THE REAL DANGER OF ISRAEL'S NEW GOVERNMENT
By Phyllis Bennis, Counterpunch.
June 24, 2021 | EDUCATE!
Above Photo: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters.
The new Israeli government takes office already largely paralyzed. With
eight diverse parties, they agree only on two things.
One, they want to get rid of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Check -
that's done. Two, given the unlikeliness of reaching agreement on any major
policy changes, they all agree that the current situation of occupation and
apartheid for Palestinians is quite sustainable for Jewish Israelis.
For now, the status quo will prevail. And that's a problem.
Despite the presence of centrist, center-left, and one small Palestinian
party, power in the new government lies with the far right. New Prime
Minister Naftali Bennett, a longtime leader of Israel's illegal settlers,
has bragged about being significantly to the right of his far-right mentor,
Netanyahu. In 2013 he boasted, "I've killed a lot of Arabs in my life, and
there's no problem with that."
In fact, power in both blocs in the Knesset - the new "change" coalition and
Netanyahu's Likud-led opposition - lies on the right to far-right to
fascist-right trajectory of Israeli politics overall. Both blocs support
maintaining the status quo regarding Palestinians.
So whatever shifts in language or tone might temporarily emerge from
Israel's post-Netanyahu leaders, there will be no shift in the conditions of
life for Palestinians.
No change for those living under military occupation in the West Bank and
East Jerusalem, no change for those living under the 15-year siege in Gaza
and the consequences of Israel's recent lethal bombardment there, no change
for those living as third- or fourth-class citizens inside the 1948
territory of Israel, and no chance for those living as third- or
fourth-generation refugees in Palestine's far-flung diaspora.
Beyond more years of the same oppression, dispossession and apartheid for
Palestinians, there's an additional political danger here. The threat is
evident in Washington, among some in the White House and Congress.
While continuing their uncritical support for giving billions of dollars in
U.S. aid directly to the Israeli military, uncritically backing Israel in
the UN, and protecting Israeli leaders from being held accountable in the
International Criminal Court, many in Washington were still embarrassed by
Netanyahu. They saw him, accurately, as an Israeli clone of Trump, sharing
the former U.S. president's overt racism, crude Islamophobia, xenophobic
nationalism, and straight-up right-wing authoritarianism - not to mention
sharing Trump's disdain for Democrats, the press, and democracy.
Netanyahu, of course, had started down that path decades before Trump's
emergence as a political force. But Trump's years in office enabled
Netanyahu's power to rise both inside Israel and in regional and even global
arenas. Some of those among Washington's current power brokers and
policymakers will likely be so grateful to have Netanyahu out of the way
that they'll welcome Bennett, and his telegenic coalition partner and
foreign minister Yair Lapid, as symbols of a new start - a "reboot" of
Washington's relationship with Israel.
And that's very dangerous. Because this new government has no intention of
changing Tel Aviv's policies based on what the Israeli human rights
organization B'tselem calls "a regime of Jewish supremacy" from the river to
the sea.
This new government has no intention of ending Israeli efforts to undermine
the U.S. return to the Iran nuclear deal, even if war might be the result.
These new leaders have no intention of holding themselves accountable for
violations of international humanitarian law and human rights in Gaza or
elsewhere.
It's just a few new faces coming to town - starting with the one who brags
"I've killed a lot of Arabs in my life." Hopefully there will be enough
pressure continuing on those in Washington eager to welcome them to remind
them that some of us do have a problem with that.