Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert claimed on Monday that the country faces civil war following the approval in the Knesset of the bill reducing the use of the reasonableness standard.

“There is a threat. It is a serious threat. It’s never happened before, and we are going into a civil war now,” Olmert said in an interview with Britain’s Channel 4.

The interviewer then wondered aloud, “A civil war?” to which the former Prime Minister responded, “Yeah, I mean, civil disobedience with all the possible ramifications to the stability of the state and to the ability of the government to perform, and to the obedience of the large part of the Israeli population, to a government which is perceived by a large part of the population to be illegitimate.”

He claimed, “Government has decided to threaten the foundations of Israeli democracy, and this is not something that we can accept or that we can tolerate.”

Olmert has in the past caused an uproar when he called for civil disobedience to protest the government’s judicial reform, but refused to retract those calls.

Last week, the former Prime Minister suggested that the US should downgrade relations with Israel in response to the proposed judicial reform.