Israel Studies Review

The proposal introduced in January 2023 for a ‘judicial overhaul’ in Israel has been characterized as a seismic event. Labeled a ‘reform’ by supporters and a ‘coup’ by skeptics, the proposal is better understood as part of a long process rather than a sudden event. This process involves gradual but persistent executive aggrandizement advanced by weakening multiple institutions of horizontal accountability and the media, alongside the imposition of restrictions on oppositional organizational capacity. Accordingly, the process should be defined in terms of autocratization. The spokes analogy is invoked to highlight the interconnectedness between the various realms that collectively underpin the regime.

This article analyzes the implications of the proposals of the Minister of Justice and the Chair of the Knesset's Constitution Committee to overhaul the judiciary of Israel. These proposals, if legislated, will undermine basic principles of democracy, the rule of law, and the protection of human rights. In the absence of a complete formal constitution and its relatively weak system of checks and balances, Israel has developed several institutions that protect the rule of law and human rights, including a Supreme Court with the power of judicial review of legislation; a balanced and professional system for selecting judges; a strong legal civil service, with a relatively independent attorney general. The so-called legal reforms deal specifically with these institutions, and seek to weaken or annul them. As such, this judicial overhaul is tantamount to a revolutionary attempt to change the regime and would undermine the democratic character of Israel.

This article offers two interpretations of the constitutional confrontation that ensued over the proposed 2023 judicial overhaul legislation. It places the debate in the context of a broader culture war over Israel's conditions of legitimacy and as a continuum. At one end of the spectrum, the judicial overhaul legislation can be seen as pursuing a ‘decision to decide’ tactic, countered by the opposition using the same constitutional tactic in the opposite direction. On the other end of the spectrum, the judicial overhaul program could be viewed as an opening position in constitutional negotiations, with reform advocates seeking only the nomination of a few committed conservative justices and the maintenance of the constitutional status quo of deciding not decide. To this end, the nationalists’ move was again countered by the opposition using the same constitutional tactic but in the opposite direction to prevent this outcome.

Using the 2023 controversy over Israel's judicial overhaul as a case, this article analyzes the broader, decades-long debate about the nature of the Israeli regime. It demonstrates how conflicting assumptions about democracy and the Israeli regime underpin different interpretations of the proposed judicial overhaul. The 2023 debate contraposed majoritarian and liberal orientations, echoing previous understandings of Israel as either a liberal democracy or a diminished type of democracy like ethnic democracy. Despite their differences, both positions in this debate regard Israel as a democracy equivalent to other liberal democracies in the West and neglect the question of the regime's borders and its implication for the regime's classification.

Political scientists distinguish between governments and regimes. A government is comprised of incumbents holding positions of authority specified within an institutionalized “regime,” that is, a legal order. Within a well-institutionalized regime, politics consists of legal struggles over what governments and government officials do. But when the issues in contention pertain to what governments are authorized to do, and not about what they should do, competitors may no longer feel bound to follow the rules. Such struggles can threaten the integrity of the regime. This article suggests that the prolonged, if temporarily sidelined, crisis over the overhaul of the Israeli judiciary should be understood less as a threat to democracy than as both a challenge to the Israeli regime's remaining liberal features and as an early skirmish in what will be a long political war over whether and how to emancipate millions of non-citizen Palestinian Arabs living in effectively annexed territories.

This article analyzes the effects of Israel's democratic backsliding on the Palestinian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. While research on democratic backsliding focuses on the erosion of liberal democratic features and how this influences democracies’ citizenry, Israel's composite regime offers a unique setting: an established (albeit weakened) liberal democracy ‘within the Green Line’ alongside an established occupation devoid of democratic features ‘beyond the Green Line.’ Exploring this, I analyze how Israel's belligerent occupation has at times been restrained by the ‘democratic side’ of the country, resulting in Palestinians indirectly benefiting from Israel's democracy while not having democratic rights themselves. The article thus demonstrates how Palestinians may be among the first populations to suffer from democratic backsliding while themselves being devoid of democratic rights.

This article delves into the intricate relationship between the Islamic Movement and the authorities in Israel. It specifically examines the strategy of integrating the southern faction into Israeli politics in recent years and during the emergence of the democracy crisis in Israel. I term this strategy ‘the politics of musaiyyara’ (flowing with reality), a distinctive approach within the Israeli context. This approach utilizes the Knesset as a platform for forging new alliances with Zionist actors, sidestepping discussions on issues related to the Israeli occupation. The article relies on primary sources that convey the perspectives of the Islamic Movement, specifically its two leaders, Sheikh ʻAbd Allāh Nimr Darwīsh, representing the old generation, and MK Mansour Abbas, representing the newer generation within the movement.

Since assuming office in December 2022, Israel's government has worked to weaken the state's democratic infrastructure. While this appears to break from a long-standing Israeli consensus on democracy, this article demonstrates that retiring democracy has long been the agenda of the faction of the Israeli right most empowered in Israel's current government, namely the settler movement. Following the discourse in Sovereignty: A Political Journal, it finds that by recasting ‘sovereignty’ as involving annexation and disenfranchizing Palestinians, the settler right has consistently portrayed democracy—and particularly the Supreme Court that serves as a check on governmental power and protects minorities—as an obstacle to ‘sovereignty.’ Considering the settler right's political vision, the article claims that defending democracy today will necessarily involve engaging contentious questions of occupation and annexation.

Over the years, the ‘hilltop youth’ have acted in opposition to both Israeli state authorities and the settler leadership. Israeli society viewed them as a group acting to realize an extremist religious ideology while violating Israeli law and ignoring the state's decisions. However, after coming to feel that their social position was making it difficult for them to realize their vision, they embarked upon a process of trying to gain political legitimacy. By turning to mass media and by disseminating messages with which the public at large could identify, they have worked to move closer to Israeli consensus opinion. We identify the steps through which this was carried out and trace its success. The process reached a significant point in 2023 when politicians identified with the hilltop youth took up important ministerial positions in government, marking their transition from actors who opposed the state to ones responsible for its decisions.