Episode Notes:

This weekend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired his Defense Minister after the minister criticized his proposed judicial overhaul. Now amidst ongoing protests and a general strike we’re joined by Michael Koplow. Michael is the chief policy officer of the Israel Policy Forum, and also serves as a senior research fellow of the Kogod Research Center at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America.

[:46] Latest developments

[3:14] Security angle

[5:26] Civil-Military relations

[6:33] What's next?

[9:10] Palestinian perspective

Episode Transcript

Nicholas Danforth: My name is Nicholas Danforth, and I'm an editor at War on the Rocks. You are listening to the Warcast, the members-only podcast for what you need to know, now. 

This weekend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired his defense minister after the minister criticized his proposed judicial overhaul. Now, amidst ongoing protests and a general strike, we’re joined by Michael Koplow. Michael is the chief policy officer of the Israel Policy Forum, and also serves as a senior research fellow of the Kogod Research Center at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. Welcome to the Warcast. 

Michael Koplow: Thanks, Nick. Good to be here. 

Nicholas Danforth: So we've been following these protests as they've developed, but tell us what happened over this past weekend?

Michael Koplow: Over the past weekend, you had this strange sort of start-and-stop dynamic between Prime Minister Netanyahu and Yoav Galant, who was, and I guess technically until tomorrow still is, the Defense Minister of Israel. On Thursday, there were reports that Galant was going to come out in opposition to the timeframe for the government's judicial overhaul. Crucially, he was not going to oppose it, but he was going to say it should be postponed. And that really comes after weeks of warnings from IDF leaders about how the overhaul proposal is affecting IDF military preparedness and weeks of reservists actually not showing up for duty. This was seen as a real security crisis. Galant was scheduled to give a statement, he did not inform the prime minister ahead of time that he was doing it. 

When it became public, he was immediately summoned to Netanyahu's office. They met for, I think it was 17 minutes. And then Galant came out, issued a very clear statement saying that he communicated his concerns to the prime minister, but he wasn't going to be saying anything at the moment, and Netanyahu the next day flew off to London where he had a meeting with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and a couple of other meetings on the agenda. While he was out of the country on Saturday night, Galant then came out, made his public statement, gave a speech on live television, said that he was very concerned and things should be paused. And then the next day on Sunday, which was yesterday, Netanyahu came out, issued a one-sentence statement announcing that Galant was fired as defense minister. And literally over half a million Israelis poured into the streets at midnight, shut down the main highway in Tel Aviv, flooded the prime minister's residence, there were reports that somebody actually breached the fence. And now we're sitting here on Monday and there is a general strike across Israel. The airport is shut down, universities canceled classes, and you now have some protesters out in the streets protesting what the government is planning and protesting Galant’s sacking, and you have a counter-protest that started about 30 minutes ago of people coming out who support what the government is doing. And so basically today, Israel is in complete chaos. 

Nicholas Danforth: So before we get to how that chaos is likely to play out moving forward, let me ask, what's been the substance of the defense minister and other IDF officials' criticism of why these judicial reforms are problematic from a security perspective? 

Michael Koplow: Neither Galant or Herzi Halevi, who's the IDF chief of staff, or Ronen Bar, who's the head of the Shin Bet, which is Israel's internal security service, or David Barnea, the head of the Mossad, have come out and issued any substantive critiques of the overhaul. And frankly, certainly for the IDF chief of staff, the head of Shin Bet, and the head of Mossad that would be inappropriate. Galant is a minister from the Likud party, Netanyahu’s party, so he's expected to back these on substance. What they have said at least reportedly to the prime minister in private and leaked to the newspapers, and now Galant publicly, is that because there have now been 12 straight weeks of protests inside of Israel, where you have hundreds of thousands of Israelis in the streets, and more critically for them, you have reservists who are not showing up across all sorts of units, from pilots to the armored corps, to the artillery, to some of the cyber units, that the IDF’s preparedness is suffering before their very eyes. 

And that in order for the IDF to really function cohesively, given that there is mandatory conscription for most Israeli Jews starting at the age of 18, and considering how much the army relies on reservists, when you have such a huge rift within society, it's going to impact the IDF. And so we now have all these warnings beyond actually seeing reservists actively not showing up for duty, these warnings about the idea of not being prepared. If they were to be tested by Iran or Hizbullah or Hamas, it would be very difficult at the moment for the IDF to handle the security challenges. And so what these security officials have been saying is take a pause, figure out how to hold negotiations between the government and the opposition, come to some sort of consensus that will at least get most Israelis on board, end these protests, and then whatever happens, happens. 

Nicholas Danforth: So purely from an issue of civil-military relations, how unprecedented is any of this? 

Michael Koplow: It's entirely unprecedented. There have never been reservist revolts like this, of this magnitude. You certainly have a history of Israelis who have been conscientious objectors. You have a history of Israelis who won't serve in the West Bank and Gaza. You have reservists who say that they won't show up to reserve duty if it means having to serve in the West Bank. But there's never been anything like this. And there have also never been such sustained protests like this inside of Israel. And again, when you look at protests like this in terms of what's in the streets, that's also that civil-military relations, given the way in which the IDF operates and given the number of reservists and given the number of conscripts. So this is absolutely unprecedented. And that is what's leading to these increasingly urgent warnings from IDF security officials and now the defense minister actually going public contrary to Netanyahu and being fired. 

Nicholas Danforth: Now that you've said this is completely unprecedented, let's ask you a completely unfair question. What is likely to happen next? 

Michael Koplow: It's a great question. So, I predicted yesterday, and it seems this is where things are headed today, that at this point, Netanyahu really has no chance but to pull back. But pulling back doesn't mean canceling the overhaul proposals. What he is likely to do is to say that instead of pushing them through, by the end of the current Knesset session, which is scheduled to end this week, they will postpone it until after Passover, until after the Israeli civil holidays which would come in rapid succession of Holocaust Remembrance Day, Memorial Day, and then Independence Day, and Memorial Day and Independence Day are on consecutive days in April. I think he's likely to say, let's postpone until after that, let's get through this holiday period, and then we can pick things back up afterward. And what he's counting on is that in the interim period over this month, if the government says that they are freezing their plans for now, the protests will not end, but they certainly will die down, you won't have hundreds of thousands of Israelis in the streets multiple times a week. 

I think he's counting on the fact that if they pick this back up in the Knesset summer session, they can do it in a smarter way that doesn't seem as if they're ramming it through as quickly as possible. And that will peel some people off also. And that a combination of delay and changing the process means that they can get this through. And it's important to note that even today, and about 15 minutes ago, there was a statement issued by Itamar Ben-Gvir, the head of the Otzma Yehudit Jewish Power Party, as part of Netanyahu’s coalition. He issued a statement saying that he had come to an agreement with Netanyahu to push this off until the Knesset summer session, but again, not to reverse course, not to change the actual content of the overhaul. 

It’s also important to note that Galant himself, when he gave his speech on Saturday night that ultimately cost him his job, he also did not say that he was opposed to the overhaul. He said he just wanted it temporarily frozen in order to get a bit more consensus and to have negotiations with the opposition. So this thing is certainly not over. I think that Israeli protesters are going to remain in the streets, but Netanyahu is counting on some of the momentum being halted and basically trying to pick off small groups here and there, and then, in his view, hopefully being able to push this through in a few months. 

Nicholas Danforth: One final question. What has the response been from Palestinians, both in Israel and in the West Bank, to any of this? 

Michael Koplow: Palestinians in the West Bank have looked at this from the beginning and largely said, this is an Israeli fight. The folks in the streets who are demanding for Israeli democracy are not demanding it for Palestinians. The occupation is going to continue whether judicial overhaul proposals pass or not. And so they've largely looked at this as a sideshow that isn't relevant to their own concerns about the occupation and, at this point, what seems to be a permanent state of statelessness. Israeli Arabs at the beginning were a bit cool to it, because they also said much of this is a fight between one group of Jewish Israelis and another group of Jewish Israelis. I'll note that that has not been the case across the board. Mansour Abbas, the head of the Ra’am party, which was the Arab party in the previous coalition, the first independent Arab party to ever sit in an Israeli coalition, he has said from the beginning that this is important for all Israelis, Jewish and not Jewish, and he has said that Israeli Arabs should demonstrate, but to do it as Israelis not to do it with symbols like Palestinian flags, so as not to derail the protests. Notably starting yesterday, Ayman Odeh, the head of the Joint List, and Ahmad Tibi, another longtime prominent Israeli Arab leader, have come out and publicly called for Israeli Arabs to join the protests and said this is our fight too, even if we don't believe that democracy in Israel has applied or even today really applies to us, this is a big deal and we need to stop the erosion even further. So it seems that Israeli Arab leaders are now jumping in as well. To me, that's an encouraging sign, but I also hope that it isn't used by folks on the right to somehow tarnish the protests as being illegitimate or as being anti-Zionist, because that would certainly be a tragic development. 

Nicholas Danforth: Thank you so much for joining us on the Warcast. 

Michael Koplow: Pleasure. Thanks Nick.