The pause on judicial reform and the start of confrontation with the opposition have not extinguished the protests against the Netanyahu government in Israel. The Black Flags – one of the major groups organizing the demonstrations – confirmed the demonstration scheduled for Saturday night in Tel Aviv for the thirteenth consecutive time. And already on 28 March the same group marched in protest in the city center to the cry of democracy. “The battle is still long”, argued the organization denouncing that it is not ready to “accept a half-democracy”, with reference to the negotiations between the parties.
Talks that – on the input of President Isaac Herzog – started between the majority and the two centrist leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz. “A first dialogue meeting”, defined it as the president, whose objective is “a negotiating path” to reach a compromise. But it is precisely the word compromise that constitutes the problem: the protest organizations have demanded, and still demand, the total withdrawal of the reform. The suspicion – according to many analysts and Labor leader Merav Michaeli – is that the freezing of the law announced by Netanyahu is nothing more than a way to buy time. And the fact that the government coalition has presented one of the most contested bills of the reform to the Knesset, ready to be voted on, has certainly not dampened the alarm: that of appointing judges to the Supreme Court.
A move – justified by the executive on technical grounds – which has infuriated the opposition given that it changes the composition and criteria of the committee for the appointment of judges in favor of the majority. Secular nationalist leader Avigdor Lieberman did not mince words: “Netanyahu lies and spits in people’s faces.” The prime minister instead – who according to a recent poll would no longer have a majority in Parliament if we went to vote today – underlined that his coalition is “engaged in an important debate and we will come out of it. Our goal – he assured him – is to reach vast understandings ».
