Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Thursday and refused to say if he would abide by any potential Supreme Court ruling striking down the law limiting the use of the judicial reasonableness standard.
“What you’re talking about is a situation, or potential situation, where in American terms, the United States’ Supreme Court would take a constitutional amendment and say that it’s unconstitutional. That’s the kind of the kind of spiral that you’re talking about, and I hope we don’t get to that,” Netanyahu said, warning that the country could enter “uncharted territory.”
Asked if he was expecting consequences from the United States for the bill’s passing, Netanyahu stressed that relations remained strong between the Biden White House and his government.
“Look, we’re both interested in blocking Iran. We’re both interested in advancing peace. This is the reason I came back to serving for the sixth time as Israel’s Prime Minister. I think those goals are achievable, and they’re going to be achieved together between Israel and the United States. I think that will strengthen our alliances, not weaken,” Netanyahu told Blitzer.
Pointing to debate in the US over its own Supreme Court, the Prime Minister said, “You have an internal debate in the United States right now, about the powers of the Supreme Court about whether it’s abusing its power, whether you should curtail it.”
“Does that make the American democracy not a democracy? Does that make that debate unworthy? Does that make that that issue, a symbol of the fact that you’re moving to some dictatorship personally?” he continued.
“We don’t want a subservient court. We want an independent court, not an all powerful court and that’s the correction that we’re doing,” Netanyahu explained to Blitzer, though he also acknowledged that the bill had sparked “a big debate.”
“I don’t want to minimize it. I also don’t want to minimize the concerns that people have, because many of them have been caught in this spiral of fear,” he said, stressing, “Israel is going to remain a democracy.”
In a separate interview with ABC earlier on Thursday, Netanyahu defended the government's planned judicial reform, calling it a "minor correction" to Israel's activist court.
"We had to restore Israeli democracy to its position on par with other democracies. The essence of democracy is the balance between the will of the majority and the rights of the minority, and this is achieved through the principle of separation of powers. This balance has been violated during the last 20 years, because we have the most activist court on Earth," he said.
"I pressed the 'stop' button for three months to get some sort of compromise from the opposition and I didn't get it from them. I don't think the arguments are real, but I think the concerns are real, because people are afraid. I understand them," Netanyahu added.
Later in the interview, the Prime Minister stated that US President Joe Biden has invited him to the White House for a meeting this fall, possibly as early as September.