Israel’s president has appealed to the hardline new government to delay a contested judicial overhaul, warning that mounting political polarisation had left the country “on the brink of constitutional and social collapse”. In a primetime address on Sunday night, Isaac Herzog urged the new administration, headed by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to seek a compromise with its political opponents over the judicial reform, warning that “we will all lose, the state of Israel will lose”, if no consensus was reached.
“I feel — we all feel — that we are barely a moment before a clash, even a violent clash,” Herzog said in his speech, which was delivered the evening before Israel’s parliament is due to begin voting on the overhaul. “We are no longer in a political debate but on the brink of constitutional and social collapse.”
