As the progressive Jewish world in Israel and the Diaspora has long maintained, only the end of the 55-year occupation of the West Bank and the birth there of one Palestinian state in good neighborly relations with Israel it can ensure its existence as a democratic state with a Jewish majority. The future, however, could involve a fatal choice between a binational Arab-Jewish state marked by a perpetual civil war between the two ethnic groups or an exclusively Jewish state with Palestinians disenfranchised.
Democracy in danger
A democracy is not defined only by the power of a majority elected in free elections. It is also measured and guaranteed by the existence of a system of counterweights in which the judiciary exercises control over the legislative and executive powers. In Israel, where there is no constitution for complex reasons related to the birth of the country, it is complex and conflictual relationship between state and religionand in the tangle of its bumpy 75-year history, the only body empowered to assess the compliance of government acts with the Fundamental Laws is the Supreme Court.
The ruling parties insist on changing their power by allowing for a simple one parliamentary majority Of annul any judgments of the same that they do not like. Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is the primary actor in the legislative “reform” underway, is also marked by an atypical “conflict of interest” as he has been under investigation for some time on three charges of corruption.
Minorities and discrimination
Also, a democracy is defined by the respect for minority rights, as also taught by the historical events of the Jews in the world – a small, discriminated and persecuted minority – and by the Bible which insists in its texts on the importance of respecting the foreigner. Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence mandates that it ensure “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants regardless of religion, race or sex.” From exponents of the parties in power have come attitudes and racist acts against Arabs.
In the same Declaration it is affirmed that the country “will be open to the immigration of Jews from the world and to their return from the dispersion of exile”, without defining “who is a Jew”. There Law of return it allowed Jews, often fleeing conditions of persecution and suffering, to immigrate to Israel obtaining citizenship. The government agreements would prevent this practice, defining in a more restrictive way theJewishness, questioning the very foundations of the Zionist project which imagined Israel as the state of the Jewish people and leading to a deep rift between it and the Judaism of the Diaspora. Furthermore, the ruling coalition seeks to impose strict Orthodox standards on expressions of Jewish identity, such as a ban on women’s prayers at Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall and egalitarian spaces not only for men and women but also for the multiple streams of Judaism.
The Palestinian question
On the level of relations with the Palestinians, government agreements explicitly limit the right of self-determination on the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean to Jews alone. Israeli civil law will be extended to the West Bank, which amounts to annexation de jure o in fact of the same. By virtue of a occupation military regime such as the one in force from 1967 to 1993 for the entire West Bank and by the Oslo agreements of that year for zone C – around 60% of its surface – international law requires the protection of the population living there, but if there is a civil power in that territory there is no legal framework which prohibits the existence of two different and discriminating laws in the same territory, one for Jews, the other for Arabs. This takes place in a context in which the violence of militant formations in the Palestinian world and the repressive action of the Israeli army have produced on the ground since March 2022 victims and mourning that have reached numbers comparable to those of the second intifada, at the end of 2005 .
A profound schism therefore crosses and tears apart Israeli society. Massive protests for weeks by vast sectors of public opinion against the undemocratic degradation of the country, in ways unprecedented in its history, forms of almost “conscientious objection” of departments of the army reserve – in aviation, in intelligence – which, according to the Defense Minister, risk jeopardizing the very security of the country. These acts of civil disobedience demonstrate the gravity of the crisis and the acute danger of a disintegration of society.
Copertina EPA/ABIR SULTAN’s photo