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The day democracy died.
08/05/2012 18:46Opposition role call:
Labour - 8 seats. Centre-ish. They stopped being left a long time ago.
HaIkhud HaLeumi - 4 seats. Extreme right wing religious party, including an ex-member of Kach.
Ra'am-Ta'al - 4 seats. The party of the Islamist movement.
Hadash - 4 seats. Joint Jewish-Arab communist party.
Merez - 3 seats. Left with human rights/end of the occupation-emphasis Zionist party.
Balad - 3 seats. Arab-nationalist party...ish.
Sum of all opposition seats (with a note that on the more right wing, less democratic votes, the government usually can count on HaIkhud HaLeumi) - 26.
Sum of coalition seats: Ninety-four.
Some facts about the Israeli system:
Israel doesn't have a constitution. What we have is a series of laws called "basic laws", which were meant to set the basis for a constitution. These laws take precedence, that is, if a law passes that contradicts one of the basic laws, it is cancelled.
The last of these laws to pass was in 1992, the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty. That is the major law that settles the issues of human rights in Israel. On the basis of this law developed in the Israeli court what is known as judicial activism. That is, the more the government ignores human rights and its own laws in legislation or policy, the more the Israel Supreme Court rules out laws as contradicting this basic law and cancels them. This hasn't happened a lot. But it has happened, and the Israeli Supreme Court has been subjected to ongoing attacks from the right over this in the past twenty years, becoming worse and worse with the last two governments.
A law that is being discussed a lot lately is a law that will allow the Knesset to re-legislate a law that has been rules as illegal in court if it has a certain majority. Theoretically, such a law is an important one - there should be a distinction between the court and the legislator, and the court's interference should be minimal. However, the recent Knessets and especially the current one have had a tendency of ignoring Israeli law and human rights in general. Without the court's ability to interfere with illegal legislation, there would be no one to stop them.
Two other things have happened in the past two months.
In March, there should have been an eviction of the illegal outpost Migron. In the last minute, the state reached a compromise with the settlers, one that gave them until 2015 to evict the outpost. The Supreme Court said no. The current date of eviction is August.
On Sunday, there was a discussion regarding the Ulpana neighbourhood in Beit El, which, like Migron, is built in private land owned by Palestinians. The Supreme Court - the last, final ruling court in Israel - has already ruled a long time ago that it must be evicted. The date set for the eviction by the court is the end of July. The state has appealed to have the decision overturned because it is uncomfortable to them. The court's answer, albeit phrased more politely, can be summed with "WTF no".
There's a lot of other things you can do with a majority of over 80 seats in the Knesset, not just cancel basic laws. None of them are good for democracy. No one's talking about it - at the moment.
On Sunday, there was also a conference of the Likkud party centre. What's happened in the Likkud in the past several years is that a large number of Settlers, who have no intention of voting for the Likkud in the general election, have become party members. They took over the convention more or less, and Netanyahu had to stop it in the middle when he realised he's not going to get what they want. These people also then have power in electing Likkud members, and setting up the Likkud's agenda.
The talk about election said the date would be early September. That would have been extremely uncomfortable for Bibi and the Likkud, due to the court's ruling about the settlements, and even worse for Mofaz's Qadima, who were going to shrink to about 40% of its current size. By Qadima joining into the coalition, Mofaz and Bibi have made sure they have a government that simply cannot fall. That said, the next election would be a disaster for Qadima, and also for Ehud Barak. He left Labour over a year ago, and all the polls indicated his new party would be lucky to enter the Knesset in the next election. The same will happen to Mofaz - no one is going to forget that he called Bibi a liar yesterday, and declared only last week that Qadima will not enter the government.
They may not think about it now, but in a year and a half, they're going to think about it.
At some point in 2008, I had a conversation with my landlady, who I met during my linguistics BA. She's a brilliant lady, older than I am - she's from my parents' generation. I don't remember what exactly happened at that point that made me say that I feel fascism really is gaining hold in Israel. She smiled and said, "That's how things felt in 1984, and then they got better". I went "er, I was born in 1984" and the conversation continued from there...
When I came back to Israel, already 2 years ago, she said then I was right. Things have never been this bad. Not in 1984. Not ever.
Before today, I assumed we've had at least one general election, perhaps two, before the shit really hit the fan. I don't anymore. Now I think the last truly democratic, free election, is already behind us. I don't know how things will look like in 2013. But I don't think it will look the same.
Labour - 8 seats. Centre-ish. They stopped being left a long time ago.
HaIkhud HaLeumi - 4 seats. Extreme right wing religious party, including an ex-member of Kach.
Ra'am-Ta'al - 4 seats. The party of the Islamist movement.
Hadash - 4 seats. Joint Jewish-Arab communist party.
Merez - 3 seats. Left with human rights/end of the occupation-emphasis Zionist party.
Balad - 3 seats. Arab-nationalist party...ish.
Sum of all opposition seats (with a note that on the more right wing, less democratic votes, the government usually can count on HaIkhud HaLeumi) - 26.
Sum of coalition seats: Ninety-four.
Some facts about the Israeli system:
Israel doesn't have a constitution. What we have is a series of laws called "basic laws", which were meant to set the basis for a constitution. These laws take precedence, that is, if a law passes that contradicts one of the basic laws, it is cancelled.
The last of these laws to pass was in 1992, the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty. That is the major law that settles the issues of human rights in Israel. On the basis of this law developed in the Israeli court what is known as judicial activism. That is, the more the government ignores human rights and its own laws in legislation or policy, the more the Israel Supreme Court rules out laws as contradicting this basic law and cancels them. This hasn't happened a lot. But it has happened, and the Israeli Supreme Court has been subjected to ongoing attacks from the right over this in the past twenty years, becoming worse and worse with the last two governments.
A law that is being discussed a lot lately is a law that will allow the Knesset to re-legislate a law that has been rules as illegal in court if it has a certain majority. Theoretically, such a law is an important one - there should be a distinction between the court and the legislator, and the court's interference should be minimal. However, the recent Knessets and especially the current one have had a tendency of ignoring Israeli law and human rights in general. Without the court's ability to interfere with illegal legislation, there would be no one to stop them.
Two other things have happened in the past two months.
In March, there should have been an eviction of the illegal outpost Migron. In the last minute, the state reached a compromise with the settlers, one that gave them until 2015 to evict the outpost. The Supreme Court said no. The current date of eviction is August.
On Sunday, there was a discussion regarding the Ulpana neighbourhood in Beit El, which, like Migron, is built in private land owned by Palestinians. The Supreme Court - the last, final ruling court in Israel - has already ruled a long time ago that it must be evicted. The date set for the eviction by the court is the end of July. The state has appealed to have the decision overturned because it is uncomfortable to them. The court's answer, albeit phrased more politely, can be summed with "WTF no".
There's a lot of other things you can do with a majority of over 80 seats in the Knesset, not just cancel basic laws. None of them are good for democracy. No one's talking about it - at the moment.
On Sunday, there was also a conference of the Likkud party centre. What's happened in the Likkud in the past several years is that a large number of Settlers, who have no intention of voting for the Likkud in the general election, have become party members. They took over the convention more or less, and Netanyahu had to stop it in the middle when he realised he's not going to get what they want. These people also then have power in electing Likkud members, and setting up the Likkud's agenda.
The talk about election said the date would be early September. That would have been extremely uncomfortable for Bibi and the Likkud, due to the court's ruling about the settlements, and even worse for Mofaz's Qadima, who were going to shrink to about 40% of its current size. By Qadima joining into the coalition, Mofaz and Bibi have made sure they have a government that simply cannot fall. That said, the next election would be a disaster for Qadima, and also for Ehud Barak. He left Labour over a year ago, and all the polls indicated his new party would be lucky to enter the Knesset in the next election. The same will happen to Mofaz - no one is going to forget that he called Bibi a liar yesterday, and declared only last week that Qadima will not enter the government.
They may not think about it now, but in a year and a half, they're going to think about it.
At some point in 2008, I had a conversation with my landlady, who I met during my linguistics BA. She's a brilliant lady, older than I am - she's from my parents' generation. I don't remember what exactly happened at that point that made me say that I feel fascism really is gaining hold in Israel. She smiled and said, "That's how things felt in 1984, and then they got better". I went "er, I was born in 1984" and the conversation continued from there...
When I came back to Israel, already 2 years ago, she said then I was right. Things have never been this bad. Not in 1984. Not ever.
Before today, I assumed we've had at least one general election, perhaps two, before the shit really hit the fan. I don't anymore. Now I think the last truly democratic, free election, is already behind us. I don't know how things will look like in 2013. But I don't think it will look the same.