Israel is no longer the democracy the West once loved

For decades, Israel’s Western supporters and apologists boasted that it was the only democracy in the Middle East. As a liberal democracy, they perceived that it shared the West’s values of safeguarding human rights, protecting freedom of expression, honoring the rule of law, holding free elections and maintaining equality among its citizens.

But while democratic practices were indeed observed and implemented to varying degrees within the state of Israel, its occupation of Palestinian territories demonstrated a starkly different reality. Israeli citizens lived under a civilian administration, while millions of Palestinians were subjected to a ruthless military law that denied them the most basic of human rights.

The contrast between Israel, the democratic state, and Israel, the occupier of another nation, has always been bleak but nothing compared to its horrific violations of Palestinian rights in recent years: the genocidal war on Gaza and the deliberate targeting of women, children, journalists, aid workers, medics, farmers, doctors and teachers. This duality, a modern-day Janus, has placed Israel in a class of its own among countries — a functioning and thriving democracy, on the one hand, and an apartheid state on the other.

It is today a democracy whose leader is wanted for war crimes, while the country is being investigated for committing genocide.

But in recent years, and especially under Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition government, prominent Israeli politicians, political activists, representatives of legal bodies and various unions have been warning that the country is drifting away from its democratic heritage toward authoritarianism, or what pundits sometimes describe as an illiberal democracy.

In the Israeli system of government, the prime minister wields almost absolute power. Still, the Supreme Court can overrule his decisions with oversight by the country’s attorney general and, in some cases, by the internal security agency, better known as the Shin Bet.

For decades, successive Israeli premiers had respected this form of separation of powers and the system of checks and balances. In a number of cases, they accepted rulings by the Supreme Court that invalidated government decisions. Unfortunately, when it came to issuing rulings on Israeli policies in the West Bank, the courts almost always sided with the government and the occupation.

But for Netanyahu, this was not enough. With the demise of Israel’s liberal left, represented by the Labor Party and others, the man who took the right-wing Likud party to more victories than any other saw an opportunity to push for a complete takeover of the political stage. His agenda — indeed, his legacy — is to kill the notion of the two-state solution forever and expand Israel’s area by annexing the Occupied Territories.

To do so, he wanted to ensure that the implementation of his plans, which coincided with those of the smaller ultrareligious and ultranationalist parties, would not be interrupted by snap elections or the interference of the independent judiciary.

No sooner had he partnered with extremist parties in 2022 to form Israel’s first far-right government than he began preparing legislation to undermine the country’s Supreme Court: the so-called judicial reforms. This overhaul sought to limit the Supreme Court’s power to review legislation by introducing an “override clause” that allows the Knesset to overturn court rulings and politicize judicial appointments.

However, a public backlash in the form of almost daily protests throughout the summer of 2023 forced Netanyahu and his extremist partners to postpone the debate of the so-called reforms. Then, the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks took place, which presented a beleaguered Netanyahu with a lifeline. He took Israel to war while freezing the debate of the reforms. While facing serious corruption charges, Netanyahu and his supporters pushed to pass laws to shield sitting leaders from prosecution.

But Netanyahu’s efforts to circumvent any oversight of the government and himself have resumed in recent weeks. He has decided to fire the head of the Shin Bet, claiming that he has lost confidence in him, and his Cabinet this week voted to sack the country’s attorney general on similar grounds. Both had challenged Netanyahu over the way he negotiated the release of the Israeli captives and his refusal to form an independent inquiry into the Oct. 7 attacks.

The Israeli opposition has warned that Netanyahu is becoming a dictator with unchecked powers and that Israeli democracy is under threat. Opposition figures have warned of a civil war breaking out because of such behavior.

Israel is in a class of its own — a functioning and thriving democracy, on the one hand, and an apartheid state on the other.

Osama Al-Sharif

But his ardent supporters on the right and the far right see an opportunity to hold on to power so that Netanyahu can fulfill the rest of his agenda: annexation of the West Bank and the transfer of Palestinians. They also see him as delivering on his promises, such as when, in 2018, he pushed the Knesset to pass the controversial so-called Nation-State Law, which prioritizes Israel’s Jewish identity over democratic equality and the rights of minorities. He also proposed laws to weaken nongovernmental organizations, such as “transparency laws” that target groups critical of government policies seen as marginalizing minorities and stifling dissent.

Netanyahu’s efforts to shield himself and concentrate powers in the Knesset, thus weakening Israel’s democracy, must be viewed from the perspective of the country’s “Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel.” In this May 1948 declaration, the signatories declared that the new state “will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice, and peace; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”

After more than seven decades, Israel today is what Netanyahu and his far-right partners want it to be and nothing like what its founding fathers had envisaged. Today, Israel is a regional superstate that has subjugated the native Palestinians and has, by now, overcome its neighbors. But despite its regional supremacy, it is deeply divided, with warnings that, under Netanyahu, it is now inching closer to authoritarian rule and is no longer the region’s only democracy.

• Osama Al-Sharif is a journalist and political commentator in Amman. X: @plato010