The platform of Israel’s incoming government will almost certainly include proposals to weaken the immense power of the supreme court. Among them would be a law that would empower the Knesset, with a simple majority, to override the court’s rulings. Last week, the outgoing prime minister Yair Lapid declared that the so-called “override clause,” if implemented, would “crush Israeli democracy,” and various academics and journalists have issued similarly dire warnings. Ruthie Blum, drawing heavily from an open letter (in Hebrew) by Gadi Taub, rebuts these criticisms:

There is no dispute that in Israel there is no structural separation between the legislative and executive branches. This is not unique to Israel; it characterizes the parliamentary system everywhere. Does this mean that separation of powers only prevails in a presidential system? Certainly not. It means that the separation of powers is not hermetic in the parliamentary system, and thus the nature of its checks and balances is also different. But the remedy cannot be the authorization of a court, with no defined limit to its power, to have the final decision-making authority in all matters, when its members are not appointed by elected officials, but rather, in practice, by their peers.

The definition of democracy is, indeed, the “sovereignty of the citizens.” This should be stressed in the face of the misleading discourse adopted by jurists following [the former chief justice, and architect of the court’s radical expansion of its own powers] Aharon Barak, who reduced the expression of this sovereignty—elections—to the rank of “procedure.”

The idea that the will of the people is a fascist monster, and thus needs to have an unchallengeable authority placed over it, is misleading and, in any case, undemocratic. If the people do not want democracy, there will be no democracy. No court will be able to impose democracy—or liberalism (i.e. human rights)—from above, without the sovereignty of the people.

Concentration of power in the hands of the court does not constitute insurance against the danger of the trampling of human rights. . . . In the Dred Scott ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court supported slavery, while the elections that brought Abraham Lincoln to power led to its abolition in a bloody war.

Why, ask many Israelis, can’t we just end the war, let our children, siblings, and spouses finally come home, and get out the hostages? Azar Gat seeks to answer this question by looking at the possible costs of concluding hostilities precipitously, and breaking down some of the more specific arguments put forward by those who have despaired of continuing military operations in Gaza. He points to the case of the second intifada, in which the IDF not only ended the epidemic of suicide bombing, but effectively convinced—through application of military force—Fatah and other Palestinian factions to cease their terror war.

“What we haven’t achieved militarily in Gaza after a year-and-a-half probably can’t be achieved.” Two years passed from the outbreak of the second intifada until the launch of Operation Defensive Shield, [whose aim was] to reoccupy the West Bank, and another two years until the intifada was fully suppressed. And all of that, then as now, was conducted against the background of a mostly hostile international community and with significant American constraints (together with critical assistance) on Israeli action. The Israeli chief of staff recently estimated that the intensified Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip would take about two months. Let’s hope that is the case.

The results of the [current] operation in [Gaza] and the breaking of Hamas’s grip on the supply routes may indeed pave the way for the entry of a non-Hamas Palestinian administration into the Strip—an arrangement that would necessarily need to be backed by Israeli bayonets, as in the West Bank. Any other end to the war will lead to Hamas’s recovery and its return to control of Gaza.

It is unclear how much Hamas was or would be willing to compromise on these figures in negotiations. But since the hostages are its primary bargaining chip, it has no incentive to compromise. On the contrary—it is interested in dragging out negotiations indefinitely, insisting on the full evacuation of the Gaza Strip and an internationally guaranteed cease-fire, to ensure its survival as Gaza’s de-facto ruler—a position that would also guarantee access to the flood of international aid destined for the Gaza Strip.

Once the hostages become the exclusive focus of discussion, Hamas dictates the rules. And since not only 251 or twenty hostages, but any number is considered worth “any price,” there is a real concern that Hamas will retain a certain number of captives as a long-term reserve.