On July 25, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government successfully passed the first major piece of legislation from its wider project of judicial reform. It struck down the so-called reasonableness provision, which gave the Supreme Court the authority to overrule government decisions based on whether it considers them to be, well, reasonable. Proponents of the change argue that the previous rules gave an unelected body too much power to override decisions by elected politicians.

Detractors respond that given the absence of an Israeli constitution, the Supreme Court plays a key role in the checks and balances needed for the effective functioning of the state. This concern has, indeed, been a central driver of the thirty-two weeks of protests that have rocked Israel since early this year, regularly bringing hundreds of thousands of people into the streets.

The demonstrations have often celebrated the Supreme Court as a defender of the rule of law — indeed, a bastion of liberal reason in a sea of right-wing reaction. So, it’s worth remembering that the dispossession and expulsion of Palestinians and the occupation have in fact continued apace under the watchful eye of the Supreme Court (or Bagatz, in its Hebrew acronym used by protestors). This week, for example, while tens of thousands quite literally professed their “love” for Bagatz, its judges ruled against the removal of the Homesh settler outpost in the West Bank.