Hundreds of Thousands Protest Again

OCCUPIED AL-QUDS (Dispatches) -- Tens of thousands of protesters marched into Al-Quds on Saturday evening and hundreds of thousands took to the streets in Tel Aviv and other cities in a last-ditch show of force aimed at blocking prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s contentious plan to give himself draconian powers.
Also, more than 100 of the occupying regime’s former security chiefs signed a letter urging Netanyahu to halt the plan, and thousands of additional military reservists said they would no longer report for duty.
In scorching heat that reached 33 C (91 F), the procession into Al-Quds turned the city’s main entrance into a sea of crowds as marchers completed the last leg of a four-day, 70-kilometer (45-mile) trek from Tel Aviv to the Zionist parliament.
The marchers, who grew from hundreds to thousands as the march progressed, were welcomed in Al-Quds by throngs of cheering protesters before they set up camp in rows of small white tents outside the Knesset, or parliament, before Monday’s expected vote. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands flooded the streets of the coastal city of Tel Aviv, the occupying entity’s business and cultural capital, as well as in Beersheba, Haifa and Netanya.
Netanyahu and his far-right allies claim the plan is needed to curb what they say are the excessive powers of unelected judges. But their critics say the plan will destroy the entity’s system of checks and balances and put it on the path toward authoritarian rule.
U.S. President Joe Biden has urged Netanyahu to halt the plan and seek a broad consensus.
The proposed judicial overhaul has drawn harsh criticism from business and medical leaders, and a fast-rising number of military reservists in key units have said they will stop reporting for duty if the plan passes, raising concern that the entity could plunge into a civil war and collapse. An additional 10,000 reservists announced they were suspending duty on Saturday night, according to “Brothers in Arms,” a protest group representing retired soldiers.
More than 100 top former security chiefs, including retired military commanders, police commissioners and heads of intelligence agencies, joined those calls on Saturday, signing a letter to Netanyahu blaming him for compromising the Zionist regime’s military and urging him to halt the legislation.
The signatories included Ehud Barak, a former Israeli prime minister, and Moshe Yaalon, a former army chief and war minister. Both are political rivals of Netanyahu.
“The legislation is crushing
those things shared by Israeli society, is tearing the people apart, disintegrating the IDF and inflicting fatal blows on Israel’s security,” the former officials wrote.
Israel Katz, a senior cabinet minister from Netanyahu’s Likud party, said the bill would pass one way or another on Monday.
After seven straight months of the most sustained and intense demonstrations the occupied territories have ever seen, the grassroots protest movement has reached a fever pitch.
The parliament is expected to vote Monday on a measure that would limit the supreme court’s oversight powers by preventing judges from striking down Netanyahu’s decisions on the basis that they are “unreasonable.”
Critics say that removing the standard, which is invoked only in rare cases, would allow the regime to pass arbitrary decisions, make improper appointments or firings and open the door to corruption.
Netanyahu has already been indicted over fraud, corruption and breach of trust.
Monday’s vote would mark the first major piece of legislation to be approved.
The overhaul also calls for other sweeping changes aimed at curbing the powers of the judiciary, from limiting the supreme court’s ability to challenge parliamentary decisions, to changing the way judges are selected.
Protesters, who make up a wide swath of the occupied entity, see the overhaul as a power grab fueled by various personal and political grievances by Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption charges, and his partners, who want to deepen Israel’s control of the occupied West Bank and perpetuate controversial draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men.
In a speech Thursday, Netanyahu doubled down on the overhaul and dismissed the accusations that the plan would destroy the Zionist entity.
Alarmed by the growing mass of reservists refusing to serve, war minister Yoav Gallant pushed for a delay in Monday’s vote, according to reports in Israeli media. It was unclear if others would join him.
On Sunday, former Israeli soldiers raised an “extraordinary alert” over the “deep fracture” in the military caused by the ongoing judicial crisis.
In a joint statement, the veterans said the situation is far worse than what the army leadership has described and is now affecting active-duty soldiers.
“A dramatic split like this cannot remain behind closed doors,” the soldiers, who previously served in various elite army units, said in the statement reported on Israeli media.
The veterans’ statement on Sunday warned that soldiers’ protests have now extended beyond reservists and is affecting active-duty soldiers.
“We’ve heard from our units in recent weeks and days about a growing and concrete desire among (at least) dozens of active noncommissioned officers to stop (or at least not extend) their contracts,” the former soldiers said.
“The numbers are growing every day. The situation is far graver than what the heads of the military are describing.”
Earlier on Sunday, opposition MP and former war minister Benny Gantz said that some of the damage done to the military amid the protests “is already irreparable”.
Herzi Halevi, the army’s chief of staff, wrote a letter to soldiers on Sunday, saying “no one has the right to say that they are no longer serving, and all of us do not have the right not to report for duty or to refuse an order.”
The crisis comes to a head as Netanyahu was fitted with a pacemaker early Sunday after he was rushed to hospital hours before a key debate on his plan.
Doctors said Netanyahu, 73, would remain at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv for observation.
Netanyahu had been admitted “because of what we call transit heart block,” Professor Eyal Nof said in YouTube video posted by the medical center.
He added a heart monitor, which was implanted in Netanyahu just over a week ago when he was rushed to hospital with dehydration, had alerted them to the problem.
The data indicated that Netanyahu needed an “urgent pacemaker implantation,” Nof’s colleague, Professor Roy Beinart, said in the same video.
The prime minister’s office said that so-called justice minister Yariv Levin would stand in for him while he was under sedation. However, the weekly cabinet meeting scheduled for Sunday morning was postponed and two upcoming overseas trips, to Cyprus and Turkey, were being rescheduled, Netanyahu’s office said.
The crisis at the heart of Israel is clearly deeper than that in the heart of the regime’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said Sunday.
“There are reports that doctors have implanted a pacemaker in the heart of the prime minister of the Zionist regime,” Nasser Kanaani wrote in a tweet.
Still, he added, it is clear that “the crisis at the heart of the Zionist regime is deeper than the crisis in the heart of its prime minister.”