Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism Are Trying to Reshape Israel’s Courts – and the Courts Are Pushing Back Harder Than Anyone Expected

The Israeli Supreme Court has now struck down or frozen more components of the government’s judicial overhaul agenda than the Knesset has managed to pass into durable law. That inversion – the judiciary outpacing the legislature in shaping the reform debate – is the story that the Netanyahu coalition did not plan for, and it explains the escalating fury emanating from the Justice Ministry and its far-right coalition partners.

The confrontation has been building for years, but the current phase crystallized in a series of rulings that came in rapid succession across August and September 2026. On September 3, the Supreme Court issued an interim order freezing the ‘Machshava’ law, a central pillar of the judicial overhaul package, in a 5-4 decision ^[1][2]. The single-vote margin matters: it tells you the court is not acting as a monolith, and that Justice Solberg’s dissent – arguing the law should not be suspended – reflects a genuine ideological fracture inside the judiciary itself. But the majority held, and the government’s flagship legislative instrument was put on ice.

Five days later, on September 8, the court revoked the appointment of Yifat Tomer Yerushalmi as head of the Second Broadcasting Authority council, again by a single vote ^[3]. That ruling landed differently. Tomer Yerushalmi is a military figure – verified as a major general in the Israel Defense Forces [verified entity] – and her appointment had been framed by the government as a routine administrative matter. The court’s intervention reframed it as something else: a test case for whether executive appointments to regulatory bodies could proceed without meaningful judicial review. The court answered that question by revoking the appointment, and the government’s response was not to comply quietly.

Dr. Yifat Ben-Haim Shafir, whose own appointment the court had previously blocked, went public with a pointed critique after the September 8 ruling. She argued that judges presiding over contested cases ‘operate under the intimidation of the media,’ describing the judiciary as ‘a closed system that feeds itself’ – one that had transformed from an objective arbiter into, in her words, ‘a political fortress’ ^[4]. This is not a fringe position in the current coalition. It is, increasingly, the official government line, articulated by ministers and echoed across right-wing media channels.

Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s response to the court’s June session – when Supreme Court justices convened a hearing on judicial appointments that Levin characterized as held ‘without authority’ – previewed how the government intends to fight this war rhetorically. Levin accused the sitting justices of exercising a ‘veto’ over candidates they found politically uncongenial, specifically naming the blocked appointments of Dr. Bakshi and Dr. Biton to the Supreme Court ^[5]. His argument: the judicial appointments reform the Knesset passed with 68 votes was not an attack on judicial independence but a correction of a system that had already been captured by political interests. That framing – the reformers as the true defenders of institutional integrity – is central to how Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit have sold the overhaul to their base.

Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana’s declaration that the Knesset would not hold a revote in response to a Supreme Court ruling on the State Comptroller appointment added another layer to the standoff ^[6][7]. Ohana was not speaking loosely. He was articulating a position – that the elected legislature is not obligated to re-run its procedures because an unelected court demands it – that has constitutional implications the government has not fully thought through, or has thought through and decided to test anyway.

The September 18 ruling on the Central Elections Committee adds a new front to the conflict ^[2]. The court invalidated a committee decision allowing election representatives at polling stations to update political parties on voter turnout in real time. The ruling is narrow in its immediate effect but broad in its signal: the judiciary is willing to intervene in electoral administration, not just in appointments and legislation. For the coalition’s right flank – particularly the Religious Zionism party, which has staked its political identity on judicial reform – this is precisely the kind of overreach they have been warning about. Local reports suggest the party’s internal messaging has sharpened in response, framing the court not merely as an obstacle to reform but as an active political actor aligned against the governing coalition ^[8].

The most revealing development in this period, however, may not be the rulings themselves but what is happening inside the Justice Ministry. A dispute has emerged within the ministry over whether to support the disqualification of Balad chairman Sami Abu Shuhada, who faces removal proceedings brought by Otzma Yehudit and Minister Ben Gvir over alleged support for Hamas following the October 7 attack ^[8][9]. The ministry’s internal division on this question – whether to back a petition that is politically explosive but legally complex – is a window into how much the judicial reform battle has destabilized the ministry’s institutional coherence. When a ministry cannot agree on whether to support its own coalition partners in a high-profile legal proceeding, something has broken in the internal chain of command.

The pattern across this period is not, as the government sometimes frames it, a judiciary engaged in naked political resistance. Nor is it, as the opposition frames it, a straightforward defense of democratic norms. It is something more specific and more interesting: a court that has decided, case by case, that the cost of inaction is higher than the political cost of intervention. The 5-4 split on the Machshava law and the single-vote revocation of the Tomer Yerushalmi appointment suggest a court that is not acting with overwhelming institutional confidence. These are close calls. The justices know they are close calls. And they are ruling anyway.

What that means for the coalition math is uncomfortable for Netanyahu. Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism did not join this government to watch their signature project get dismantled ruling by ruling. The pressure on Netanyahu to respond legislatively – to push a Knesset override, to advance emergency legislation bypassing judicial review, or to escalate the confrontation over judicial appointments – will intensify with each additional court intervention. The government has so far avoided the most extreme options, perhaps calculating that the political cost of open defiance exceeds the cost of judicial attrition. But that calculus is not stable. The Religious Zionism party’s electoral campaign messaging – framing Supreme Court justices and the Attorney General as operating ‘under military compulsion,’ according to local reports ^[10] – suggests the party is already running on the premise that the current standoff is insufficient and that a harder confrontation is both inevitable and politically useful.

The deeper question, which no ruling and no Knesset vote will resolve cleanly, is whether the Israeli system’s institutional architecture can absorb this level of sustained inter-branch conflict without one side forcing a resolution that the other cannot accept. The court has shown it will not simply defer. The coalition has shown it will not simply comply. The Justice Ministry, caught between them, is visibly fraying. That is not a temporary political crisis. It is a structural stress test, and the results so far are not reassuring.