The doctors’ strike and six court appeals are trying to stop the law that weakens Israel’s Supreme Court

On Tuesday, the opposition to the judicial reform of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is trying to regain the initiative with measures on various fronts, after Parliamentary ratification of the first law It weakens the Supreme Court. Doctors are on strike for 24 hours across the country, except in Jerusalem, at the invitation of the union that represents them. The administration presented this morning before the labor court a condition for its cancellation. In addition to the high-tech sector, Very active in the protests that started in JanuaryI paid for a front page black ad in five print newspapers. There are already six lawsuits that have been submitted to the Supreme Court for review The new and controversial standardwhich eliminates the court’s ability to overturn decisions of government, ministers, or elected public officials that it deems unreasonable.

Hospitals are operating in mode Saturday, that’s the minimum. The emergency services did not change their work. Yes, the four health centers Boxesas the organizations that provide health services to the vast majority of Israelis are called.

At the request of Minister Moshe Arbel, technicians from the Ministry of Health prepared a request to cancel the strike, which was presented to the courts. In the text, they emphasized that this pause is not a “legitimate means” of protest, but rather an end in itself, “and that is why “it is necessary to study the issue of good faith,” according to Israeli public radio. The organizers of the meeting argue that this cancellation of reviewing the reasonableness of government decisions, which was approved on Monday by the Knesset, may affect them, for example, in appointments to positions.

In addition, five major Israeli newspapers hit newsstands with a black front page with a single small message in white letters – “Black Day for Israeli Democracy” – and the date Tuesday. On the back you can read: “The locomotive of Israel will never surrender,” referring to the high-tech sector, which finances advertising in the three public newspapers with the largest circulation (Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel Hume y Haaretz) and two economists (calculator y Brand). They call it the locomotive because it contributes more than 10% of employment and 15% of Israel’s GDP. Businessmen and workers are pioneers of protest, due to their social background and place of residence, as well as their dependence on a country that is still seen as democratic by the outside world. With an open economy and legal certainty.

legal battle

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The battle is raging in the judicial field. The Supreme Court received six requests to review the law, including one from opposition leader Yair Lapid and the Bar Association. President Esther Hayut and other justices of the court had to shorten their official visit to Germany, which began on Sunday, to return to Israel for examination. It’s a paradox — the Supreme Court’s ability to overturn a rule that affects it — that experts are divided on.

The list they are to review on Monday was approved by 64 votes (the entire coalition formed by Netanyahu’s party, Likud, with the ultra-Orthodox and ultra-nationalists) and zero against, when the other 56 lawmakers left the plenary chanting: “Shame!” The law removes from the Supreme Court one of the legal candidates he had in a country without a constitution (It is guided by a series of basic laws that have been developed over the yearsIn which Parliament elects the Prime Minister. The Court has spent years in the crosshairs of the right, particularly its most extreme.

Before, during and after the approval, there were protests in various cities, especially Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, although they were not mass. 32 demonstrators and 12 policemen were injured, none seriously. Three of the first cases were due to a deliberate hit-and-run, the perpetrator of which remains in detention.

In addition, dozens of artists hung eight-meter-high banners on the side of Ayalon this morning with clenched fists and anti-reform messages, they claimed in a statement. It is a busy highway in Tel Aviv that young demonstrators cross every Saturday, Since the start of mobilization 30 weeks ago.

At the end of Monday, as thousands of people demonstrated in the streets, Netanyahu addressed the nation to defend the new law as “necessary to rebalance the powers,” so that the executive branch can “lead policies according to the will of the majority of the country’s citizens.” “This is not the ‘end of democracy’, it is the essence of democracy,” he stressed.

Lapid, his predecessor as prime minister and leader of the Yesh Atid party, accused him of having “turned himself into a puppet.” of Christian extremists‘, but he asked those reservists who threatened thousands to stop wearing the uniform It’s time for the Supreme Court to hear the petitions.

Another opposition political leader, Benny Gantz, Netanyahu’s defense minister and chief of staff, tried to boost morale with a military analogy: “I am a man who knows the battle, and I tell you today: ‘We may have lost a battle, but we will win the war.'”

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