Doctors across Israel are set to strike on Tuesday in protest against the passing of a key part of Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul, after thousands of protesters took to the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv on Monday night.
The Israeli Medical Association, which says it represents about 95% of doctors, said it would hold a 24-hour protest, with exemptions for medical care in Jerusalem and emergency care across the country. It held a brief strike last week as a warning, arguing the judicial overhaul would “devastate the healthcare system”. The doctors are set to be joined in strike action on Tuesday by 73% of interns, according to the Intern Doctors Organization. Health minister Moshe Arbel is reportedly seeking an injunction to prevent the doctors’ strike going ahead.
Legal action, a general strike and possible refusal from upwards of 10,000 military reservists to report for duty are now on the cards as Israel’s largest ever domestic crisis enters a new chapter.
The protests have been sparked by the judicial overhaul bill, which abolishes the “reasonableness” clause that allows Israel’s unelected supreme court to overrule government decisions. It was passed into law by a final vote of 64-0 in parliament on Monday. Every member of Netanyahu’s coalition voted in favour, while opposition lawmakers abandoned the Knesset plenum in protest, shouting “Shame!” as they left.
On Monday night the streets around the parliament building in Jerusalem were thronged with approximately 20,000 protesters waving blue and white flags, some of whom marched to the city over four days last week. There were cries as news of the vote result filtered through the crowd, together with shouts of “we will never give up”. Walls and fences were plastered with stickers reading “we won’t serve a dictator,” “democracy or rebellion” and “save Israel from Netanyahu”.
Police used water cannon – and for the first time, skunk gas – to disperse people blocking roads, some of whom had lit fires, while malls and businesses in many cities closed their doors in solidarity. Many protesters put plugs in their noses or held up sprigs of rosemary plucked from nearby bushes to try to control the stench from the skunk gas. At least 19 arrests have been made.
“This puts us on the way to dictatorship,” said protester Danny Kimmel in Jerusalem. “You don’t do this to people who are protesting. It’s their right.”
Thousands of people also demonstrated in central Tel Aviv – the centre of months of anti-government protests. Scuffles took place between police and protesters, with at least eight people arrested and demonstrators lighting bonfires. Police said they arrested a driver who hit a group of protesters in central Israel, injuring three people.
The White House said Joe Biden had not given up on his goal of finding a broader consensus among politicians in Israel. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said: “It is unfortunate that the vote took place today with the slimmest possible majority.”
Opponents of the bill said they would challenge the new law in the supreme court. Opposition leader Yair Lapid said he would urge the supreme court to strike down the law, telling the Knesset the vote marked “a takeover by an extreme minority over the Israeli majority”.
After the vote, he said: “It’s a sad day. This is not a victory for the coalition. This is the destruction of Israeli democracy.”
Germany’s foreign ministry said on Monday it “very much regretted” that negotiations between the government and the opposition had broken down “for the time being”.
“In light of our deep ties with Israel and its people, we view the deepening tensions in Israeli society with great concern,” it added, “Especially after today’s adoption of the first part of the planned restructuring of the judiciary, it remains important to give sufficient time and space for a broad social debate and consensus.”
The British Board of Deputies backed Israeli president Isaac Herzog’s efforts to find a consensus and urged Israel’s leaders to keep talking to “prevent the deepening of a constitution crisis which will do tremendous damage to the very fabric of Israeli society”. Of the negotiations, it said it was “deeply disappointed that, at this stage, the efforts have failed”.
Jewish groups in the US condemned the vote as a threat to democracy and warned that it could damage relations with American Jews.
The American Jewish Committee, one of the oldest pro-Israel groups in the US, expressed “profound disappointment” at the vote and said it is “gravely concerned” that it will deepen divisions in Israeli society amid huge demonstrations against the law, including in the military with thousands of military reservists threatening to refuse to report for duty.
“The continued effort to press forward on judicial reform rather than seeking compromise has sown discord within the Israeli Defense Forces at a time of elevated threats to the Jewish homeland and has strained the vital relationship between Israel and diaspora Jewry,” it said.
In a televised address on Monday night, Netanyahu described the bill as “a necessary democratic act” that would “return a measure of balance between the branches of government.” The prime minister called for fresh dialogue with the opposition and pleaded for national unity.
With Associated Press and Reuters