Israel’s judicial reforms risk becoming America’s problem

On July 24, Israel’s Knesset passed legislation that would officially cancel what is known as the “reasonableness doctrine,” curbing the Supreme Court’s ability to exercise oversight over government policies.

It marks the first of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s multi-pronged judicial overhaul plan, which has sparked unprecedented protests across Israel since it was first announced in January.

Thousands of army reservists have threatened to refuse volunteering for duty, while Israel’s president Isaac Herzog warned that the conflict could lead to civil war. The Biden administration has taken the unusual step of making public appeals to dissuade Netanyahu from moving forward with the deeply divisive reforms, suggesting it could dangerously erode Israel’s democratic foundations and cause irreparable damage to the “special relationship” between the two countries.

Critics have condemned President Joe Biden for unfairly interfering in another state’s domestic affairs, but Israel’s escalating crisis risks compromising U.S. interests in the region.

Together with our shared democratic values, the 75-year partnership between the U.S. and Israel has been built on a united commitment to regional security. Yet just along Israel’s eastern border, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has been struggling to maintain control over the West Bank. Major cities, such as Jenin and Nablus, are de-facto ruled by loosely organized Palestinian militias and have become breeding grounds for attacks by Iran-backed terror groups such as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Israel’s military has repeatedly called on its political leadership to advance measures aimed at stabilizing the PA, though their warnings have not been translated into any significant action by Netanyahu over the last several years. And now his latest coalition — which Biden has called “one of the most extreme” Israeli cabinets he has ever seen — has even less of an incentive to support the PA.

Part of Netanyahu’s original government formation deal, signed with his right-wing coalition partners, included strengthening Israel’s control over the West Bank. For many of the reform’s main architects — staunch pro-annexation, pro-settlement types who do not believe in a two-state solution — Israel’s Supreme Court has stood in the way of their nationalist aspirations.

Israel’s justice minister Yariv Levin admitted as much during his speech ahead of the Knesset vote, when he offered examples of the court overturning decisions concerning Palestinians as part of his argument in defense of the reforms. Preventing the judiciary from placing checks on the government’s power enables Netanyahu and his cabinet to freely pursue their own radical interests in the West Bank, all while fueling Palestinian resentment and exacerbating the PA’s illegitimacy.

The potential collapse of the PA is a disastrous scenario for the region. It would create a security vacuum that Iran and its allies will be sure to exploit, throwing the West Bank deeper into lawlessness and violence. It would effectively put Israel and the Palestinian territories on the brink of a third intifada. An Israeli-Palestinian conflict aside, it also threatens to destabilize Jordan—home to the largest population of Palestinian refugees who serve as ideal targets for Iranian recruitment — and might give Saudi Arabia doubts about normalizing relations with Israel, a landmark deal that would be an enormous step forward in improving Arab-Israeli relations.

We rely on Israel, our strongest Middle East ally, to help mitigate threats from our common adversaries and preserve regional stability. But Netanyahu’s judicial reforms are slowly creating conditions for Israel to be threatened from all sides, jeopardizing both its own security and the overall security of the Middle East in the process.

And what’s happening in Israel will not stay in Israel. We would be doing ourselves a disservice by turning a blind eye as this coalition continues to lay the groundwork for a much larger and longer problem we won’t be able to ignore.

Sahar Soleimany is a research associate at the American Enterprise Institute focusing on the Middle East.