Since Israel’s authorities introduced plans in January to overtake the judiciary, the nation has been gripped by rising turmoil within the streets, disquiet within the army — and warnings from its president, Isaac Herzog, of societal collapse and even civil struggle.

However now Mr. Herzog, who’s overseeing negotiations to discover a compromise, has a extra hopeful message — two weeks after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suspended the overhaul to permit for a month of negotiations with the opposition.

In his first full interview on the topic with journalists, Mr. Herzog stated this week that his negotiations have been gaining momentum and that consensus was doable. He even hopes for a compromise that would resolve not solely the talk over the judiciary but additionally different constitutional ambiguities which have gone unsolved since 1948, when Israel’s founders established the state with out writing a proper structure.

“It’s a possible for a constitutional second,” Mr. Herzog stated. “A second the place we are able to direct Israel right into a stronger and extra resilient construction.”

“One thing,” he added, “which we didn’t do since our founding 75 years in the past.”

As a figurehead president, Mr. Herzog, 62, has no formal authority to convey the edges collectively.

However he has used his lengthy expertise and public standing to imagine the place of dealer, taking over a bigger management function than his largely ceremonial place often permits for.

Within the interview, Mr. Herzog warned Israel’s enemies in opposition to deciphering the nation’s inner divisions as an indication of army weak point — rowing again earlier feedback on the specter of civil struggle.

Armed teams in southern Lebanon fired rockets at Israel final week, after Hassan Nasrallah, the chief of Hezbollah, a robust Iran-backed militia primarily based in southern Lebanon, predicted that Israel would quickly collapse. However Mr. Herzog warned Iran’s proxies to not strive comparable assaults on Friday, when Iran plans a nationwide protest in opposition to Israel’s existence.

“Don’t idiot yourselves,” Mr. Herzog stated. “We’ve all the time been united in relation to our protection and safety. Israel is extraordinarily sturdy and is able to taking motion if wanted.”

Mr. Herzog’s projection of power and unity was an unlikely dose of optimism after a fractious begin to the 12 months that shook many Israelis, together with the president himself.

Within the first week of 2023, days after taking workplace, Mr. Netanyahu’s far-right authorities introduced plans to restrict the Supreme Court docket’s means to countermand legal guidelines handed by Parliament, give the legislature larger energy to overrule the court docket and permit the federal government extra management over who will get to be a Supreme Court docket justice.

Critics worry that Mr. Netanyahu desires to scale back the judiciary’s affect to keep away from punishment in his corruption trial, a declare he has repeatedly rejected. Mr. Herzog — who has the ability to pardon Mr. Netanyahu — denied within the interview that he was holding separate talks with the prime minister about pardoning him.

The deadlock has led to one of many longest and largest protest waves in Israeli historical past.

In late March, after three months of mass demonstrations and amid a normal strike that stopped planes leaving the nation’s essential airport, Mr. Netanyahu pulled again, suspending the overhaul till the subsequent session of Parliament, which begins in late April.

That has offered respiratory house for Mr. Netanyahu to start negotiations with the opposition — chaired and hosted by Mr. Herzog.

For the primary time because the begin of the disaster, high-level delegations from either side have met a number of occasions at Mr. Herzog’s official residence in Jerusalem in an try to thrash out a compromise.

“I’m carrying a sure historic burden on my shoulders,” Mr. Herzog stated. “I’m maybe the one component in Israeli public life that every one events can be at liberty to come back and communicate to and confide with,” he stated.

Members of the delegations declined to debate the negotiations on the document, however either side have publicly acknowledged their willingness to succeed in a consensus.

The mediation effort may nonetheless fail. The federal government superior far sufficient with a part of the overhaul that it may enact it inside a single afternoon as soon as Parliament returns from recess on the finish of April. And Mr. Netanyahu should discover a approach of placating hard-line members of his coalition who reject any change to the overhaul’s present format.

The opposition negotiators even have a base to fulfill: an unlimited protest motion, a few of which desires the overhaul scrapped solely. The protest leaders will not be on the negotiation desk.

Shikma Bressler, a kind of leaders, stated she feared that the opposition would possibly make too many concessions as a result of — with the federal government in a position to transfer ahead so shortly — it was negotiating “with a gun held to our temple.”

Mr. Herzog, a lawyer turned politician, comes from a household of public servants. His grandfather, Yitzhak, was a chief rabbi of Israel. His father, Chaim, was president for a decade, beginning in 1983. And his brother Michael is the present Israeli ambassador to Washington.

Mr. Herzog headed a number of ministries earlier than turning into chief of the opposition Labor Occasion for 4 years, beginning in 2013.

However it’s since turning into head of state in 2021 — elected by a big majority of lawmakers — that he has come into his personal.

On the world stage, Mr. Herzog has turn out to be concerned in Israeli diplomacy, each in public and behind the scenes.

A 12 months in the past, he helped revive ties with Turkey, turning into the primary senior Israeli official to go to the nation in years. And final fall, he helped resolve a disagreement with Germany over compensation for households of Israeli athletes killed on the Olympic Video games in 1972.

However since Mr. Netanyahu’s authorities entered workplace in late December, Mr. Herzog has centered on Israel itself.

Even earlier than the federal government formally launched its proposal in early January, the president quietly tasked an skilled former civil servant, Oved Yehezkel, with coaxing either side away from positions on the problem that will be unacceptable to both facet.

Then, in February, Mr. Herzog started to host oblique negotiations in his formal residence — permitting critics of the overhaul to satisfy there with authorities officers and their supporters.

That effort failed. Mr. Herzog’s personal compromise proposal — printed in March — was additionally instantly rejected by the federal government.

However now either side are again on the negotiating desk, at conferences chaired by the president himself, and can meet once more subsequent week for marathon talks.

“Herzog is a wizard at creating belief — I’ve by no means met an individual who doesn’t love and doesn’t belief him,” Naftali Bennett, a right-wing former prime minister whose tenure overlapped with Mr. Herzog’s first 12 months within the presidency, stated in a telephone interview.

“I can’t consider a extra appropriate particular person than him, at such a dramatic second, to guide the negotiations,” stated Mr. Bennett, who’s not in politics and isn’t concerned within the negotiations.

Although a patchwork of Israeli legal guidelines have taken on a quasi-constitutional standing, Israel has by no means had a single written structure.

That ambiguity has led to recurrent friction over the stability of energy between the totally different components of presidency, spiritual and secular visions of the state, the state’s tasks to ultra-Orthodox Jews, and the contribution that ultra-Orthodox Jews ought to make to state establishments just like the army.

Mr. Herzog stated that lots of these points would possibly now be addressed, however declined to offer full particulars to keep away from jeopardizing the talks.

He’s optimistic, although. The federal government has signaled it may wait till late summer time for a compromise, he stated.

“There’s loads of good will within the room since we began the negotiations two weeks in the past,” Mr. Herzog stated.

“I’m not naïve,” he stated. However, “I nonetheless give it an opportunity.”