Israel’s president urges halt to ‘oppressive’ court reform

Jerusalem/Tel Aviv. In a new day of protests, the Ben Gurion Airport and its surroundings were major focuses in the framework of the “Day of National Resistance” promoted on Thursday by the detractors of the initiative of the Government of Israel to weaken the judiciary.

As tens of thousands of protesters returned to the streets, the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, called the proposal promoted by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu as “oppressive” and urged him to abandon it “immediately” and replace it with an alternative agreed with all political forces.

In an unusual special televised address to the nation, the president seriously described the judicial reform plan as a “disaster” and “nightmare”, which seeks to give the Executive more power over the judiciary, politicize justice and reduce the capacity inspector of the Supreme Court.

It’s wrong, it’s harsh, it undermines our democratic foundations. And therefore it must be replaced by another agreed scheme immediately,” Herzog said.

Herzog asked the government to paralyze all the bills that the reform entails, many of which are already pending in the Knesset (Israeli Parliament), so that the country “does not descend into a social and constitutional abyss” after a broad movement has been unleashed of social response in many sectors and protests that have been taking hundreds of thousands of Israelis to the streets for ten consecutive weeks.

When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left for a visit to Rome, he had to elude flag-waving Israelis who blocked access routes to Ben Gurion Airport with motorized convoys.

Before leaving, he managed to greet US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who underscored Washington’s concern over the proposals by saying that both American and Israeli democracy were built on an independent judiciary.

The US official also expressed concern about the multiplication of acts of violence committed by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank and warned that such incidents could generate greater insecurity.

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Panic in Tel Aviv

In the afternoon, an attacker opened fire in central Tel Aviv on Thursday in a suspected terrorist attack, wounding three people, before being “neutralized” by Israeli police.

Many police and medical personnel went to Dizengoff Street, one of the main avenues in the city center, where a Palestinian gunman from the Islamist Hamas movement carried out the attack.

The suspect was neutralized by police officers,” according to a statement from the security forces. Three people were injured, one of them in serious condition, he said.

There were no details about the circumstances of the shooting, but police said early indications pointed to a terrorist attack.