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Protesters Rally in Jerusalem as Israel’s Leaders Look to Rein in Judges [1]
['Isabel Kershner']
Date: 2023-02-20
After a first reading, bills must go back to a committee for further discussions, then return to the floor for two more votes before potentially passing into law, a process that can take weeks or months. But a deeply split Israel is already in turmoil over the plan, with opponents alarmed at the speed with which it is moving forward, just weeks after the governing coalition — the most right-wing and religiously conservative in Israeli history — came to power.
Mass protests have been taking place on Saturday nights in Tel Aviv for seven consecutive weeks and have spread around the country. Last Monday, about 100,000 protesters filled the streets around Parliament and the Supreme Court in Jerusalem, according to estimates in the Israeli news media, though organizers put the number at more than double that.
On the morning of the vote, small groups of protesters sat down outside the front doors of some coalition lawmakers’ homes in a bid to block them from leaving for Parliament. They were removed by the police. Outside Parliament, protesters from the medical profession set up a mock triage station for “casualties of the judicial reform.”
The coalition leaders have pushed for a hasty first vote on the bills, defying a plea from Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, to pause the legislative process and allow room for national dialogue and compromise. The president, a mostly ceremonial figure, has little executive power, but his voice is meant to be unifying and carries moral authority.
The leader of the opposition, Yair Lapid, a centrist, asked for a 60-day hiatus in the legislative process as a condition for any negotiations. The politicians driving the process have expressed some willingness to talk but have so far refused to halt their work even for a day.
“We won’t stop the legislation now, but there is more than enough time until the second and third readings to hold an earnest and real dialogue and to reach understandings,” Yariv Levin, the justice minister, told the Yediot Ahronot newspaper on the eve of the initial vote.
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/20/world/middleeast/protest-jerusalem-judicial-overhaul.html
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