The Year of the Fall of the Illusion of Liberal Democracy in Israel

2018 was a notable juncture in the process of weakening the authority of the 20th Knesset (which served from March 17, 2015, to April 9, 2019) and transforming it into a body that approves rather than oversees or legislates freely. This weakening did not emerge from a single event but was the result of a series of developments that occurred that year, the most prominent of which was the passage of the "Basic Law: Israel - The Nation-State of the Jewish People" in July 2018, which was enacted with a closed ideological logic, completely disregarding legal and constitutional objections from within the Knesset itself. The parliamentary debate was turned into a formal procedure, as the decision was predetermined among the government and coalition. It was concluded that the Knesset had become a tool to promote the vision of the executive authority instead of being a venue for balancing competing values, also due to its lack of traditions that could safeguard such an entity.

 

In contemporary times, many refer back to 2018, considering the "Nation-State Law" as the first bullet in the weakening of the legislative authority, as it ignored the principle of equality and overstepped legal warnings. Some concluded that as soon as the Knesset ignored a complete indigenous minority (the Palestinians of 1948), it was not difficult for it to ignore half of the majority community. It soon shifted, in its performance, from delegitimizing Arab lawmakers to weakening the opposition. The plan for judicial overhaul initiated by the current Israeli government in the early months of its term in early 2023 aimed to transform the Knesset from a weak legislative authority into a body harnessed to promote the goals of the executive authority.

There is not enough space to present the flood of legislations approved by the Knesset that year concerning what it was harnessed for, which led more researchers to conclude since then that what had emerged was not a mere incidental regression but a proof of the fall of the illusion of liberal democracy in Israel, and that the Knesset had always been limited, but in 2018, the mask was definitively lifted.

For a concrete illustration, we refer to two issues: First, on May 7, 2018, the Knesset approved in the first reading the "Override Clause" which includes amending Section 8 of the "Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty" and Section 4 of the "Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation,” which have been commonly referred to as the "Restrictive Clauses": restricting the Knesset and its absolute freedom to enact laws that contradict fundamental human rights guaranteed specifically by the aforementioned basic laws. This means empowering the Supreme Court to nullify a law, or specific provisions of a law, if it determines that it is "unconstitutional" for conflicting with texts in the basic laws and infringing upon fundamental human rights disproportionately. Although the Supreme Court had not exercised this authority except cautiously and very partially since the enactment of the aforementioned basic laws in 1992, the enactment of the "Override Clause" was meant to put an end even to this partial and limited use, and to close the door on any appeal to what the parliamentary majority could legislate in laws that narrow rights, violate them, and infringe upon them.

Second, concurrently, the Knesset approved in the final reading a bill that transferred the authority to declare war or a military campaign from the government to the security cabinet (the cabinet for political and security affairs). The law allows the Prime Minister to obtain approval from the security cabinet only and clarifies that not all members of this cabinet are required to participate in the discussion. It also allows for very exceptional circumstances that grant the Prime Minister, in consultation with the Minister of Defense, the authority to declare war. This is an authority that cannot be criticized or changed. This law is fundamentally different from what the situation was previously.

Various analyses at the time considered this law another step in a series of steps that accelerated the Knesset's actions in 2018 and led the system in Israel to become authoritarian.