Netanyahu swaps domestic turmoil for London
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu escaped the biggest protest movement in his country’s history when he met Rishi Sunak in London for the first time today.
Yet the Israeli PM could not avoid his detractors. He was greeted at Downing Street by a wave of angry protesters. While nothing novel for an Israeli leader embarking on a trip to Europe, there was a striking difference. Many in the crowd were not waving Palestinian flags but, rather, Israeli ones, while shouting “shame” in Hebrew and holding placards saying “save Israeli democracy.”
Their anger stems from Israel’s new far-right coalition government’s controversial plans to overhaul the judiciary, which have sparked widespread criticism, with hundreds of thousands of citizens taking to the streets in various cities over the last three months.
The judicial reforms would allow the ruling coalition to appoint supreme court judges, and enable a simple parliamentary majority to override almost any of the court’s rulings.
Behind the closed doors of Number 10, however, the two leaders met to discuss “strengthening [their] close partnership”, just days after signing the 2030 Roadmap for UK-Israeli Bilateral Relations – a landmark agreement which aims to enhance cooperation on matters such as trade, security, science and intelligence.
While minimal details of today’s talks have been made public, Netanyahu was clear from the outset that his number one priority was to discuss the threat posed to world security by Tehran – and ways to “stop Iran’s nuclear programme.”
As Tim Marshall writes on Reaction, the relationship between Iran and Israel has been one of mutual loathing ever since the 1979 Iranian revolution. Yet Israel is increasingly concerned that Iran is amassing stockpiles of enriched uranium at levels as high as 60%. It will also see the recent normalisation of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran as a threatening development.
While eager to talk foreign policy with Sunak, the Israeli PM will almost certainly have been less keen to discuss his own country’s domestic turmoil.
Netanhayu’s coalition members backing the overhaul of the judiciary argue that Israel’s supreme court is too powerful and biased against the settler movement, which advocates Israeli jews moving in the occupied territories. But critics – which include Israel’s US allies, much of the country’s military and an overwhelming majority of voters – say the reforms spell the end of democracy. The changes may well also help Netanyahu evade prosecution in his corruption trial.
The ruling coalition has put settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank at the top of its agenda and Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked controversy after he delivered a recent speech in Paris in which he declared: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian nation.” Smotrich was speaking from a podium draped with a map of Israel that included the occupied West Bank and parts of Jordan.
Prior to Netanyahu’s visit, some MPs urged Sunak to distance himself from an Israeli government they claim is different in character to any of its predecessors.
Alicia Kearns, the Tory MP who chairs the foreign affairs select committee, warned of the risk of a third intifada: “Israel has many friends in parliament… but if the constitutional conflict deepens, criticism of the Israeli government will become much more mainstream,” she said.
What Sunak said to Netanyahu we don’t know. We are told the PM did his bit to help sweeten the discord. According to his spokesperson, the PM “stressed the importance of upholding the democratic values” in the judicial reforms and “outlined international concern at growing tensions in the West Bank.”
Yet a meeting which concluded in the two countries “strengthening [their] close partnership” will be seen by many as a mark of approval for what is quite possibly Israel’s most hardline and authoritarian government to date.
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