The protest movement for the judicial reform in Israel has raised its pulse to the Government this Thursday with what they have called "Day of resistance against the dictatorship", which includes actions in different parts of the country, among which the road blockade stands out. and a rally at the main Israeli airport, Ben Gurion, to try to prevent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from flying to Rome to meet his Italian counterpart, Giorgia Meloni.
A group of protesters has managed to block one of the access roads to the aerodrome, although the police diverted traffic without causing serious interruptions in the operation of the terminal.
The Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, who had warned in an interview with channel 13 that he would not allow "anarchists to block the airport",
The protest has also led to partial strikes and pickets at universities.
In the north of the country, dozens of boats and kayaks have tried to prevent access to the port of Haifa.
Escraches are also planned in front of the houses of members of the Executive.
Some groups, such as social workers, army veterans, lawyers or employees of sectors such as high technology or health, are leading marches in different locations.
The organizers announced in the previous days that there will be "many surprises."
A group of protesters block a highway in Tel Aviv, this Thursday.
ABIR SULTAN (EFE)
The main march takes place in Tel Aviv, where thousands of people demonstrate with Israeli flags and chants such as "The time has come to oust the despot."
The coastal city is the epicenter of the protest movement that has brought hundreds of thousands of Israelis to the streets in the past two months.
The reason is a judicial reform proposal that would weaken the Supreme Court and change the system for electing its magistrates to the benefit of the Executive.
The initiative, promoted by the Netanyahu government, which was sworn in in December, was approved last week at first reading in Parliament.
He still needs two more.
Its promoters defend it as a way to give more power to democratically elected institutions against a Supreme Court that they accuse of intervening excessively and with political intentions.
His detractors see, instead, an attempt to laminate the division of powers by the most right-wing government in the seven decades of the country's history, in the style of what happened in Poland and Hungary.
Police on horseback during the protest through the streets of Tel Aviv, this Thursday.
RONEN ZVULUN (REUTERS)
The reform would allow Parliament to annul a decision of the Supreme Court and would convert the legal advisers of the Government (today professional positions with binding opinions) into politicians whose assessment would only be advisory.
It would also give the Executive a majority in the committee that appoints the court judges and would eliminate a legal tool that allows the Supreme Court to annul those decisions or political appointments that it considers "unreasonable."
The new pulse comes amid the expansion of the protest to the army, the institution most valued by far by Jewish Israelis, in part for its unifying role in a country crisscrossed by numerous internal fractures.
The latest sample is a letter in which some 400 reservists from the Maglan special unit call on Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to use his influence to stop judicial reform in order to "protect the State of Israel," warning that They will not sit "idly by" if it ends up moving forward, because "it would change the face of the country."
consensus draft
The government and the opposition are not formally discussing the reform, because the former insists on doing it in parallel to the parliamentary process and the latter demands that it be halted in order to sit down at the negotiating table.
However, the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, has generated an alternative channel ―made up of academics of different ideological tendencies― from which a draft consensus text has emerged.
According to the daily
Yediot Aharonot
In the revised version, the Knesset (Parliament) could not annul the decisions of the Supreme Court, nor would the Government have an automatic majority to choose judges.
Instead, the court would be stripped of the power to strike down basic laws (constitutional in a country without a Constitution) and the “unreasonableness” tool would be limited to “patently absurd” decisions that do not deal with “policies or appointments.”
Protest in the center of Tel Aviv, this Thursday.
RONEN ZVULUN (REUTERS)
The Secretary of the Government, Yossi Fuchs, with tasks similar to those of a chief of staff, has described the proposal on Twitter as "serious" and "basis for negotiation", with only "some gaps".
Herzog assured on Monday that the possibility of a framework agreement "is closer than ever" thanks to negotiations "behind the scenes", and he abstractly glossed the benefits of the new text.
The protest leaders responded, however, that his "sincere efforts are unfortunately doomed to failure."
"Until [the government] withdraws its intention to transform Israel into a dictatorship, we will not stop our fight to preserve Israel as a Jewish and democratic state," they sentenced.
The controversy seems to have begun to generate divisions within the Executive.
Public radio has reported that various ministers from Likud, the right-wing party led by Netanyahu, are increasingly insisting that he order the head of Justice, Yariv Levin, to step on the brakes, due to the deterioration of the image that the training.
The Prime Minister (almost) has no one to transport him
Benjamin Netanyahu, at the weekly meeting of the council of ministers, on Sunday in Jerusalem.
GIL COHEN-MAGEN (REUTERS)
Netanyahu's trip to Italy this Thursday has been preceded by a saga that shows the scope of the protest.
In the previous days, the national airline, El Al, traditionally in charge of foreign trips for prime ministers, did not find a single pilot willing to take the Netanyahus (Benjamin and his wife, Sara), apparently due to a hidden rebellion, according to local media.
Typically, these trips are planned weeks in advance, but those added later to the schedule, like this one, depend on a pilot volunteering to do it outside of normal business hours.
Faced with this situation, the prime minister's office opened the tender on Sunday to other national airlines.
El Al won it again and its first executive, Dina Ben Tal Ganancia, announced that the flight will have personnel "according to the company's protocols and will take off normally on the scheduled date."
Netanyahu, however, will not fly (as is customary and wanted) on a Boeing 777, but on a 737, of which the airline has more in its fleet and therefore more pilots trained to fly them.
The Business Class of the 777 model is larger than that of the 737 and has seats that fully recline to act as beds.
Although El Al linked the incident to the lack of pilots of the 777 model after the pandemic, the words of Ben Tal Ganancia point in another direction: "We will not throw a cable to any type of boycott, certainly not against the prime minister of Israel [ …].
It is a great honor for us to transport the Prime Minister on state trips.
It is what we have always done and what we will do in the future.”
Added to this is a Facebook post this Thursday from a translator from Hebrew to Italian, Olga Dalia Padua, in which she claims to have rejected an offer to act as Netanyahu's interpreter in Rome because she considers his leadership "extremely dangerous in everything related to democracy in the State of Israel” and, above all, because —he stresses— his children would not forgive him.
“They always encourage me to take on new jobs.
But in this case they were determined: we do not cooperate with those who promote fascist principles and repress freedom […].
I decided to listen to them, ”she concludes her response to the proposal.
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