Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Israel's Supreme Court strikes down disputed law that limited court oversight

"Why Palestinians Aren’t Joining Israel’s Protests
"The U.S.-Israel Relationship No Longer Makes Sense
"Israel voters message to American voters, and to Netanyahu -- Israel Is Somewhere It’s Never Been Before
"Netanyahu fires defense minister, sparking mass protests in Israel""" "

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See also: Ehud Barak blames Binyamin Netanyahu for “the greatest failure in Israel’s history”
[...]Netanyahu’s Betrayal of Democracy Is a Betrayal of Israel
"Israel’s Netanyahu back in power with hard-line government"
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[...]FEW ISRAELIS have anything close to Ehud Barak’s experience of operating in Gaza. In 2000 he was prime minister and defence minister when the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, erupted in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Before that he was the commander of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) when Israel carried out its first major pullback from the cities in the Gaza Strip as part of the first Oslo Accords signed in 1993.
P - And then in his second stint as defence minister, in 2009, he oversaw Israel’s largest ground operation against Hamas in Gaza to date.
[...]He also wants Israel to ensure that its actions are seen as legitimate by the wider world. In the aftermath of the terrorist attack most Western governments offered Israel their full support. But “the support also comes with an expectation we abide by international law in our operations,” Mr Barak warns. “Support will erode when there is footage of ruined homes [in Gaza] with bodies of children and weeping old women.” America’s naval presence—on October 14th it deployed a second aircraft carrier group to the eastern Mediterranean—is partly designed to deter outside actors from entering or escalating the conflict. But it “also emphasises Israel’s need to operate according to international law”.
P - Israel will need to keep a watchful eye on Hizbullah, the Iran-backed Shia militia in Lebanon....
[...]Although Mr Barak strongly supports a ground campaign in Gaza, he is critical of talk of “destroying Hamas” by Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, as well as ministers in his government and some generals. “What does it even mean?” he says. “That no one can still breathe and believe in Hamas’s ideology? That’s not a believable war aim. Israel’s objective now has to be clearer. It has to be that Hamas will be denied its Daesh-like military capabilities,” he says, referring to the Arabic term for Islamic State.
P - Mr Barak believes that the optimal outcome, once Hamas’s military capabilities have been sufficiently degraded, is the re-establishment of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. The authority, which was established under the Oslo Accords and runs the autonomous parts of the West Bank, was ousted from Gaza by Hamas in a bloody coup in 2007. However he warns that Mahmoud Abbas .. https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2022/08/23/the-ageing-ailing-palestinian-leader-does-not-do-much-governing , the Palestinian president, “cannot be seen to be returning on Israeli bayonets”. There will, therefore, need to be an interim period during which “Israel will capitulate to international pressure and hand Gaza over to an Arab peacekeeping force, which could include members such as Egypt, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. They would secure the area until the Palestinian Authority could take control.” Yet for now, other countries in the region seem to have no desire to contribute troops to such a force.
P - And then there is the great reckoning that will take place in Israel once the war ends.
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By Ari Rabinovitch
January 2, 202411:16 AM GMT+11Updated 19 hours ago

VIDEO

JERUSALEM, Jan 1 (Reuters) - Israel's Supreme Court on Monday struck down a highly disputed law passed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government that rolled back some of the high court's power and sparked months of nationwide protests.

The law was part of a broader judicial overhaul proposed by Netanyahu and his coalition of religious and nationalist partners which caused a deep rift .. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israels-netanyahu-discharged-hospital-reuters-witness-says-2023-07-24/ .. in Israel and concern over the country's democratic principles among Western allies .. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-calls-israel-parliament-vote-unfortunate-urges-work-toward-consensus-2023-07-24/ .

Monday's court decision could test the cohesion of an emergency government formed to manage the war against Hamas, which includes hardline proponents like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and critics of the judicial overhaul such as centrist Benny Gantz and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

Smotrich dismissed the decision as "extreme and divisive", echoing the bitter divisions that marked Israeli politics in the months before the deadly Hamas rampage through southern Israel on Oct. 7.

The new legislation .. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/what-is-israels-new-judicial-law-why-is-it-causing-upheaval-2023-07-25/ .. brought before the court had removed one, but not all, of the tools the Supreme Court has for quashing government and ministers' decisions. It took away the court's ability to void such decisions that it deemed "unreasonable".

[Insert: Netanyahu drops key part of Israel judicial overhaul plans
[...]Meanwhile, far-right ultranationalist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of the Jewish Power party, accused Mr Netanyahu of "surrendering" to civil unrest, saying it was "a victory for violence and a loss for Israel".
[...]An ultra-Orthodox minister, Meir Porush, told a newspaper that the original changes to bolster parliament were a condition for his United Torah Judaism party joining the governing coalition. "Any other agreement is not acceptable to us," he said.
[...]Prof Suzie Navot, an expert in constitutional law who has been representing the largest opposition party, Yesh Atid, in the talks at the president's office, found no reason for encouragement in the prime minister's latest remarks.
P - "This is a coup d'etat in the Polish way, which is done a little at a time," she wrote on Twitter, referring to a series of judicial reforms in Poland in recent years that the European Union said undermined judicial independence.
P - At the moment, the Israeli government is pushing ahead with an element of the changes relating to what has been termed "the reasonable clause", advancing a bill that would prevent the court system from using a test of "reasonableness" when ruling against decisions and appointments made by all elected officials.
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President of the Supreme Court of Israel Esther Hayut and all fifteen justices assemble to hear petitions against the reasonableness
standard law in the High Court in Jerusalem, on Tuesday, September 12, 2023. DEBBIE HILL/Pool via
REUTERS/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights

Twelve of 15 justices ruled that it was within the court's parameters to strike down quasi-constitutional "basic laws". A smaller majority of eight ruled to nullify this specific basic law, which the court said "causes severe and unprecedented harm to the core characteristics of Israel as a democratic state."

Some Israeli officials have acknowledged that the internal divisions caused by the judicial overhaul - which seeped into the military .. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-hit-by-day-disruption-disputed-judicial-bill-nears-key-vote-2023-07-18/ .. and prompted Netanyahu to temporarily fire Gallant .. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/party-pressure-mounts-netanyahu-pause-judicial-overhaul-2023-03-26/ , who had called to halt the reforms - may have factored into Hamas' decision to carry out its Oct. 7 killing spree.

Netanyahu's Likud party said the Supreme Court's decision was unfortunate and that it opposed "the will of the people for unity, especially during wartime". It did not discuss any possible steps it might take in its brief statement.

Yair Lapid, opposition chair and a former prime minister, praised the court, whose decision he said "seals a tough year of dispute that tore us apart from the inside and led to the most terrible disaster in our history."

The Supreme Court, according to its summary of the case, said the government in passing the amendment to the basic law "completely revoked the possibility of carrying out judicial review of the reasonableness of decisions made by the government, the prime minister, and the ministers."

"The court held that the amendment causes severe and unprecedented harm to the core characteristics of Israel as a democratic state."

Editing by Jason Neely

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israels-supreme-court-strikes-down-disputed-law-that-limited-court-oversight-2024-01-01/

See also:
[...]Freedom of movement – Israeli citizens enjoy freedom of movement in the entire area controlled by Israel (with the exception of the Gaza Strip) and may enter and leave the country freely. Palestinian subjects, on the other hand, require a special Israeli-issued permit to travel between the units (and sometimes inside them), and exit abroad also requires Israeli approval.
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... and ...
Why Israel is not a democracy
[...] For some, it is apparently sufficient that Israel has an electoral system, and that Arabs have the right to vote in those elections (though just how equally this right is protected is of course a different matter). The fact that one can't vote for a candidate who questions the special Jewish nature of the state, because such candidates can't run for or hold office, strikes most as irrelevant — hardly enough for them to call into question Israel's democratic credentials.
P - If what we see in Israel is indeed democracy, then what does fascism look like?
P - I'm sorry, but I am over it. As a Jew, I am over it. And if my language seems too harsh here, that's tough. Because it's nothing compared to the sickening things said by Israeli leaders throughout the years. Like former prime minister Menachem Begin, who told the Knesset in 1982 that the Palestinians were "beasts walking on two legs". Or former PM Ehud Barak, who offered a more precise form of dehumanisation when he referred to the Palestinians as "crocodiles".
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