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WHILE IN TEL AVIV earlier this month I attended two of the pro-democracy rallies that have been taking place since January.
The Israelis I spoke with said they were worried about the future of their country – “it seems like Israel is not going to be a democracy anymore”, said one man.
Others pushing prams said they were out protesting for their children. One section of the rally was occupied by a group of protestors waving Palestinian flags. When I asked two 23-year-old women holding Israeli flags nearby what they thought about this group they said people are free to carry a Palestinian flag if they want, but they didn’t really think the protests were about “that”.
This was a common refrain among Israelis at the protests who said the rallies needed to be “focused” on the judicial reforms, and that protesting against the occupation of Palestine would discourage some people from protesting.
The rallies weren’t a left-wing student affair: they drew a cross-section of Israel’s factionalised society which were united by their opposition to reforms to the judiciary that the new Israeli cabinet want to pass in parliament, which would remove judicial independence and oversight of government decisions.
People of all ages carried the blue and white Israeli flag and sang the national anthem and I Have No Other Country, which has become a symbol of the protests with its lyrics:
“I have no other country
even if my land is aflame
Just a word in Hebrew
pierces my veins and my soul -
With a painful body, with a hungry heart,
Here is my home.”
Some protestors wore religious kippahs, while others draped themselves with Pride and trans rights flags.
A smaller number who grouped together carried Palestinian flags, although Arab Israelis – who make up a fifth of Israeli citizens – were largely absent from the protests, which they viewed as primarily concerned with the protection of a Jewish brand of democracy that willfully disregards Palestinian rights.
The rallies hit a peak last weekend as army reservists and the head of police for Tel Aviv joined hundreds of thousands of protestors along the city’s main highway, where many faced tear gas and water canons wielded by Israeli security forces.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who is currently facing corruption charges, which he denies – also faced opposition from within his government and appeared to fire his minister for defence after he said the proposed reforms were creating security issues.
Hours later, the Israeli premier buckled to the mounting public pressure and announced that he would pause the controversial judicial reforms until next month – whether this is a brief reprieve or a victory for the protestors remains to be seen.
Netanyahu’s new government – a coalition of right wing, far right and ultra-religious parties – has forced many Israelis to confront an autocratic side of their state with which Palestinians living under occupation will already be well-acquainted.
Scenes of the Palestinian town of Huwara in the West Bank in flames last month after a violent attack by Israelis living in nearby illegal settlements made for uncomfortable viewing for many Israelis.
While the attack was described by an Israeli military commander as “a pogrom,” the Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich who oversees the administration of the West Bank initially called for Huwara to be “wiped out” before backtracking on his comments following widespread condemnation.
“We called what happened in Huwara ‘a pogrom’ because that is the Eastern European name for the atrocities that happened to Jewish people in their own villages a hundred years ago all over Europe,” one young protestor told me in Tel Aviv. After decades of denial and willful ignorance, there is a growing awareness among Israeli about the violent realities of the Palestinian occupation.
Yet many in Israel still fail to see the connection between an increasingly autocratic Israeli government and the militarised and systemic oppression of Palestinians which has led human rights NGOs including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to label Israel an apartheid state.
I spoke with a 20-year-old woman who was protesting in Tel Aviv with a small anti-occupation group which displayed posters saying: “We supported an occupation and ended up with a dictatorship.” While we were speaking, a man holding an Israeli flag approached her and shouted: “It’s not about this”, while pointing at the Palestinian flag she was holding.
The woman said it wasn’t common for her Israeli peers to support Palestine; the Israel Democracy Institute last month found that almost three quarters of Jewish Israelis aged 18 to 24 identify as right-wing, in contrast to 46% of Jewish Israelis over 65 who identify as right-wing.
One 18-year-old protestor who identified as a leftist said she didn’t feel safe carrying the Palestinian flag at protests and had stopped carrying the Pride flag after stones were thrown at her by a group of children.
The protestor said she had family who oppose the protests and added that they are supporters of Netanyahu – who will conveniently be in a stronger position to fight the corruption charges against him if the judiciary is weakened.
The protestor’s family believe that the judicial reforms will make Israel “more democratic” as the parliament who people vote for will make “all of the decisions, rather than a Supreme Court that we didn’t choose,” she said. It’s an argument that effectively sidelines human rights in exchange for an all-powerful executive branch – which is currently under the control of Netanyahu’s hard-line ethnonationalist government.
Building illegal settlements in the West Bank and providing heavy-handed security for them have created a culture of militarism and nationalism among Israeli institutions and eroded their democratic values and respect for human rights.
Today, approximately 750,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank that are deemed illegal under international law and part of Palestinian territory. Israeli policy means that, in effect, wherever settlers go in the West Bank the Israeli military will provide security for them no matter what the impact is on Palestinians already living there.
Minister Smotrich is himself religious settler born, while the minister for national security Itamar Ben-Gvir is part of fringe settler community of settlers who live on the outskirts of Hebron, a city in the West Bank that is home to some 200,000 Palestinians.
The approximately 700 settlers living inside Hebron are typically protected – at significant expense – by an equal number of Israeli soldiers, while the city’s commercial heartland has been turned into a militarised zone that is off limits for most Palestinians.
Israelis in liberal enclaves like Tel Aviv have often viewed the settlements as part of a radical fringe movement but have now awoken to the reality that ultra-religious and right-wing settlers now control many of their state institutions.
As well as now occupying key ministerial positions, settlers serve in the military and in the current Israeli supreme court – which despite preventing the expansion of some settlements has largely rubberstamped the dispossession of Palestinians from their land.
Over 1,000 Palestinians in Masafer Yatta in the West Bank are currently facing eviction after the Israeli supreme court upheld a ruling that the area where they live can be designated a military firing zone.
Liam Corcoran, a press officer for medical NGO Doctors Without Border said that residents in the town are routinely denied access to medical care and that “ambulances trying to reach Masafer Yatta are delayed or even blocked and residents trying to reach hospitals are stopped at the checkpoints and face long delays”.
Now, after targeting Palestinian territory and entering government, the emboldened settler movement have their sights set on banning abortion and same-sex marriage in Israel – and they’re willing to dismantle the supreme court to ensure that they succeed.
The decision of successive Israeli governments to expand and protect illegal settlements in Palestinian territory has not just eroded the possibility of a two-state solution, it has also gradually eroded any possibility of a secular and democratic Israeli state.
While I was in Ramallah in the West Bank, I met the Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh who noted that this year the total Palestinian population in Gaza, the West Bank and within Israel (5.3 million) now exceeds the total Israeli Jewish population (5.2 million.)
“What does this mean?” asked Shtayyeh, “if Israel is not accepting of two states as a solution, starting today, then tomorrow we and the Israelis are slipping into a one state reality in which the Israeli minority will be governing the affairs of the majority Palestinians – a reality in which Israel will be neither Jewish nor democratic.”
Hannah McCarthy is a journalist based in Beirut.
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