WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY News Journal Update - (en) Italy, UCADI #178 I-8 - The anarchist communists, the Jewish and Palestinian questions I. - The peculiar institutional nature of the State of Israel (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 

To understand Israel's internal political dynamics, it is extremely

important to take into account the effects of immigration on demographic
growth. As of March 31, 2019 (date of the last census) the Israeli
population was made up of 9 million people; since 1948 it has grown by
1700%. This is due not only to the fertility rate which is in the world
average, but to a constant and regulated immigration which went from
28,600 in 2021 to 70 thousand in 2022 due to the influx from Ukraine,
due to the war and from other countries of the east.[11]
However, in the previous twenty years, most of the olim (as the new
immigrants are called) came from the countries of North Africa, from
Iraq, from Iran, from the countries of Latin America; this great
mutation in the social class composition of the Israeli population has
had a significant influence on the political balance, increasing the
weight of the religious parties who owe their increase in consensus also
to the need for settlement in the territory of the newcomers, willing to
settle on stolen lands to the Palestinians.
This has meant that Netanyahu's policy, which began organically in 2009,
of making Israel a "normal" country, by modifying its institutional and
management structure, reducing autonomies, verticalizing decision-making
processes, with the result of making losing to the country that
characteristic of continuous social experimentation that has
distinguished it due to its atypical origins as a form of State and
government which, as we have seen, is formed on an institutional project
with a strong pan-syndicalist imprint.
This meant that the country did not equip itself, like those of
continental Europe, with a centralized structure characterized by the
presence of the guarantee of a Constitutional Court, but rather
proceeded with the construction of the country by progressively
equipping itself with a sedimentation of fundamental laws, the result of
the absolute prevalence of the Parliament, the Knesset, which assumed
the anomalous role of a permanent constituent assembly and at the same
time that of a normal Parliament which therefore does not need to
establish rules contained in a unitary written text, once and for all,
but refers this task to the future, being content to proceed step by
step, to make over time a "constitution in stages" that can be shaped to
adapt to a dynamic society, a continuous change. Like the United
Kingdom, Israel has chosen to have constitutional rules that are spread
across many "Basic Laws", dealing with different aspects. In this way,
Israel wants to keep the dialectic between its various secular and
religious components open, creating a functional synthesis between the
cultural contributions of the different cultural origins of its
population, albeit within the framework of the common choice of
belonging to Israel.
It follows that Israel has adopted over 10 fundamental laws, even if
this orpus is not contained in a single text; it has a "Constitution in
progress" which depends on the evolution of internal political balances
and has no prescriptive value. The Knesset, and the parties represented
in it, have the political sovereignty of the country but the social pact
provides that the rules established in the fundamental laws can always
be called into question by parliamentary politics. and aggravated
procedures for modifying fundamental rules, even if foreseen, can easily
be overcome by the Knesset. In this way, Israeli democracy is similar to
that of England, where parliamentary supremacy remains an indisputable
dogma, which the judiciary respects, while exercising its supervisory
function.
Today some fundamental laws, both on the form of government and on the
direct election of the prime minister, to strengthen the government by
limiting the power of small parties, have proven to be unsuccessful. No
rule guarantees the elected prime minister a certain majority in the
Knesset which remains the arbiter of the government coalitions and
sovereign even towards the prime minister chosen by the people who the
direct election should have strengthened.
Analyzing, albeit briefly, the institutional and government system of
Israel here, we note that in relation to the relationship between the
State and citizens, two fundamental laws introduced the Bill of Rights:
a catalog of individual rights towards the State. The notable
consequence consists in having made possible a judicial system of
control of the constitutionality of laws. The first ruling of the
Supreme Court that made it effective in 1996 gave birth to a liberal
democracy in the constitutional sense, with the result that the Knesset
was subjected to the control of independent judges, guarantors of
individual freedoms and of minorities, including non-Jewish ones,
limiting the arbiters of power.
Believing himself to be eternal, Netanyahu wanted to force his hand and
carry out a constitutional twist, proposing a fundamental law that
allows the executive to control the judiciary, limiting the powers of
the Supreme Court.
This would be equivalent to restoring the fullness of the principle of
parliamentary supremacy of the Knesset in the face of non-elective
judges, therefore devoid of democratic legitimacy. And yet once the
primacy of rights over power has been established, their defense is the
task of the democratic process and, secondarily, of the judicial power
of the Constitutional Court. In Israel, the fundamental law of 2018, on
the "national state of the Jewish people", desired by Netanyahu to
"ensure that Israel" remains "a Jewish state for future generations",
has widened the rift between religious and secular people, and
exacerbated the issue on the protection of minorities which remains
open. The future possibility of transforming, albeit slowly, Israel into
a non-confessional, open and pluralist state is based on this clash, as
the expectations of some at its origins predicted. An evolution in this
sense could be facilitated by the absence of a compromise on the
founding values of the country, codified in a written Constitution,
which would constitute a closed catalogue, in the face of the presence
of laws of constitutional rank, but which can be easily modified and
integrated into the time, the result of a constant dialectic between the
different components of society: it is actually about designing an
institutional space for minorities, within the framework of an open and
consociational society that makes mediation an element of strength and
stability.

[11]In 1960, there were 2,114,020 Israeli residents and 10 years later
they exceeded 3 million. Between 1970 and 1992, population growth
slowed. But since 1991 the population has started to rise again at a
rate of around 200 thousand individuals per year. Most of the 2022
immigrants are young: 27% are between the ages of 18 and 35, which,
according to the Jewish Agency, "includes professionals in fields such
as medicine, engineering and education." 24% of olim are under the age
of 18, 22% are between 36 and 50 years old, 14% are between 51 and 64
years old, and 13% are over 65 years old.

https://www.ucadi.org/2023/11/05/i-comunisti-anarchici-la-questione-ebraica-e-quella-palestinese/
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