Today or tomorrow, there is a good chance the Knesset will vote on, and even pass, the so-called reasonableness bill. This legislation—the small part of the broader package of judicial reforms that has so far survived—would prevent the Supreme Court from repealing laws on the ground that they are “unreasonable,” and thus remove some of the arbitrariness of the court’s power. In the week leading up to the vote, protests have intensified, with demonstrators blocking roads and threatening not to appear for military reserve duty. Haviv Rettig Gur assesses the situation:

To the opposition, the change to “reasonableness” is the government’s first step in a much larger illiberal turn across all the institutions of the state, and so must be opposed irrespective of its specific content. . . . To coalition supporters, meanwhile, the current bill is such a small fragment of the original intended package that it demonstrates not the right’s illiberalism but its capacity and willingness to compromise, while the opposition’s frenzied campaign against so small a change proves the inability of the center-left (and some parts of the center-right) to do the same.

The real debate, in other words, isn’t about the content of the bill. It’s about trust, or the lack of it.

A Channel 12 poll earlier this month asked Israelis if they supported canceling the “reasonableness” test for government and ministerial decisions, as the government bill proposes. The poll found that 32 percent supported the idea while 42 percent opposed it. It then asked respondents if they supported blocking roads amid continuing protests against the government’s legislation. The opposition’s 42 percent (against the reasonableness law) dropped to 27 percent (supporting road blockages), while fully 68 percent of Israelis—equal to all coalition voters and between a third and half of opposition voters—oppose blocking roads.

The sticking power of any change depends on this vast middle ground. If the middle doesn’t support a change, the next government could easily alter it. . . . Even if the right wins, it loses. It will have passed an overhaul that is unlikely to survive the first change of power, while losing it the support of the middle without which it cannot make the change stick.

Examining the effects of Iran’s decision to launch nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1, Benny Morris takes stock of the Jewish state’s strategic situation:

The massive Iranian attack has turned what began as a local war in and around the Gaza Strip and then expanded into a Hamas–Hizballah–Houthi–Israeli war [into] a regional war with wide and possibly calamitous international repercussions.

Before the Iranians launched their attack, Washington warned Tehran to desist (“don’t,” in President Biden’s phrase), and Israel itself had reportedly cautioned the Iranians secretly that such an attack would trigger a devastating Israeli counterstrike. But a much-humiliated Iran went ahead, nonetheless.

For Israel, the way forward seems to lie in an expansion of the war—in the north or south or both—until the country attains some sort of victory, or a diplomatic settlement is reached. A “victory” would mean forcing Hizballah to cease fire in exchange, say, for a cessation of the IDF bombing campaign and withdrawal to the international border, or forcing Iran, after suffering real pain from IDF attacks, to cease its attacks and rein in its proxies: Hizballah, Hamas, and the Houthis.

At the same time, writes Morris, a victory along such lines would still have its limits:

An IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon and a cessation of Israeli air-force bombing would result in Hizballah’s resurgence and its re-investment of southern Lebanon down to the border. Neither the Americans nor the French nor the UN nor the Lebanese army—many of whose troops are Shiites who support Hizballah—would fight them.