Jerusalem
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has offered Israeli military reservists protesting against his judicial overhaul plan a nominal olive branch, cooling his earlier censure of them as concerns for the country’s war-readiness mount.
Protest leaders say thousands of reservists have stopped reporting for duty. Among them are hundreds of air force pilots or navigators whose absence from weekly refresher flights means that by next month they may no longer qualify for combat.
As Israel faces potential flare-ups with Iran, Lebanon and the Palestinians, Netanyahu raged, in a cabinet recording leaked to a TV station on July 12, against what he deemed insubordination that threatened military capabilities. The protesters have bristled at the term, noting that many of the reservists are designated as volunteers and arguing that their no-shows were a last resort to defend Israeli democracy.
Convening the top brass for consultations on the crisis late on Sunday, Netanyahu changed his language somewhat, saying in a statement he utterly rejected the phenomenon of conditional reserve duty. Brothers in Arms, a reservist protester group, seemed unmoved by the gesture, accusing Netanyahu of playing down risks to military readiness.
The seeping of the reform furore into the armed forces, which Israelis long viewed as an apolitical melting pot, could be exacerbated by an unprecedented showdown among branches of government next month. The Supreme Court will on Sept. 12 hear arguments against a bill limiting some of its powers to void government decisions, which was ratified in a parliament controlled by Netanyahu’s religious-nationalist coalition.
