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THE likely restoration of Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister has stirred some angst among a few long-standing friends of Israel, not because of his abrasive personality, toxic ideology or the unresolved corruption charges against him, but because he can only return to power at the helm of the most extreme-right coalition his country has thus far experienced.
That’s quite an achievement in the Israeli context, given its history of right-wing governments stretching back to the genesis of its nationhood. As far as the dispossessed Palestinians are concerned, there are few grounds for nostalgia relating to the era when the Labour Party was the dominant political force and the myth of a two-state solution was sustained by rhetoric that bore little relation to what was happening on the ground.
Back then, though, the question of Palestinian rights was at least part of the mainstream political discourse. Of late it has effectively disappeared from the agenda. That does not mean the status quo is acceptable to the lately dominant forces in Israel.
The most prominent among Netanyahu’s latest allies are the Jewish Power Party’s Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionism party, brought together by Netanyahu to form the third largest force in the Israeli Knesset. The parliament is now almost bereft of potentially moderating influences. The relatively left-wing Meretz was expected to fall short of the threshold for representation, with Labour reduced to four seats. The marginalisation stretches to an assortment of Arab parties.
Israel reminds us that things can always get worse.
Of course, Palestinians in the occupied territories don’t have a vote in Israel — and their supposedly autonomous administration, effectively a handmaiden to the military occupiers, keeps postponing its own elections because Mahmoud Abbas rightly fears being replaced by someone who might not meekly kowtow to the Palestinian Authority’s Israeli overlords.
Some Palestinian commentators have lately reiterated the mantra that Israeli election results don’t matter to those living under occupation, because their situation won’t improve. That’s true as far as it goes — but there’s always the possibility that conditions could deteriorate.
For instance, the party platform of Ben-Gvir vows to establish “sovereignty over all parts of Eretz Israel liberated in the Six-Day War and the settlement of the enemies of Israel in the Arab countries that surround our small land”. Ben-Gvir also favours giving greater leeway to the military to murder Palestinians. And Smotrich, who describes himself as a “proud homophobe”, not only advocates extending apartheid to maternity wards but also backs total annexation of the West Bank — much like Netanyahu and his successor as prime minister last year, Naftali Bennett.
Annexation has been averted thus far mainly because Israel’s sponsor-in-chief, the US, has hitherto resisted the idea, even under the Trump administration. It has done so chiefly not out of humanitarian concerns, but because of the outrage it might spur, not least among American Jews. Washington has been equally reluctant, mind you, to deploy the leverage it obviously possesses to nudge its precious Middle Eastern outpost in the opposite direction.
It’s interesting, though, that even The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman, whose assumptions and predictions are often delusional, is rattled by the result of Israel’s fifth election in four years. In a lament headlined ‘The Israel we knew is gone’, he sees what’s happening there as a “harbinger of what’s coming our way” — referring not just to yesterday’s US midterm elections but what might lie in store two years hence.
If, as widely expected, the Republicans — all too many of them beholden to the brazenly truth-denying MAGA faction of the party — take control of both Houses of Congress, the US will indeed closely resemble Israel in some ways. And it won’t entirely be a coincidence. For all its claims about being a standout Middle Eastern state, Israel remains reliant on US largesse, supplemented with tax-free private donations to some of the most deplorable political organisations, including those that have at some point been labelled terrorist entities.
But it’s not a one-way street. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has lately been particularly active in pushing against any congressional candidates who might dare to adopt a balanced stance on Palestinian-Israeli issues. Inevitably, most of the targets fall in the category of relatively progressive Democrats. Increasing numbers of young American Jews, however, are not exactly enamoured of Aipac and its ilk.
That’s in stark contrast to young Jews in Israel, more than two-thirds of whom tilt to the right or the far right — perhaps demonstrating what decades of brainwashing can achieve. The biblical phrase “as you sow, so shall you reap” obviously doesn’t apply exclusively to the US or Israel, but seems entirely apt for both at the moment.
Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2022
