The UK media features wide coverage of yesterday’s bill passing and ensuing protests. The Times devotes a leader article to the barring of the court’s use of reasonability. “Today was a dark day for Israel,” it writes. “The vote by its parliament to strip the country’s supreme court of its powers to block government decisions came after months of unprecedented protests. Introduced by Israel’s right-wing coalition government, the law has opened deep fissures in Israel on the nature of the Jewish state, the role of religion and the future of democracy… No issue has produced such intense debate, anger and soul-searching since the founding of Israel in 1948. At issue is whether it can remain a democracy in the western sense or whether it will become, like many neighbours in the Middle East, a sham democracy with no check on the power of the executive.”

Across several articles, The Guardian covers yesterday’s events; provides an explainer and looks ahead to what comes next; explores the range of protests and strikes in response; assesses the anguished responses of US Jewish groups; and features an op-ed by Israeli writer David Grossman. “The Jewish nation,” he writes, “has experienced rifts and divisions… But what has been occurring in Israel these past few months is no longer on the same continuum. We do not yet have the words to adequately describe this turn of events, and that is why it is so frightening. It may transpire that it was the beginning of a process that will crumble – and possibly resolve – our society’s ossified, dangerous points. But for now it is bringing to the surface Israel’s secrets and lies, the cumulative historical offences, the lack of compassion, the injustices, all of which have become an intolerable dissonance that breeds mutual revulsion.”

Coverage of the day’s events and their context is also found in The Times, The Telegraph, The Economist, and The Financial Times. Channel 4 News, meanwhile, runs a video interview with Ehud Olmert in which the former prime minister says that Israel is approaching a civil war.

The BBC reports from yesterday’s protests and also offers an explainer on the reforms and their impact on Israeli society.

The Financial Times also focusses on the protest movement and looks ahead to its next steps.

Away from the reforms and protests, The Guardian covers Israeli forces shooting and killing three Palestinian gunmen in West Bank yesterday. The troops returned fire after being fired on by occupants of a car in Nablus. Earlier yesterday, Palestinian gunmen fired on an Israeli bus near the town of Huwara, close to Nablus. No Israelis were hurt.

After an historic day, the Israeli media is saturated by coverage of the passage of the bill, the reaction of the protest movement, and analysis from commentators.

A group of protesters from Israel’s hi-tech sector take out ads covering the first two pages of the print editions of Yedioth Ahronoth, Haaretz and Israel Hayom. The pages are black; on the bottom of the first page appears today’s date and the words “A black day for Israeli democracy”; on the bottom of the second “Israel’s locomotive will never give up”.

In Yediot Ahronot, Nahum Barnea writes “Yesterday at 3:45, outside the Knesset in the blazing sun, I understood for the first time in my life that I am under occupation… When one reviews the magnificent 64 who voted in favour of the amendment, it is clear they aren’t all cut from the same cloth. Some are… sycophants with an eye on the next primary election and slaves to Bibi-ists on social media. Others are soldiers who obey orders; they don’t care what role the Supreme Court plays and why it needs the grounds of reasonability. And then there are still others, people who are motivated by genuine, whole-hearted hatred for everything that the Zionist vision built here. They hate the laws, the institutions, the rules of the game and the complexities. Take Ben Gvir, Rothman, Karhi or Struck for example. Until this government was formed they expounded extremist, delusional ideas with the full knowledge that they would never be put into action. Delusion is a minority’s privilege. It is its flak jacket against reality.”

Also concentrating on the coalition dynamics behind the reform, Nadav Eyal writes in Ynet that “If real reform was the government’s aim, the path would have been through thoughtfully identifying problems, reviewing them with the help of judicial experts and then proposing a variety of solutions to resolve them and not a power grab by Simcha Rothman and the need for revenge of his partner – Levin… Recent attempts at reconciliation were not in talks between the ruling Likud and opposition parties. Over one-third of Likud voters are strongly opposed to any judicial overhaul. The strong axis within the government is Smotrich-Ben Gvir-Levin, they alone decide the government’s position. Netanyahu may be too weak to stand up to them or he may support their positions but either way, he had surrendered control of the government, to them.”

Ben Caspit, in Maariv, focusses on the prime minister and writes: “Faced with the dilemma whether to save the coalition or to save the country, Netanyahu chose the coalition. That is to say, he chose himself. He is a prime minister who refused to convene the security cabinet to hear what impact the legislation is expected to have on the military. Who refused to meet with the IDF chief of staff before the vote, despite statements to the contrary. Who ignored all warning lights, all the writing on the wall. To serve what end did he do all that? Not to annex Judea and Samaria. Not to reunify Jerusalem. Not to destroy the Iranian nuclear programme or to assassinate Hassan Nasrallah. He did all that to get a bill passed that would strip the Supreme Court of its ability to oversee government actions in cases that are unreasonable in the extreme. A law to turn Israel into a single-branch country that is the be-all and end-all of everything. No checks and balances, no judicial oversight, no constitution. After spending his entire career fighting initiatives of this kind, Netanyahu collapsed at the moment of truth like a house of cards, only to preserve a coalition that is leading Israel to the abyss… Anyone who watched the international coverage of the Israeli fiasco yesterday understood that Israel has become a “failed state.”… Nothing is final. Everything is reversible. This destructive government will eventually be sent packing by the voters back under the rock it emerged from. This will be a one-off chance never to return, to set things right for Israeli democracy once and for all: To draft a constitution, to draft the Haredim, to teach those who don’t serve a full slate of core curriculum subjects. To save the Zionist project. There won’t be another chance.”

A Haaretz editorial writes that the 64 coalitions MKs who voted for the bill “will be remembered forever as being responsible for crushing the rule of law and fatally undercutting the separation of powers… But the heaviest blame falls on Benjamin Netanyahu. The most destructive prime minister in Israel’s history has again proven that he is prepared to sacrifice Israel’s democracy for his personal political survival… Monday was a sad and painful day for everyone who holds Israeli democracy dear. However, the last few weeks have proven that the battle is not lost; that the democratic camp, which in recent years seemed to have lost its way, has consolidated and become a mighty force ready to sacrifice itself for the high values of democracy, liberalism and rule of law.”

In a different vein, Ariel Kahana in Israel Hayom argues that the “Israeli state has left a lot of casualties in its wake throughout history… There’s no arguing with how people feel. No argument can change that… [But] It is precisely because the lessons that were learned from the destruction of the temple as a result of baseless hatred at this time of year 1,954 years ago are so deeply ingrained in all Jews that the third commonwealth will not be destroyed. The end of democracy neither has nor will it arrive. We won’t have a ‘hollow democracy’ either. The hundreds of thousands of Israelis whose hearts are now filled with despair, anger and dread, people who throughout all these months of protest were resolute but never violent, will heal from this wound. I don’t agree with them, but it is clear to me that they won’t bring this house crashing down on its residents. The more time that passes, alongside the sense of disappointment and the taste of bitterness that is left after defeat,  the happier they will be that the democratic Israeli state was spared. Because it is precisely during this period of mourning that we all know that we haven’t got another country.”

In Haaretz, Anshel Pfeffer reflects on the failure to achieve a compromise. “The so-called compromise always sounded like an impossible ask,” he writes”. “It [the reform programme] was never just about changing the amendment on eliminating the reasonableness standard (there is no way the coalition was going to agree to bench it at this point) so that at least part of the opposition could live with it. A compromise on the government’s bigger legislative plan would also have to include some form of agreement on how two new Supreme Court justices will be appointed when the Knesset returns in October (as President Esther Hayut and Justice Anat Baron will be retiring). This is the most critical of all the issues. And then comes agreeing on some form of moratorium on introducing constitutional legislation without broad consensus. This was another minefield: How long would the moratorium last? Exactly what type of legislation would it cover? What constitutes a broad consensus? Seventy-five lawmakers? Eighty?”

The Jerusalem Post’s editorial, calling for unity, says that “The threat of a political rift is immense. The country is being torn apart – and our enemies are enjoying the show and waiting for an opportunity to exploit the situation. Battle cries at demonstrations are one thing; the cries of civil war are something else entirely – and nobody wants to go there. There is a whole lot of middle ground that is being missed even by those who identify with the center… Democracy didn’t die, and Israel is not going to disappear. Monday was a difficult and painful day for the country, but divisive as it was, it need not be a sign of things to come. If the political leaders can’t bring themselves to do it, it is up to the ordinary citizens to take charge of their own response. We can each choose to continue to shout at one another, or to reach out across the divide, shake hands, and chart a path forward.”