Israel’s Radical Government

Neutralizing the judiciary

The fight against the judicial system is central to the restructuring of the state, because the judiciary is often the hurdle that prevents the government from im­ple­menting its policies and personnel politics. In fact, there is no other authority in Israel that can effectively limit the power of a gov­ernment. There is no elaborate consti­tu­tion, no second chamber, no federal system, no higher instance such as the EU – only the Supreme Court. This is why judicial over­haul was one of the current coalition’s most important projects when it took office.

The government was forced to delay key elements of the project following months of mass protests in 2023. After the terrorist attack on 7 October of that year, it seemed to have halted its efforts. But in the shadow of the war, the overhaul of the justice sys­tem has picked up speed again. This includes the efforts of Justice Minister Yariv Levin (Likud) to change the composition of the Judicial Selection Committee and to abolish the seniority principle for the presidency of the Supreme Court.

In March 2025, the Knesset passed a reform of the Judicial Selection Committee. This new law is not as radical as a previous bill, as the required majority in the com­mittee now also necessitates one vote from the opposition. Yet the government has pur­sued its objectives undeterred. The Bar Association is no longer represented on the committee; instead, the government and opposition appoint lawyers of their choice. In addition, the representatives of the Su­preme Court will be stripped of their block­ing minority. Critics warn that this will lead to a strong politicization of the judiciary, as careers will now depend primarily on politi­cal considerations.

The dismantling of control mechanisms also includes the dismissal of Attorney General Baharav-Miara, which was initiated in March 2025. Levin accused her of being a tool of the government’s opponents and of thwarting the will of the electorate. The Attorney General is not only the chief pros­ecutor, but also a legal advisor to the gov­ern­ment. In this role, she provides opinions on the legality of legislative proposals and executive actions. In other words, she issues warnings when she believes the government may be in breach of the law – which has occurred frequently in recent years. Last but not least, she decides whether to pursue or discontinue criminal proceedings. So she also decides whether cases against Netan­yahu should go ahead.

Politicizing the police

Immediately after Ben-Gvir was appointed Minister for National Security at the end of 2022, the coalition passed an amendment to the Police Ordinance. The amendment gave the minister extensive new powers, such as the authority to issue instructions on what the police should investigate. It also restricted the obligation to make cer­tain directives to the police public. In January 2025, the amendments were par­tially overturned by the Supreme Court. However, the reform had already led to disputes with the most senior officers in the police and prison service, Kobi Shabtai and Katy Perry. Their terms were not renewed, with Perry being charged with “insubordination”, among other accusations.

Following the appointment of Danny Levy, a confidant of Ben-Gvir, as the new police chief, several high-ranking officers were immediately replaced by others loyal to the minister. When officers were pro­moted, they were asked whether they were loyal to Ben-Gvir. In an interview, he em­phasized: “I openly admit that I am looking for officers who adhere to my policies.” By now, Ben-Gvir has transformed the Israeli police into an apparatus run by those loyal to him. This can be seen, for example, in the contrast between the lack of police action against violence and organized crime in Israel’s Palestinian-Arab community and the massive and heavy policing of anti-gov­ern­ment demonstrations. Prisoners are treated ruthlessly. In addition, the police give violent settlers in the West Bank a virtually free hand.

The latter in particular has repeatedly led to tensions with the domestic intelligence service. In August 2024, the media quoted from a letter to Netanyahu in which Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar warned that Jewish extremists in the West Bank were trying to provoke a conflagration. He noted that the police were looking the other way and secretly supporting the settlers.

In March 2025, the Israeli TV station Kanal 12 published an internal document from Bar in which he ordered the Shin Bet to check the police for infiltration by Kahanism – the extreme ideological move­ment to which Ben-Gvir belongs. Bar urged caution because the “political level” might be involved. This illustrates the dramatic nature of the current situation. The Shin Bet’s work of monitoring all kinds of ex­trem­ism, including Jewish extremism, is obstructed by having an extremist at the head of the police force who is restructuring it as he pleases. At the same time, the government prevents Shin Bet from ful­filling its duties. Instead, Bar was also dis­missed. However, this dismissal was pro­visionally overturned by the Supreme Court in March 2025, too.

Establishing media dominance

In its dealings with the country’s media, the government’s approach is three-pronged. Firstly, it attempts to mollify critical organs (significantly, two of the three corruption charges against Netanyahu concern his – albeit less recent – entanglement with media outlets). Secondly, it seeks to delegiti­mize certain journalistic voices and, thirdly, it strives to build alternative media, often together with like-minded private investors. “I need my own media,” Netanyahu was quoted as saying after his election defeat in 1999.

This does not mean that there was no con­servative journalism in Israel before. But the newly created media are notable for their political activism and lack of criticism of Netanyahu. They include the free news­paper “Israel Hayom,” which was establish­ed in 2007 and was financed by the late US bil­lionaire Sheldon Adelson (and now by his widow). “Israel Hayom” is today the most widely circulated newspaper in the country. Even more tendentious is the TV station Channel 14, which is financed by Yitzchak Mirilashvili, son of a Russian-Israeli bil­lion­aire, and received a news license under pres­sure from Netanyahu. Channel 14 has only praise for the prime minister. When it comes to the Gaza war, the station dis­seminates incitement, defends government positions, and discredits opponents. Com­munications Minister Shlomo Karhi (Likud) has promoted the channel in various ways, for example through a law that includes the channel – along with three others – in the private cable network, while the pub­lic sector covers the substantial costs.

At the same time, the government is targeting public broadcasting. Back in 2016, Miri Regev (Likud), then Minister of Culture and now Minister of Transport, remarked that state broadcasting “that we don’t con­trol” was unthinkable. In March 2025, Netanyahu questioned why there should be state-funded broadcasting at all and argued for a purely private model. Communications Minister Karhi also declared his aim to dismantle public broadcasting in Israel. and called for a media strategy to advance right-wing politics. To this end, Karhi wanted to reorganize the relevant broadcasting body, but the Supreme Court prohibited him from doing so. He countered that the court order had been issued “without authority,” and was therefore “void, non-binding and meaningless.”

Rejection of the Arab plan

This made conflict resolution and reconstruction of severely destroyed Gaza a very distant prospect. The Arab states had pre­sented a reconstruction plan at the begin­ning of March, proposing to rebuild Gaza without moving its inhabitants out. It is therefore a counter-proposal to Trump’s “Riviera” vision, which threatens the national security of Egypt and Jordan in particular, as they are named as host states. The plan envisages handing over the Gaza Strip to a reformed Palestinian Authority (PA) after a transitional period and deploy­ing a UN-mandated force in the Palestinian territories, and it upholds the ultimate goal of a two-state settlement. As such it is un­acceptable to the Israeli government, which immediately rejected it – as did the White House.

On 18 March, Israel launched new air strikes and soon afterwards another ground offensive. From now on, Netanyahu said, negotiations would only take place under fire. The aim of the military operation was to force Hamas to release all remaining hostages and agree to the disarmament and exile of its leaders and fighters.

On 2 March, Israel had imposed a complete closure of the Gaza Strip – similar to the beginning of the war. In order to put pressure on Hamas no more aid deliveries were permitted. As a result, the humanitarian situation deteriorated dramatically once again. At the beginning of April, the World Food Program (WFP) had to close all its bakeries in the Gaza Strip. In mid-April, the UN warned that the Gaza Strip was now likely facing the worst humanitarian crisis since October 2023.

Since mid-March Israel has expanded its military operation in Gaza and yet again ordered extensive evacuations. According to Defense Minister Israel Katz (Likud), the aim is now to enlarge the Israeli-controlled buff­er zone and completely destroy Hamas’s mili­tary capabilities. In March, the Israeli army recaptured the Netzarim corridor, which divides the Gaza Strip in two; at the begin­ning of April, Israel established another east-west corridor in the south of the coast­al area. In addition to more than 50,000 Pales­tinian fatalities since the beginning of the war, around 1,600 more (as of early April) were killed in the bombings following the collapse of the ceasefire. It now appears that the aim was to concentrate the popu­lation in a “humanitarian zone” and turn the rest of the Gaza Strip into a no-go zone, uninhabited and without any buildings or agriculture. Today this buffer zone takes up a little over one third of the Gaza Strip – about 16 per cent along the border with Israel and about 20 per cent south of the second east-west corridor. Moreover, at the end of March, a migration directorate was set up in the Israeli Ministry of Defence to organize the “voluntary” emigration of Gaza’s Palestinian population. It is, of course, dubious to speak of anything being voluntary in a war situation. Indeed, at a conference on Jewish resettlement of the Gaza Strip in January 2024, Communica­tions Minister Karhi cynically commented that in war, “‘voluntary’ is at times a state you impose [on someone] until they give their consent.”

Katz also called on the people of Gaza to banish Hamas and free the hostages. He was referring to the protests in which, since the last week of March, thousands of Pales­tinians had been calling for an end to the war and chanting “Hamas out.” Yet it is un­realistic to think that Palestinian activists could organize an uprising against Hamas in the face of massive bombings, evacuation orders and a deteriorating humanitarian situation. Nor does it seem plausible that Hamas would comply with Israeli demands under military pressure and without reli­able assurances. Hamas representatives have signaled that they would be prepared to relinquish control of the territory and par­ticipation in its government. However, they are only prepared to disarm, if at all, within the framework of a long-term conflict settlement.

“Application of sovereignty”

In its December 2022 guidelines, the Israeli government laid out the exclusive and in­alienable claim of the Jewish people to the entire land of Israel – including Judea and Samaria (the biblical term for the West Bank). At the same time, it announced that settlement activities would be expanded. A two-state solution was no longer an option. Encouraged by Trump’s election victory, Finance Minister Smotrich (who also holds a ministerial post in the Ministry of Defense) announced that 2025 would be the year of “implementing sovereignty in Judea and Samaria” – i.e. annexation.

It matters little for the dynamics on the ground whether annexation takes place through a formal declaration or through practical measures. In any case, according to Israeli human rights defenders and lawyers, the government has already taken steps towards annexation by transferring settlement matters to a newly created ad­mini­strative body within the Ministry of Defense, which has a civilian head report­ing directly to Smotrich. The explicit aim is to normalize the situation of the settlers, i.e. to put them on an equal legal footing with Israelis in Israel proper. Organizational changes within the ministry have also con­siderably accelerated the approval of new settlements.

In the same vein, the government signifi­cantly increased the budget for settlement construction, allowed an unprecedented num­ber of new outposts to be built, en­forced the demolition of Palestinian build­ings, and refused building permits for the Palestinian population in Area C (the 60 per cent of the West Bank where Israel has civil and secu­rity control under the Oslo Accords and is also responsible for spatial planning). The current government has declared more ter­ri­tory there as state land than ever before.

Increase in settler violence

Since the Netanyahu government took office, settler violence against the Palestin­ian population, their olive plantations and livestock has also increased dramatically. The settlers have repeatedly carried out pogrom-like attacks on Palestinian villages, sometimes in retaliation for violence by Palestinian militants, which Shin Bet chief Bar described as “Jewish terror”.

Settler violence intensified after 7 October 2023. The Israeli military is increasingly standing idly and failing to protect the civil­ian population. It is reported to be over­whelmed, or even participating in the vio­lence. The problem has been exacerbated as due to the war in Gaza increasing numbers of reservists are being deployed in the West Bank, some of whom come from the settle­ments there. The then IDF commander in the West Bank, Yehuda Fuchs, stated in 2024 that the government had effectively stopped preventing illegal settlement con­struction and that the army had failed to combat vio­lence, including acts committed by settlers.

The PA as enemy

At the same time, Israel’s government con­siders the PA less and less as a partner and more as an enemy to be fought against. It is not only the far-right Minister for National Security, Ben-Gvir, who accuses the PA of supporting terrorism and calls for cooperation to be stopped once and for all. Likud politicians such as Regional Cooperation Minister David Amsalem and Communications Minister Karhi, also share this stance. In September 2024, Defense Minister Katz threatened to dismantle the PA if it pro­moted a resolution against Israel at the UN. In connection with the proceedings before the International Criminal Court, Finance Minister Smotrich called the PA an “immi­nent danger to the state of Israel” and urged that it be dismantled. Accordingly, he re­peatedly withheld the transfer payments to the PA stipulated in the Oslo Agreements and threatened to refuse waivers for Pales­tinian banks. As a result, the PA frequently came to the brink of financial collapse. Its ability to pay salaries and provide public services was heavily impaired. This further damaged its already badly tarnished repu­tation among the Palestinian population.

In addition, Israel is increasingly aiming to restrict the work of international organi­zations and NGOs in the Palestinian terri­tories. At the end of January 2025, two laws came into force against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). They prohibit UNRWA from operating on Israeli territory – which under Israeli law includes East Jerusalem, which was annexed in violation of inter­national law – and prohibit Israeli author­ities and officials from having any contact with the agency. In March 2025, the govern­ment announced new regulations stipulating that all NGOs working in the Palestin­ian territories must re-register. The author­ities have a great deal of discretion as to whether or not to approve the registrations. Two bills are also being discussed in the Knesset. The first would levy a tax of 80 per cent on foreign public funds received by NGOs and prohibit organizations receiving such support from taking legal action against the government. The second would make any cooperation with the Internation­al Criminal Court a punishable offense.