Daniel J. Arbess
WSJ, Mar. 17, 2023
“Israel could consider reforming the structure of its constitution from the British parliamentary mode to an American-style separation of powers that would be adapted for Israel’s unique needs.”
Street demonstrations and political drama over Israel’s judicial-reform debate have some people wondering whether the end of Israeli democracy is nigh. Quite the opposite. Competing judicial-reform proposals from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s religious Zionist coalition government and President Isaac Herzog’s consultative “People’s Framework” have launched a discussion that could ultimately resolve constitutional issues that have simmered since the modern nation’s founding in 1948.
As its 75th anniversary approaches next month, Israel has finally achieved sufficient security and stature to consider addressing, in a formal constitution, its enduring national identity crisis: the reconciliation of its defining attributes as both a Jewish state and a multicultural democracy.
While Israel is a legislative democracy with 13 quasiconstitutional Basic Laws, it isn’t a true constitutional democracy. The Basic Laws were intended to be draft chapters of a formal, unitary constitution that would define the role and respective powers of the main institutions of the state, and human and civic voting rights. The drafting of a formal constitution was deferred from the nation’s inception by wars and other existential concerns. The new coalition government’s judicial-reform proposals opened the door; now the Herzog plan broadens the conversation, by proposing to elevate existing Basic Laws to formal constitutional status and raise the legislative approval thresholds for passing new ones.
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