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.

While conventional wisdom in the Western press believes that the war with Hamas has left Jerusalem more isolated and scuttled chances of expanding the Abraham Accords, Gabriel Scheinmann points to a very different reality. He begins with Iran’s massive drone and missile attack on Israel last month, and the coalition that helped defend against it:

America’s Arab allies had, in various ways, provided intelligence and allowed U.S. and Israeli planes to operate in their airspace. Jordan, which has been vociferously attacking Israel’s conduct in Gaza for months, even publicly acknowledged that it shot down incoming Iranian projectiles. When the chips were down, the Arab coalition held and made clear where they stood in the broader Iranian war on Israel.

The successful batting away of the Iranian air assault also engendered awe in Israel’s air-defense capabilities, which have performed marvelously throughout the war. . . . Israel’s response to the Iranian night of missiles should give further courage to Saudi Arabia to codify its alignment. Israel . . . telegraphed clearly to Tehran that it could hit precise targets without its aircraft being endangered and that the threshold of a direct Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear or other sites had been breached.

The entire episode demonstrated that Israel can both hit Iranian sites and defend against an Iranian response. At a time when the United States is focused on de-escalation and restraint, Riyadh could see quite clearly that only Israel has both the capability and the will to deal with the Iranian threat.

It is impossible to know whether the renewed U.S.-Saudi-Israel negotiations will lead to a normalization deal in the immediate months ahead. . . . Regardless of the status of this deal, [however], or how difficult the war in Gaza may appear, America’s Arab allies have now become Israel’s.