On Sept. 12, Israel’s Supreme Court will consider whether the judicial power grab by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is legal. Netanyahu has repeatedly refused to commit to abide by an adverse decision, so if the court rules against his coalition, Israel will be in full-blown judicial crisis.
The heads of the military, Mossad, Shin Bet and the police will have to decide to whom they are loyal — a political coalition engaged in a judicial putsch or a Supreme Court that preserves its independence.
But even if the court rules that it is powerless to maintain its authority, Israel will still be in a full-blown crisis. Because Netanyahu and his far-right coalition of Jewish supremacists and ultra-Orthodox Jews have already breached the core social contract that has held Israel together for the last 75 years — “live and let live.”
I know a lot about that principle. I lived in two countries in the Middle East from the late 1970s to the late 1980s — Lebanon and Israel — that maintained their stability for years by respecting that principle. Until they didn’t.
Lebanon and Israel have two big features in common: They are really small in geography and incredibly diverse in population — religiously diverse, ethnically diverse, politically diverse, linguistically diverse, educationally diverse.