Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday fiercely defended disputed legal reforms on a visit to Berlin, where German Chancellor Olaf Scholz urged him to reconsider a compromise.
The package of judicial reforms has sparked weeks of protests in Israel since its introduction by Netanyahu's hard-right coalition, prompting Israel's president to warn the nation may be on the brink of "civil war".
In Berlin, Netanyahu put on a defiant front, arguing his plans merely sought to bring Israel's democracy "in line with what is common and acceptable in just about every Western democracy"."Israel is being constantly... maligned. I'm supposed to be some... potentate who's abolishing democracy and all this nonsense," he charged at a press conference, standing next to Scholz, adding, "this is absurd, it's preposterous".
The coalition has proposed a two-stage process to a key element in the reform -- "an immediate fix and then balancing things out", he said, adding however that president Herzog had "discarded" the offer.Netanyahu's coalition, which includes ultra-Orthodox and extreme-right parties, says the reforms are needed to limit judicial overreach, but protesters say they threaten Israel's liberal democracy by weakening key checks and balances.
"I will not allow it to happen," he said, adding he was convinced the majority of Israelis want a compromise. Israeli protesters returned to the streets on Thursday, with some holding up placards saying the reforms spelled "the end of democracy". "I'm here to give a big welcome to the want to be dictator in Israel, to show him we won't accept it," he told AFP.The two nations forged strong diplomatic ties in the decades after World War II, with Berlin committed to the preservation of the Israeli state in penance for the Holocaust.
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