The last time Israel almost broke, a judicial overhaul provoked mass demonstrations, warnings of constitutional breakdown, and whispers of civil war.
The central question was whether one prime minister could dismantle the institutions designed to restrain him. For months, Israel stood on the edge of a crisis without precedent in its history.
Then came the 7 October attacks, followed by a war in Gaza that numerous human rights organisations and the United Nations described as genocidal, and a request to the International Criminal Court (ICC) seeking arrest warrants for Israel’s leadership.
When a ceasefire was announced this year, a United States president arrived in Jerusalem and, at the PM’s request, urged Israel’s president from the Knesset podium to pardon Benjamin Netanyahu on the three criminal charges opponents say the entire judicial reform was a tool to evade accountability for.
Following a letter from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s lawyer last month to President Isaac Herzog seeking the pardon, Israel's mostly symbolic presidency must now decide to what extent it wishes - or can - apply the rule of law in the case of a beleaguered leader who long ago taught the state to fear his removal more than love anything about him.
Veteran Netanyahu opponents - many still believers in Israeli democracy - are unsure what the decision could reveal.
The 'Bus 300' precedent
“I would be satisfied with a Bus 300 outcome [to Netanyahu’s pardon request],” says Anat Maor, a veteran anti-Netanyahu activist and former Knesset member in Yitzhak Rabin’s government, seated beneath a shade tarp outside the Knesset.
In the 1984 ‘Bus 300’ affair, cited in Netanyahu’s pardon request as proof of the Presidency’s power to “pre-emptively” pardon Netanyahu, even though his trial has been ongoing since 2018, Israeli security agents killed two captured Palestinians and falsified the record.
When photographs surfaced proving the extrajudicial killings, then-President, and father of the current President, Chaim Herzog, issued pre-trial pardons in the case on the condition that those involved admit responsibility and leave public life. The Supreme Court upheld the pardons on national security grounds.
Critics argue that this precedent points in the opposite direction today. If anything threatens Israel’s domestic credibility now, they say, it is the sight of a prime minister seeking to escape accountability while still holding power.
Nearby to Maor’s tent by the Knesset, a second tent is occupied by Israeli army veterans living with PTSD who are protesting government neglect. She keeps notes on what has changed since the 2023 judicial crisis: 7 October, permanent war, messianic politics in the cabinet, unprecedented international legal exposure, and public norms of decency eroded beyond recognition.
“The best headline Israel could create now, even better than recognising a Palestinian state, would be to sack Netanyahu,” she says.
With members of the governing coalition headed by Netanyahu now openly calling to defy court rulings, delegitimise judges, and dismantle judicial review - promising to stop only if Netanyahu is pardoned and remains in office - renowned former chief Supreme Court justice Aharon Barak warned last week that something fundamental has failed.
“Checks and balances have collapsed,” he told Israeli media. “The prime minister, who controls the government, which controls the Knesset, is in practice ruling the state alone.”
Legal complications and conditions
A pardon is not straightforward. Under Israeli law, pardons usually follow legal proceedings, not precede them. The President requires recommendations from the Attorney General and a special advisory committee. The President’s Office called Netanyahu’s 111-page request “interesting” and said it would be reviewed.
Even if granted, a pardon does not force acceptance. If Netanyahu resigns as part of an agreement, the preferred outcome of Maor and about 70% of Israelis, polls show, he will avoid prison in Israel but face potential prosecution abroad the moment he becomes a private citizen.
Accepting a pardon while staying in office would eliminate the immediate threat of trial and preserve his eligibility to remain in or return to power as pressure to step aside evaporates. Any pardon at all would likely remove his most direct danger: conviction and prison.
Netanyahu timed his clemency request well as Gaza receded from headlines - perhaps as a primary motivation for lodging it - and Israeli President Isaac Herzog is likely to face criticism no matter the response he gives
“Herzog is a responsible leader,” Maor says, “but instability, even talk of armed unrest, may still be in store.” She pauses. “We will not let Netanyahu take our democracy. Before the war, I would not have said that Netanyahu must leave at any cost. But with the damage he has caused, he should find another country willing to shelter him.”
What began as a crisis with Netanyahu’s first breach-of-trust indictment, and continued through what critics called a judicial coup and laws tailored to protect him from removal, has now culminated in an unprecedented pardon request, revealing a stalemate Netanyahu learned to inhabit long ago.
It is a system that cannot absorb Palestinians, yet cannot expel them. A dominance that provokes resistance yet punishes any leader who questions it. A machine built to go nowhere, but forever.
Netanyahu's survival
Supporters of a Netanyahu pardon point to a diplomatic opportunity. Even his devoted supporters question his innocence. But as Donald Trump backs Netanyahu in the hope of securing a legacy-defining agreement with Saudi Arabia, which would require a pathway to Palestinian statehood, Netanyahu cannot and will not deliver what Washington needs.
The supporters who've elected Netanyahu eight times take pride in seeing him as the only figure “tricky” enough to plausibly negotiate with both Washington and Riyadh without collapsing his narrow coalition, all while assuring his base he will never concede the core issues those arrangements demand and getting away with it while protecting the organising principle he represents.
In any politics so narrow, the value of continuity often outranks function, and a leader often need not improve the system, only promise to guard it (in Netanyahu’s case, by blocking a Palestinian state) or distract people wondering whether they’d have better lives outside of the system altogether.
It’s a contention that Netanyahu’s opposition struggles with. In 2023, protesters who insisted that democracy could not coexist with occupation were pushed aside, a sign that even Netanyahu’s critics defended the foundations of his rule.
Many opposition figures still avoid saying they intend to replace him. They propose rotation agreements for the premiership, but only if Netanyahu first loses the next election.
Israel's broken politics
Some of the prime minister’s most determined critics do not rule out President Herzog granting a pardon.
Anat Maor and other leaders of the Kaplan movement, which first mobilised in 2018 to demand Netanyahu’s resignation upon indictment, and in 2023 swelled into the hundreds of thousands, say Netanyahu’s efforts to weaken the courts were never ideological but aimed at staying in power long enough to evade judgment.
But they also say a pardon could be acceptable if it results in Netanyahu’s permanent removal from public life, a condition the Prime Minister's office ruled out last week.
Ofer Cassif, a socialist member of Knesset to the left of the Kaplan mainstream, rejects the submission outright on the grounds it blocks the legal process rather than concludes it.
“This is not a request for a pardon, but rather a request that the president misuse his power to grant pardons,” he said, adding he would support any arrangement that removes Netanyahu from office “for good”.
“Herzog will steer the response to Netanyahu’s pardon towards a plea bargain with the prosecution,” Maor believes, “with the price Netanyahu will pay for the damage he has caused being permanent removal from public office.”
She doesn't think a pardon will break Israel, but says she fears that it will reveal just how broken it already is.
With Herzog’s response to Netanyahu’s request expected in the coming months, Israelis might learn if what’s left of the “Middle East’s only democracy” is fixable.
This article is published in collaboration with Egab