“The ruling, released on New Year’s Day, annulled the single biggest piece of legislation passed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition. The Court’s reasoning fundamentally changes the balance of power in Israel’s democracy — so fundamentally, in fact, that some members of the elected government have vowed not to abide by it. If that happens, Israel will be thrown into a full-blown constitutional crisis.
About a year ago, Netanyahu proposed a sweeping overhaul to Israel’s judiciary — one that would, in effect, put it under his personal thumb. Mass protests succeeded in blocking most of the overhaul. Only one plank — curtailing the power of the courts to overturn government policy — actually became law, an amendment to Israel’s “Basic Laws,” the closest thing the country has to a constitution. This is the law that was just overturned by the Supreme Court.
In doing so, the Court came to two key conclusions. First, that it has the general power to overturn Basic Laws — a power it had never deployed before. Second, that this new Basic Law was threatening enough to Israeli democracy that the court was justified in overruling it.
In peacetime, a ruling this epochal would transform Israeli politics, reorienting everything around the question of the court’s new claim to power and (plausible) claim to be saving Israeli democracy.
But with the country enmeshed in an existential war in Gaza, the domestic reaction to the court’s ruling is far less explosive than it would be otherwise. Whether this lasts — or whether Israel erupts into a domestic political crisis to match its current international peril — is far from clear.”