This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.
Israel’s Supreme Court on Monday struck down a controversial law passed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government that limited some of the power of the high court and had sparked months of protests across the nation. The landmark decision could catapult Israel into a constitutional and political crisis, in a time when it is already waging a deadly war with Hamas.
The court ruled 8-7, with all 15 justices present for the first time in Israel’s history. In a summary of the case, the Supreme Court said it “held that the amendment causes severe and unprecedented harm to the core characteristics of Israel as a democratic state.”
Netanyahu’s Likud party denounced the decision, in particular its timing, when Israeli soldiers are “fighting and endangering themselves in battle.”
Yair Lapid, the leader of the opposition and a chief rival of Netanyahu, said the High Court’s ruling “ends a difficult year of conflict that tore us apart from within and led to the worst disaster in our history.”
As soon as Netanyahu took office on December 29, 2022, for his sixth term as prime minister, he introduced plans for a judicial overhaul that aimed to limit the power of the Supreme Court. The plan divided the nation and led to 40 weeks of protests, with hundreds of thousands coming out every Saturday night since January, 2023.
Those protests abruptly stopped on Oct. 7, when Hamas killed around 1,200 people and abducted around 250.
This article was originally published on the Forward.
