Why Israel Needs a Senate

One way or another, the war with Iran will come to an end, and when it does, the political and social controversies that had Israelis at each other’s throats for much of 2023 will come roaring back in full force. These conflicts hardly disappeared on October 7, 2023, even if the pressures of war muted them temporarily. They will be impossible to ignore this fall, when, at a date yet to be determined, Israelis will go to the ballot boxes for the first time in four years. The election will be a referendum on the war: on who was responsible for its outbreak, whether Israel won or lost in Gaza, Iran, and Lebanon, and whose policies succeeded or failed. But it will also be about the deeper issues that divided Israel  and put its political system to the test before the war began.

The issue that dragged Israel into a severe constitutional crisis in the summer and fall of 2023 concerned the role and power of the judiciary. The country seemed to be on the verge of tearing itself apart, with large numbers of reservists declaring that they would refuse to take up arms for the state if the right-wing government pursued its course of judicial reform. After the massacres on October 7, it seemed for a moment as though Israel’s enemies had united her people, and that the massive demonstrations and explosive rhetoric were just the boisterous, abrasive exterior of a people fundamentally bound to their fellow citizens. The war with Iran has had a similar effect. But it did not take so long for the seams of the social fabric to show signs of stress. At present, the tension between the elected government and the judicial branch remains a central preoccupation in Israeli politics. And it is a tension that exacts a heavy social, economic, and political toll on the nation.

A major constitutional reform that speaks to the concerns of both sides of this debate could shift the direction of Israeli politics: the creation of a senate.