for the Palestinians is the policies in the West Bank. And again, if we go back to these guidelines, the very first thing you see in there is a commitment to expanding settlements, to legalizing. There are dozens and dozens of small, tiny, they call them outposts that were built illegally. This government is committed to legalizing all of these outposts as well. And what difference then, Joe, would legalizing them make? If the outposts are already there, just illegal, what difference would legalizing them actually have? A couple of things.

First of all, it sends a message of the sentiment in the country. But these outposts are also very strategically located. So what you often see is there is a settlement in the middle of nowhere, for example, and then some supporters will build an outpost 300 meters, half a kilometer up the road. Once that becomes legalized, everything in between kind of becomes linked and these outposts end up becoming new neighborhoods of existing settlements. So it's another way of expanding not only the settler population, but also expanding the amount of land that's controlled by settlers. So Benjamin Netanyahu is currently on trial for corruption,

as you mentioned earlier. He's charged with bribery, fraud, and breach of trust in three different cases. He denies the allegations against him. But would overhauling the justice system have any effect on his trial? Absolutely. And that's really the most important thing here, because his partner is not necessarily the Supreme Court changes. That's another area that they're fighting. But some of the other changes they're talking about is they want to wipe away some of these charges. They want, for example, breach of

trust. There are many figures in this coalition who say, breach of trust, what is that? It doesn't really make sense. It shouldn't even be a crime. So they want to abolish that charge. If that goes away, then part of the trial goes away. So the idea is let's get rid of the charge and therefore he can't be charged with it? Yes, that's one of the ideas they're talking about. Another thing they're talking about is finding a way to either sack or force the Attorney General out of office and install a much friendlier Attorney General who's going to say, you know what this whole case is flimsy. They never should have charged him to begin with. I dismiss it. They may find a way to freeze the trial indefinitely and it will just

kind of float away over time. So there are all sorts of ideas that are bouncing around. And his partners support all of these things. And that's why he has been so generous in giving them so much authority. Wow. And even with these charges that are, even when he's facing these charges, he can still sit as prime minister in the Knesset, in the parliament? Yeah, that is one of the flukes of the law here. If a cabinet minister, a regular cabinet minister is charged with a crime, they have to step aside. That doesn't apply to the prime minister. So unless he is convicted, he can continue to be prime minister. Is there any chance that this government might back away from some of their hardline policies? Is that an option?

I think U.S. opinion does matter. I don't think they can stop everything, but they certainly can restrain things. And then another interesting thing to keep our eyes on are Israel's new Arab allies. In 2020, during the Trump administration, there were the Abraham Accords, four diplomatic accords establishing relations with four Arab countries that did not have full relations with Israel at the time. The biggest one is the United Arab Emirates. That's the biggie. Israel has very warm relations with the UAE right now. Netanyahu wants to, he talks about expanding, he calls it the circle of peace. His dream is to bring in Saudi Arabia, which is the most powerful Arab country

in the Gulf, very wealthy, powerful country. If they push ahead with this agenda, it will become difficult to bring in Saudi Arabia. And it could even become difficult to maintain the relationships with countries like the UAE, just because of public opinion in the Arab world. Now, Itamar Ben-Gvir, for example, I'll give you an example. One of the first things he did days after taking office is that he paid a visit to Jerusalem's most sensitive holy site. It is revered by the Jews, but today it's home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is a very important site in Islam. It's a very important site to

the Palestinians. And he went up there kind of in a show of force two or three days after taking office. Now the visit was legal. He didn't do anything illegal, but it was seen as a provocation because the type of message that he was trying to send, that we're in charge here. And when that happens, the Palestinians feel very threatened because they think that there is a plot underway to either divide up the site or even take it over at some point. And what you saw immediately after that visit, the UAE spoke out against it and said, hey, this was not a good idea. So long answer to your question, but Israel's new Arab allies, which are very important to Netanyahu, they could play a role in restraining this government. Making these kinds of changes to the justice system is, of course, a big deal here. When do we actually expect these reforms to start happening? They've already begun drawing up the legislation. It's expected to be submitted in the coming weeks. And there have been reports where they want to start implementing things as soon

as March. And when the Justice Minister announced this overhaul, he said, this is just the first stage. He has other things in mind. I don't know what they are he said, this is just the first stage. He has other things in mind. I don't know what they are yet, but this is just the beginning. Just lastly here, Joe, Israel has had five elections in less than four years. And those previous governments that were formed, they didn't last long. So will this government, this coalition that's been formed now, will it actually last? It seems like it will. We've already seen opinion polls.

One TV station with one of the top pollsters in the country, he ran a poll about a week ago, and they asked people, if we had another election, how would you vote? And it showed that we'd end up with deadlock again. Polls have shown that most Israelis don't like the overhaul of the Supreme Court. They don't like some of these things the Supreme Court. They don't like some of these things when it comes to religious coercion and so forth. So they have a lot to lose to go back to another election. So it seems that it should be able to last. Coalitions do have a habit of falling apart before their full four-year term. But this is not the

same type of thing that we saw in the previous times where we saw very short-lived coalitions. There's a lot of glue keeping these guys together. And it seems like, at least for the medium term, they're going to be able to push ahead. Joe, thank you so much for taking the time to walk us through this today. Thank you. That's it for today.

I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Kasia Mihailovic is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening,

and I'll talk to you next week.