Since the beginning of 2023, Israel, a country in the Middle East, has been plunged into an institutional crisis. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is attempting to pass laws that would diminish the country’s Supreme Court’s powers and give such to Parliament. According to Simcha Rothman, the “architect” behind these laws, “A court that sets the laws for itself and decides for itself which laws it operates under is not a court.” This reveals the core issue of the conflict: different perceptions of how a democracy should work.

Since representatives in Israel’s legislature, as well as in most of the Western world, are elected by the people, it would be easy to claim that most power should be given to them due to their closeness to citizens. Yet, it is not as easy as that. A core value of democracies around the world is the balance of power throughout all branches of government. While the legislature creates laws based on the citizens’ needs, the Judiciary analyzes those laws to make sure they conform to the country’s Constitution. Without this process, a clash is much more likely to occur.

It is important to highlight that one of the intended laws would make a Prime Minister’s removal acceptable only under “mental or physical incapacitation”. This seems to be an attempt by Netanyahu to stay in power while he is on trial for corruption charges. While Israel is a sovereign state and has complete control over its own issues, the international community should closely observe this situation. These clashes on the balance of power and legality usually end up dividing the country into two fields and creating a civil war. This would create instability in the only Western-like democracy in the Middle East.

Israel’s status as the only state to have been created by a U.N. resolution in 1947 has proved to be one of the main destabilizers in current times. The country does not possess a constitution per se that could establish an explicit set of rules and procedures. Instead, the country has “Basic Laws”, which are a set of documents that act as an informal constitution and can easily be changed by Parliament. The absence of a strong, explicit, and somewhat set-in-stone document has contributed to this clash. The creation of a new constitution with input from civil society would strongly benefit the country in determining what the boundaries are.

In the upcoming weeks, Israel’s Supreme Court will hear the cases that challenge and curtail its power. Whatever happens, there must be a solid commitment to democratic ideals and the people’s will.