From Rule of Law to the Law of the Ruler: The Twofold Upheaval of the Israeli Right

In January 2023, Israel’s newly formed coalition under the leadership of the Likud party began to promote a reform that would alter the nature of the regime and undermine the democratic tenets of the separation of powers, judicial review, and the independence of the judicial branch. The article determines that the planned government overhaul diverges sharply from the historic path of “The Likud,” and directly contradicts the worldview and policies held by the party’s founding father and leader for over three decades, Menachem Begin. In this respect, what is referred to by the current government as a “judicial reform” is in fact a twofold project that aims to reform the regime as well as the foundational policies of law upheld by the ruling political party in Israel for the past four decades. The article sheds light on the substantive ideology attributed to the “right” and the “left” in Israel’s political historiography and determines that the essential principles of the proposed reform are not intrinsic to right-wing ideology and should not be identified as such. The sharp departure revealed by the right-wing reform policy and its ideas on questions of democracy and governance at this watershed moment provide a theoretical-historical basis for the analysis of their motivations and processes.