Israel's Governing Extremists Are Now Galloping Towards Annexation - Opinion - Haaretz.com
Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is playing political chess, while the opposition to the government’s judicial overhaul plan is playing checkers.
The opposition wants to keep as many game pieces on the board as possible to protect the institutions and processes that assure checks and balances in Israel’s system of government. Smotrich, in contrast, wants to remove – in fact, destroy – as many pieces as possible, to clear the way for him and his extreme right-wing allies to attain their real goal: “victory” over the Palestinian people, annexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and burial of the two-state paradigm for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
For now, everyone is observing the rules of the game –legislation initiated by the Netanyahu government and mass demonstrations across the country – but their strategies are being played out at cross-purposes. Israel's opposition has done an amazing job of mobilizing a significant cross-section of Israelis to protest the government’s plans, reflecting the population’s pluralistic composition and the strongly-held view that the legislation will impair Israel’s democracy.
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The rallying cry has been to save Israeli democracy by preserving the only real check on a government’s legislative overreach: the independence of the Supreme Court when it sits as the High Court of Justice. Without the carefully balanced method of selecting justices that has worked smoothly and fairly for almost 70 years, a governing coalition could stack the court and remove any possibility of judicial review.
Indeed, the court’s ability to review legislation and even its unusual power to decide on the reasonableness of government policies and practices, have worked to protect the rights of citizens on both the left and the right, as well as those under occupation, in a situation where there is no constitution and no bill of rights.
A standoff between pro-democracy demonstrators and police officers in Tel Aviv.Credit: Itay Ron
To Smotrich and the extremists who built this legislative overhaul, the proposals are but a means to an end. Smotrich has argued for years for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that reduces the Palestinians to second-class residents in an Israel that has annexed the occupied territories and whose citizens enjoy all the rights that the annexed Palestinians do not.
To Smotrich, the enemy has been the peace process. He believes that an independent Palestinian state – an outcome of a negotiated two-state solution – would present a mortal danger to the State of Israel. Israel must “win” and the Palestinians must “lose,” which to him means they must give up on the idea of national rights and accept their second-class status in Israel, leave the country or be killed should they continue resistance.
Smotrich has calculated correctly that, should the protest movement understand his real motives, it would split and perhaps disintegrate; there are many protesters who want to preserve Israeli democracy but are not ready to protest more settlements or annexation.
Smoke is seen from Israel's side during a raid on Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Salem checkpoint, in July 2023.Credit: RONEN ZVULUN/ REUTERS
For Smotrich, his strategy advances whether or not the bills do: If the Knesset passes them, many obstacles to annexation and settlement expansion will be removed. If it doesn’t, for whatever reason, he and his fellow extremists will demand and likely receive “compensation” from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the form of more resources for settlements, “legalization” of illegal outposts and other measures designed to ties the settlements and settlers more firmly to the Israeli legal system.
Smotrich and the settler movement more generally have long made clear that they value the land and the state’s Jewish identity far more than its democratic character. They are honest enough to admit that the outcome they seek will be less than fully democratic, but that is a price they are willing to pay to assure eternal Israeli control over all of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and the complete defeat of the Palestinian national movement.
To not understand this, or to fail to appreciate the dangers of Smotrich’s long game, is to be duped into believing that slowing down or moderating the coalition’s proposed judicial overhaul would be sufficient. It would not be. The only serious way to push back against the extremism that has taken over Israel’s governing coalition is to push back hard against both the extreme aspects of the proposed legislation and what used to be creeping annexation of the occupied territories, but is now galloping annexation.
Daniel Kurtzer is the S. Daniel Abraham Professor of Middle East Policy Studies at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. During a 30-year diplomatic career, in diplomacy, he served as the U.S. ambassador to Israel and as the U.S. ambassador to Egypt. Twitter: @DanKurtzer