A thousand-strong line of anti-government demonstrators marched through Jerusalem on Saturday night, turning the city’s main road into a sea of blue-and-white Israeli flags, to protest the far-right government’s plan to limit judicial power.
In temperatures sometimes nearing 100 degrees Fahrenheit, hundreds of demonstrators have been marching since Tuesday night from Tel Aviv, a coastal city about 40 miles away, and have camped for four nights along the route. Many more joined them in the following days, and by Saturday the number of marchers had grown to at least 20,000, despite the scorching heat.
By the time the march reached the outskirts of Jerusalem on Saturday, the marchers were walking 10 abreast, forcing cars into a single lane of traffic. The line stretched for at least two miles and included people in motorized wheelchairs and at least one person on crutches.
“Have you ever seen anything like this?” said Ilana Holzman, 65, a protester from Tel Aviv who joined the march for its final leg on Saturday.
“I think it’s the only place to go right now,” Ms. Holzmann. “Not on the beach and not in the air-conditioning. Here you will see the people of Israel at their best. It was very hot, but they marched on.”
The unusual spectacle reflects the intensity of sentiment running through Israeli society this weekend, as the ruling coalition prepares to pass legislation in the coming days that will limit the ways in which the Supreme Court can overturn government decisions.
The country’s largest union, the Histadrut, announced on Saturday night that it was holding an emergency meeting in response to the government’s plan, amid speculation it could call a general strike.
A tent city has sprung up in a Jerusalem park below the Parliament building as some of the protesters who marched into the city settled in for what could be more stormy days of protest ahead.
Hundreds of thousands of other protesters simultaneously held rallies in multiple cities across the country for the 29th consecutive week. A group representing military reservists from all branches of the military announced that about 10,000 Israelis have said they will stop reporting for reserve duty if the law is passed, in addition to more than 1,000 members of the Air Force who have made similar threats in recent days.
And a group of former senior Israeli security leaders issued a joint letter calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to delay voting on the law unless it is amended by consensus, citing protests by reservists and the resulting risks to Israel’s military capacity.
The signatories to the letter were three former military leaders; five former heads of Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service; three former directors of Shin Bet, the internal security agency; and four former police commissioners.
Adding to the uncertainty on Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu at the hospital to have a pacemaker implanted during a procedure in which he will be placed under sedation, his office said.
Negotiations to reach an 11th-hour compromise in the judicial dispute are still ongoing, and could result in the plan being scaled back or postponed. But for now, lawmakers are expected to hold a binding vote on the law on Monday in Parliament, where the ruling coalition has a four-seat majority.
The law will prevent the court from overruling the national government using the legal standard of “reasonableness,” a concept judges have used to block ministerial appointments and to challenge planning decisions, among other government measures.
The government and its supporters say the new law will improve democracy by restoring the balance of power between elected lawmakers and unelected judges, and giving lawmakers more freedom to implement policies chosen by a majority of voters at the ballot box.
“The proper balance between authorities has been disturbed in recent decades,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a speech on Thursday. “This balance must be restored so that the democratic choice of the people can see the government elected by the people.”
The court can still use other legal criteria to challenge government decisions.
But much of the country, including those who marched Saturday, say the law undermines democracy because it would remove a key check on government overreach. They say it could allow the government – the most ultranationalist and ultraconservative in Israeli history – to build a less pluralist society.
“We are marching because the government, in short, is trying to turn it into a dictatorship,” said Navot Silberstein, 31, shortly after reaching the top of a steep hill west of Jerusalem on Friday night.
“We will not live in a country where the government has too much power over us,” added Mr. Silberstein, his shirt drenched in sweat after walking for hours in the sun.
This disagreement is part of a broader and long-standing social dispute about the nature and future of Israeli society. The ruling coalition and its base generally have more religious and conservative views, and view the court as an obstacle to that goal. The opposition tends to take a more secular and diverse view, and consider the court as a standard-bearer for its cause.
Some protesters fear the law will make it easier for the government to enforce ultra-Orthodox Jewish practices in public life, for example by forcing shops to close on the Sabbath or enforcing gender segregation in public spaces. Others fear the law will make it easier for government leaders to get away with corruption, or for Mr. Netanyahu, who is currently on trial for bribery and fraud, to escape punishment, a claim he vehemently denies.
“The fear is that our country will not look like it does today,” said Ms. Holzman about the judicial overhaul plan.
Similar mass protests in March prompted the government to suspend, at least for now, other planned judicial reforms. One of the suspended plans would have allowed Parliament to overrule court decisions; another would give the government more power over who becomes a Supreme Court justice.