October 7 is no longer a recent shock, but it remains an unresolved reference point in Israeli politics. More than two years later, the Israeli parliament continues to operate within two parallel realities.
One reality is shaped by war, trauma, and recovery: an extended military campaign, hundreds of thousands of reservists cycling in and out of service, displaced communities still unable to return home, mounting economic strain, and a society grappling with the consequences of the gravest security failure in the country’s history.
The other reality is political, marked by a legislative agenda pushed forward by the governing coalition that never fully slowed, even as the attack reshaped nearly every other dimension of Israeli life.
“What stands out is not only how much legislation is moving,” Dr. Assaf Shapira, director of the Political Reform Program at the Israel Democracy Institute, said in an interview with The Media Line, “but which laws are advancing first. The sequence tells you a great deal about priorities.”
Since the outbreak of the war, the governing coalition has advanced more than 30 legislative initiatives touching nearly every central institution of the state. Some have already been enacted into law. Others have passed first readings or moved through key committees. Several remain formally on the agenda, waiting for political timing. Collectively, these bills affect the judiciary, public broadcasting and media regulation, the civil service, electoral rules, military service, and religion-state relations.
Supporters of the agenda insist that none of this should be surprising. The coalition, they argue, was elected on a clear ideological platform, and war does not suspend democratic governance.
“A government doesn’t stop governing because there is a war,” one coalition figure said privately. “The voters did not elect a caretaker.”
Yet when the legislative record is examined not by declarations but by outcomes, a pattern emerges. The initiatives most decisively advanced by the governing coalition are not those dealing with postwar recovery, reserve manpower, economic rehabilitation, or civilian resilience. They are laws that restructure institutions, reallocate authority, and stabilize coalition arrangements.
Changing who controls the rules of the system
This pattern is most visible in the legal and judicial arena. Several of the coalition's most consequential changes have already passed. A law altering the composition of the Judicial Selection Committee removed Bar Association representatives and replaced them with political appointees from the coalition and the opposition, ending a longstanding professional counterweight in judicial selection. Another law transferred authority over the appointment of the judicial ombudsman from an independent framework to the Israeli parliament itself.
“These are not technical adjustments,” Shapira said. “They change who controls the rules of the system. Once those rules change, they shape everything that follows.”
Alongside enacted legislation, a series of additional proposals advanced by coalition lawmakers has focused on the role of the government’s chief legal adviser. Bills under discussion would restructure the position, divide its authorities, and weaken the binding force of legal opinions. These initiatives emerged amid sustained political attacks by coalition figures on the current legal adviser, including efforts to facilitate her removal or reduce her capacity to constrain government action.
Other proposals promoted by the coalition move in parallel, loosening restrictions on civil service appointments. Draft legislation would allow ministers greater freedom to appoint individuals with political, personal, or business ties to senior roles in government companies and public bodies, rolling back safeguards designed to prevent conflicts of interest and preserve professional independence.
“Taken together, these measures form a coherent approach,” Shapira said. “The legal system is no longer treated as a check, but as a component to be redesigned.”
A similar concentration of legislative energy driven by the coalition is evident in the media sphere. A sweeping broadcasting reform, introduced as a government bill, has already passed its first reading. It would establish a new regulatory authority under the communications minister, empowered to impose heavy fines, revoke licenses, regulate news websites, and exert control over audience ratings data.
Additional initiatives advanced by coalition lawmakers would privatize or dismantle the public broadcaster, shift its funding into the annual state budget, require its leadership to appear before parliamentary hearings over content, and grant the government direct authority over appointments to its governing council.
“When regulation, funding, and appointments are all placed under political control, independence becomes conditional,” Shapira said. “Not because censorship is ordered, but because pressure becomes built into the structure.”
A correction to excessive power in unelected institutions
Abraham Russell Shalev, a senior fellow at the Kohelet Policy Forum, rejects the suggestion that these reforms undermine democratic norms. He frames them instead as a correction to what he describes as excessive power concentrated in unelected institutions.
“Public bodies must ultimately be accountable to elected officials,” he told The Media Line. “Oversight is not politicization. It is the essence of democracy.”
Shalev has been sharply critical of organizations such as the Israel Democracy Institute, arguing that they equate any reduction in judicial or bureaucratic authority with democratic erosion.
“There is a tendency to treat independence as immunity,” he said. “No institution should be immune from scrutiny.”
Regarding timing, Shalev is unequivocal.
“War does not freeze constitutional questions,” he said. “A democracy cannot put itself on hold indefinitely.”
Yet when attention turns from principles to prioritization, the framework becomes less concrete. While the coalition has established special parliamentary tracks to advance institutional and media reforms, there has been no comparable legislative effort by the coalition to address postwar reconstruction, the burden on reservists, or long-term civilian recovery. On those issues, Shalev emphasizes the limits of legislation itself.
“Security and recovery are addressed primarily through executive decisions and budgets,” he said. “Not every challenge requires a law.”
For critics, the distinction is difficult to sustain when viewed against the legislative sequence.
“If something is truly urgent,” Shapira said, “the parliament finds a way. What we are seeing is not a lack of capacity, but a hierarchy of interests.”
The issue of military service brings that hierarchy into sharp relief. Since October 7, Israel’s reliance on reservists has reached unprecedented levels, exposing longstanding manpower shortages. When then-Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Yuli Edelstein advanced legislation imposing sanctions on draft evasion, ultra-Orthodox parties withdrew from the coalition.
The political response was swift. Edelstein was removed from his post. MK Boaz Bismuth was appointed in his place, and a revised proposal backed by the coalition emerged that avoided sanctions, did not guarantee meaningful recruitment, and posed no real threat to coalition partners opposed to compulsory service.
“That episode,” Shapira said, “shows how national security considerations are weighed when they collide directly with coalition survival.”
Religion-state legislation has followed a similar trajectory. Bills advanced by coalition lawmakers that expand the authority of rabbinical courts to handle civil arbitration, permit gender-segregated tracks in advanced academic degrees, reshape daycare subsidies to benefit ultra-Orthodox families regardless of military service, and embed religious practices in publicly funded institutions have continued to move forward. Some have already become law.
The same tension surrounds the question of accountability for October 7. Rather than establishing a traditional state commission of inquiry involving the Supreme Court, the coalition has advanced a nontraditional framework in which lawmakers would retain decisive control over appointments and scope. Supporters argue this reflects democratic oversight. Critics counter that legitimacy depends on visible independence.
“After a national failure of this magnitude,” Shapira said, “people are not asking who has authority. They are asking who they can trust.”
Hovering over the legislative agenda is the broader issue of legal accountability. Proposals advanced by coalition members to delay criminal proceedings against a sitting prime minister, expand parliamentary immunity, and raise investigation thresholds have not all been adopted, but their presence shapes the political environment. In that context, reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought a possible amnesty from President Isaac Herzog resonated beyond their immediate legal implications, reinforcing perceptions that legal considerations remain tightly intertwined with governance.
Viewed as a whole, the legislative record does not suggest ideological confusion. It suggests selectivity. Laws that restructure institutions, secure coalition partners, and lock in long-term shifts of power have moved quickly. Laws that would impose costs on coalition constituencies or directly address the burdens revealed by the war have been delayed, diluted, or failed to materialize.
Shalev maintains that this does not constitute a misplaced priority.
“The government is dealing with the war every day,” he said. “Legislation is only one part of governing.”
Legislation, however, remains a signal. It reflects what a governing coalition chooses to formalize when political capital is limited and stakes are high. Israel’s post-October 7 reality is defined by exhaustion, uncertainty, and an unresolved demand for accountability. The coalition's legislative agenda suggests that the Israeli parliament is being used to entrench prewar political logic, even as the country has entered uncharted territory.
Whether that gap will narrow or widen remains an open question. What is already evident is that the legislative agenda driven by the governing coalition has followed familiar political incentives, even as the national context has shifted dramatically. Structural reforms affecting legal authority, media oversight, and institutional appointments have progressed in a consistent manner. At the same time, legislative responses to the social, economic, and civic consequences of the war have remained fragmented, delayed, or largely absent.
In that sense, the period since October 7 has not produced a recalibration of parliamentary priorities so much as a test of continuity. The question facing Israel’s political system is not only how it governs during prolonged conflict, but also whether its legislative framework is capable of absorbing shocks without reverting to preexisting patterns. As the war lowers in intensity but not in consequence, the gap between a society transformed by crisis and a parliament mobilized to serve coalition priorities may prove more consequential than any single bill now moving through the plenum.