Doctors strike, army reservists punished in Israeli judicial furore

Israeli doctors declared a strike and black ads covered newspaper front pages on Tuesday in a backlash over the hard-right government's ratification of the first part of a judicial overhaul that critics say endangers democracy.

With long-serving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu facing his gravest domestic crisis, Israel's military took its first known internal disciplinary action over the protests. One reservist was fined US$270 (about RM1,200) and another given a suspended 15-day jail sentence for ignoring call-ups.

"A Black Day for Israeli Democracy," read the ad on the front of major newspapers placed by a group describing itself as worried hi-tech workers.

The bill curbing Supreme Court review of some state decisions passed in a stormy Knesset parliament on Monday after an opposition walkout. As the vote took place, protesters were out in their thousands, some scuffling with police.

Protest leaders said growing numbers of military reservists would no longer report for duty if the government continued with its plans. Former top brass have warned that Israel's war-readiness could be at risk.

However, opposition leader Yair Lapid asked protesting reservists to hold off, pending any Supreme Court ruling on appeals against the new law. Both a political watchdog group and the Israel Bar Association have filed challenges.

The crisis has opened a deep divide in Israeli society and hit the economy hard by triggering foreign investor flight, weakening the shekel and raising the spectre of a general strike by the Histadrut public sector union.

It has also strained ties with the West including close ally the US which called Monday's vote "unfortunate".

Court orders doctors back

The Israel Medical Association called a 24-hour strike around the nation, though not in Jerusalem, which is the scene of escalating confrontations. However, the Tel Aviv Regional Labour Court ordered the doctors to return to work, backing a government injunction request, a copy of the ruling seen by Reuters showed.

Physicians said they would not remain silent.

"Tomorrow the physicians will go back to work, but I can say that thousands of them are not going to be silent, because there is a strong feeling... that we cannot work as physicians when Israel is no more a democratic state," said Hagai Levine, chairman of the Israeli Association of Public Health Physicians.

Disquiet spread to the arts. Divided audience members heckled and applauded a cast member in a popular musical in Tel Aviv as he read a statement on the crisis and a fellow actor strode off stage in apparent exasperation, according to video on social media.

Angering critics further, Netanyahu's ultra-Orthodox Jewish coalition partners said they would submit legislation shoring up exemption from mandatory military service for their constituents who are studying in seminaries. But Netanyahu's Likud party said no such bill would be pursued for now.

First elected to top office in 1996 and now in his sixth term, Netanyahu, 73, has cast the judicial overhaul as a redressing of balance among branches of government. He said he wants consensus on any further legislation by November.

Complicating Netanyahu's position is a corruption trial in which he denies wrongdoing, and his weekend hospitalisation to receive a pacemaker. His religious-nationalist coalition's expansion of settlements on occupied land where Palestinians seek statehood has also weighed on relations with Washington.

Palestinians killed

In new violence, Israeli troops killed three Palestinian militants who opened fire on them from a car near the West Bank city of Nablus on Tuesday, Israel's defence minister said.

The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas claimed its gunmen were the three killed near Nablus.

On another front, the Israeli military confirmed as genuine a video on social media showing masked men in commando clothing pacing through brush on the other side of the Lebanese border fence, an area controlled by the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement.

A Lebanese source familiar with the development said the men were members of a Hezbollah elite unit on a patrol that had nothing to do with Israel's domestic crisis.

Hezbollah's media office said it had no comment.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Monday said Israel's domestic crisis showed it was on a "path of collapse and fragmentation".

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, in comments to Army Radio, said the military was combat-ready even though reservists wanted to "put a gun to the head of the government".