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Israeli Leaders Advance Key Part of Judicial Overhaul but Delay Rest

The government vowed to press on with a plan to take more control over appointing judges. But other changes were postponed in a move that was presented as a concession.

Protesters in the street waving Israeli flags. One demonstrator holds a flare giving off red smoke, and a rainbow flag can be seen in the background.
A rally protesting the judicial overhaul blocked a highway in Tel Aviv on Saturday. The debate over the proposals has set off one of the deepest domestic crises in Israeli history.Credit...Ohad Zwigenberg/Associated Press

Reporting from Jerusalem

Israel’s government announced on Monday that it would attempt to enact by early April the most contentious part of its effort to overhaul the country’s judiciary — a change to the way that judges are appointed — while postponing the implementation of other parts of the plan by at least a month.

The planned change to judicial appointments would allow government appointees to form a majority on a powerful committee that selects judges. That would clear the way for the government to have greater control over appointments to the Supreme Court.

Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have protested every week against the plan since the start of the year. The crisis has also set off unrest in the military, spooked investors, and provoked rising criticism from influential Jewish Americans and the Biden administration.

The announcement by the government followed a phone call Sunday night between President Biden and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that addressed the judicial overhaul. Mr. Biden said that “democratic societies are strengthened by genuine checks and balances, and that fundamental changes should be pursued with the broadest possible base of popular support,” according to an account of the conversation published by the White House.

As a concession to critics, the Israeli government said it had modified the planned overhaul of judicial selections to include a provision that would prevent more than two Supreme Court justices from being appointed during each parliamentary term without the support of at least one opposition lawmaker on the committee. All judicial appointments to lower courts would also need the backing of at least one opposition lawmaker or judge on the committee.

The governing coalition also said that it would delay other parts of the program, including a proposal to limit the court’s oversight over Parliament, until at least late April.

Government lawmakers presented the changes as major concessions. An earlier version of the plan placed no limits on how many judges could be appointed to the Supreme Court without opposition consent, and some coalition members said that the new plan had given up too much ground.

But opposition leaders and protest organizers said that the new proposals would still give the government too much control over a court that is currently one of the few curbs on government overreach. Critics say that the changes would allow the government of the day to act with too few restraints on its power, endangering minority rights, and perhaps even pave the way for a more authoritarian and religious system of governance.

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, left, alongside the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, before a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem last month. Credit...Pool photo by Ronen Zvulun

The government and its mainly religious supporters say that the judiciary needs urgent change to ensure that elected lawmakers have primacy over unelected judges.

The debate over the judicial overhaul has set off one of the deepest domestic crises in Israeli history and has become a proxy for wider and older social rifts related to the role of religion in public life and class tensions. Religious Jews and those of Middle Eastern descent feel underrepresented in state institutions like the Supreme Court, whose judges have historically been overwhelmingly from European and secular backgrounds.

Mr. Netanyahu’s government first unveiled its overhaul plan in early January, a few days after taking office. The proposal caused an immediate uproar in Israel because parts of it would allow Parliament to override Supreme Court decisions and make it much harder for the court to strike down legislation it deemed unconstitutional.

But while the government has indicated willingness in recent weeks to compromise on the override proposal, its leaders and supporters last week doubled down on the changes to the judicial appointment committee, making it clear that control over the body was a top priority.

Nevertheless, Mr. Netanyahu has faced considerable foreign and domestic pressure to significantly change the proposals. Tech investors and start-up entrepreneurs — the pride of Israel’s economy — have threatened to pull their money and businesses from the country because, they say, the changes would worsen the business environment by weakening the rule of law.

Influential American Jews like Michael Bloomberg have also criticized the plans, while the Biden administration — initially reluctant to intervene — has also made its opposition to the process increasingly clear.

The limits of U.S. pressure on Mr. Netanyahu were illustrated on Monday by the Israeli government’s decision to press on with the major part of the plan, despite the phone call from Mr. Biden, and by the meager ambitions and paltry gains from a continuing U.S.-led diplomatic effort to reduce tensions in the occupied West Bank. Israeli and Palestinian officials met in Egypt on Sunday, along with American and other Middle Eastern representatives, to try to address the violence in the West Bank, where residents have experienced the most violent start to any year since 2000, according to Palestinian officials.

Mr. Netanyahu has little room for maneuver: His far-right coalition partners want to avoid any concessions either to Palestinians in the West Bank or to domestic opponents of the judicial overhaul.

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A march against the government’s planned judicial overhaul in Tel Aviv on Saturday. Opposition leaders and protest organizers say that the proposals would give the government too much control.Credit...Oren Alon/Reuters

Several lawmakers in Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition said that the plan announced on Monday, presented as a “softening” by coalition leaders, was too much of a concession.

“It really is not a softening,” Tali Gottlieb, a lawmaker from Likud, Mr. Netanyahu’s party, said in an interview with Kan, a public radio station. “This is a surrender to the left,” she added.

Opposition figures agreed that the announcement did not constitute a softening — but for the opposite reason. They argued that it still gave the government too much control over who gets to be a judge.

“This is not a compromise, this is a hostile political takeover of the judicial system,” said Yair Lapid, the leader of the opposition and Mr. Netanyahu’s predecessor as prime minister. “If this law passes, Israel ceases to be a democratic state,” Mr. Lapid added in a speech to lawmakers from his party, Yesh Atid.

Other leading critics of the plan described it as a bluff that was intended to dupe significant numbers of protesters into leaving the streets.

“This is a transparent attempt to put the protest to sleep,” the coordinators of the main mass protests against the overhaul said in a statement on Monday. “This is not a softening, but rather a declaration of war by the Israeli government on its citizens and on Israeli democracy.”

Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting from Rehovot, Israel.

Patrick Kingsley is the Jerusalem bureau chief, covering Israel and the occupied territories. He has reported from more than 40 countries, written two books and previously covered migration and the Middle East for The Guardian. More about Patrick Kingsley

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Israeli Leaders Plan to Start Judicial Overhaul by April, Stoking Anger. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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