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Published: 21 March 2023

Last updated: 5 March 2024

Israel's nightmare scenario is that the Supreme Court strikes down Netanyahu's judicial overhaul and the PM refuses to accept the verdict. Then what?

A final vote in the Knesset on a portion of the judicial overhaul legislation could take place as early as next week.

Immediately following that, opponents of the plan would appeal to Israel’s Supreme Court and ask the court to strike down the legislation. Leading legal experts, including former attorneys-general and Supreme Court judges, are almost unanimous in their belief that the court would indeed strike it down on the grounds that it contradicts Israel’s identity as a Jewish and democratic state.

If the legislation is struck down, some of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition allies, particularly from the ultra-Orthodox religious parties, would call on the Prime Minister to ignore the court’s ruling. These politicians have been challenging the court’s legitimacy for years, mostly because they view it as a liberalising force in Israeli society that is solely responsible for much of the progress Israel has made in recent decades on issues such as LGBT rights, women’s rights and equality for minorities. The parties would pressure Netanyahu to "put the justices in their place" and refuse to accept their ruling.

At that point, the moment of truth would arrive. Israel could face an unprecedented constitutional crisis, with widespread civil disobedience and thousands of reservists refusing to show up for military duty. What would the leaders of the military, the police and Shin Bet do if they were given illegal orders to crush such resistance – or instructed to help the government install new judges to replace the ones who had struck down the legislation?

The Biden administration and the American Jewish community need to begin preparing for this eventuality or they will be caught unprepared, as the US Capitol Police were on January 6, 2021.