As Israel's protest movement intensified from January into late March, with tens of thousands of angry citizens taking to the streets to demonstrate against
the government's plan to reform the judiciary,
it seemed clear that someone would have to give in.
But for much of that time, it didn't look like that someone was going to be Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Hardliners in his fragile coalition government had threatened that judicial reform was the price he had to pay to remain head of government and there was little sign he would jeopardize his position.
Thus,
Israel appeared to be at a dead end:
protesters claimed that reform could catastrophically undermine the checks and balances of Israeli democracy.
Supporters of the plan, many on the right, say the judiciary has overreached its functions over the years and become an obstacle to important political programs.
Then, on Sunday and Monday, the earth moved with extraordinary speed.
As the protest movement increased pressure through unions, businesses, universities and, perhaps most importantly, members of the military, Netanyahu announced that the reform would be postponed until after the parliamentary recess, allowing negotiations with the opposition leaders.
Israeli flags in Jerusalem, during a protest against the controversial judicial reform proposed by Benjamin Netanyahu.
Photo: REUTERS
The final resolution of the Israel crisis remains unclear
, and many protesters worry that Netanyahu will resubmit basically the same plan if the talks fail.
Public outrage and political results
But this week's rapid changes offer an object lesson in what it takes for a mass movement to translate public outrage into political results.
The answer, as I've written before, comes down to one word:
influence.
“The question of the success of social movements always comes down to whether they have an influence that can actually force political leaders to do something they otherwise wouldn't do,” said Wendy Pearlman, a political scientist at Northwestern University who studies social movements in Israel and other places.
The forms of influence are specific to the circumstances of each country.
In South Africa, for example, in addition to trade embargoes, the anti-apartheid movement was able to take advantage of the economic elite's reliance on black labor, wrote Elisabeth Wood, a political scientist at Yale University, in Forging Democracy from Below:
Insurgent Transitions in South Africa and El Salvador
(
Forging Democracy from Below: Insurgent Transitions in South Africa and El Salvador
).
Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, pressured between the protests and his fragile government coalition.
Photo: AP
Through union organizing and strike action, they successfully lobbied the Afrikaner economic elite, who then demanded change from those in political power.
In the Israeli case, amid numerous uncertainties, a first question seemed to be who could drive cracks in the ruling coalition, Pearlman said.
Netanyahu's government is made up of multiple right-wing and religious parties, some of them small, with only a few seats in Parliament.
They have tremendous influence over the prime minister because
any defection could spell the end of his rule
.
And until this week they had insisted that they would not tolerate delaying or abandoning the reform.
Those parties represent specific, highly ideological constituencies and are therefore relatively insulated from the pressures of mass demonstrations, Pearlman said.
At first, it was not clear if the protests had much influence.
Hundreds of people protest in Tel Aviv against the Israeli government's judicial reform project, this Thursday.
Photo: EFE
unexpected pressure
But an unexpected source of pressure arose.
Some members of Israel's military reserves, including elite air force units and the prestigious military intelligence service, announced they would not report for training or military operations unless the review was scrapped.
The reservists argued that military service was subject to an implicit social contract: they had agreed to serve a democratic Jewish state.
And so, if Israel ceased to be a democracy, as they argued would happen through reform, they would no longer have an obligation to serve.
That symbolic formulation helped “legitimize why people would do something that is not done in the Israeli experience, which is to disobey military orders,” said Yagil Levy, a civil-military relations scholar at the Open University of Israel.
Policemen on horseback patrol a street in central Tel Aviv, ahead of a protest against the right-wing government.
Photo: AP
The reservists' strong social ties and active communication networks meant they could mobilize quickly.
“There are numerous WhatsApp groups where most of the time people are having Diwali barbecues or just sharing jokes,” said Gal Ariely, a political scientist at Ben-Gurion University and a former reservist.
When the crisis began, these networks became powerful vectors of messages and political organization.
“When these networks are activated, they reach a very broad spectrum of Israeli society,” said Jennifer Oser, a political scientist at Ben-Gurion University who studies protests.
And, crucially, those networks had a form of influence that ordinary civil society groups lack: the power to directly affect national security.
The government "woke up in the morning and discovered that it would not have a real option to attack Iran," said Levy, an expert on military relations.
The precise impact of the protests on the capabilities of the armed forces is unclear, but senior military officials warned the government that the armed forces were about to reduce the scope of certain operations.
On Saturday night in Israel, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant publicly warned the government that continuing with the reform endangered Israel's national security.
Netanyahu on Sunday deposed him.
In briefings with Israeli news organizations, his office said Gallant should have done more to discourage reservists from protesting.
If that was intended to make the protesters back down, it had the opposite effect.
Within hours of the minister's removal,
protests broke out again
.
In Tel Aviv, protesters blocked a highway and lit bonfires along major routes, and crowds in Jerusalem broke through security fences at Netanyahu's private residence.
On Monday, the main union called a general strike, paralyzing many services and disrupting air traffic.
Universities closed and hospitals went to weekend hours, attending only emergencies.
“I think the last decision was the key, because it was seen as a lack of judgment,” said Guy Lurie, an analyst and constitutional scholar at the Israel Democracy Institute, a think tank that opposes judicial reform.
Israel's military is by far the most respected institution in the country, he said.
And there is a strong political and social taboo against anything that puts it at risk.
"No one within the majority of Israel's Knesset members can afford to accept a situation where the army disintegrates," Levy said.
"So there was a lot of pressure on Netanyahu."
concessions
The prime minister's coalition partners began to give indications that they might negotiate concessions.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, national security minister and leader of a far-right party in the governing coalition, said he was
willing to temporarily delay the reform
, insisting, "No one will scare us," and vowing that the bill would eventually will be approved
On Monday night, Netanyahu announced that the reform would be put on hold until after Parliament's April recess.
In response, the unions called off the strike.
Now members of the government and opposition parties are meeting for the first time to try to broker a mutual agreement.
But with divisions so deep, it's hard to see how the crisis could end quickly.
©The New York Times
Translation: Elisa Carnelli
BC
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