Israeli politics descended into turmoil on Monday as Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline government faced a spiralling backlash to its bitterly contested plans to overhaul the judiciary, leaving members of his coalition deeply divided on whether or not to back down.

Huge protests erupted across the country overnight, with tens of thousands of people taking to the streets after Netanyahu, the prime minister, sacked his defence minister for urging a delay to the overhaul, warning that it posed a “tangible threat” to Israel’s security.

The resistance intensified on Monday, with Israel’s president imploring the government to suspend the overhaul, and the country’s biggest union calling a strike, prompting diplomats at Israeli embassies around the world to stop work, and triggering the grounding of flights at the Ben Gurion international airport.