A UN General Assembly vote December 30, 2022, on a resolution requesting
the International Court of Justice to weigh in on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict [photo credit: Screenshot/UN]
The Israeli response was as vitriolic as it was predictable. Before
the vote the Israel’s ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan issued a statement which said in part:
No international body can decide that the Jewish people are
‘occupiers’ in their own homeland. Any decision from a judicial body
which receives its mandate from the morally bankrupt and politicized UN
is completely illegitimate. The Palestinians have rejected every peace
initiative while supporting and inciting terror. Instead of pushing the
Palestinians to change, the UN is doing the opposite: helping them to
harm the only vibrant democracy in the Middle East.
That “vibrant democracy” has just witnessed Benjamin Netanyahu
cobbling together the most extreme far right government in the country’s
history. Among the ministers he has appointed are convicted criminals
and openly racist, religious and homophobic bigots. It is not far off
the mark to call this Israel’s first Fascist government.
Bezalel Smotrich,
the leader of the Religious Zionism Party has been appointed minister
of finance as well as being given the Occupied Territories
administration portfolio. He has described himself as “a proud
homophobe” and wants the state’s judicial system to be placed under
Torah law.
Itamar Ben-Gvir
who heads up Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) has been convicted of
inciting racism and supporting a terrorist organisation. He courts
attention by going into mixed Jewish and Arab neighbourhoods, sometimes
theatrically waving a gun while calling on police officers to shoot
stone throwing Palestinians. Ben-Gvir has been given a portfolio
specially created for him as National Security Minister with authority
over the Israeli police on both sides of the Green Line.
Yariv Levin
is the Speaker and Justice Minister tasked to drive through an override
rule that would enable the Knesset to overrule Supreme Court decisions,
an extraordinary politicization of the judiciary.
Avi Maoz
of the one Knesset seat Noam faction has been put in charge of the
Orwellian-sounding National Jewish Identity Department. This advocate of
‘conversion therapy’ for LGBTQ+ has been given responsibility for
revising school curricula. In a 9 December editorial, The Jerusalem
Post, otherwise known for its right wing stance, wrote that Maoz was
“unfit to have authority on Israel’s education system.”
Two of Netanyahu’s deputy prime ministers
are Almog Cohen who has called for the integration of the West Bank
into the state of Israel while denying Palestinians the right to vote
and Aryeh Deri whose most recent conviction for fraud was in January
last year. Under previous legislation the conviction made him ineligible
to a ministerial appointment. Using Netanyahu’s coalition majority, an
amendment was pushed through the Knesset enabling him to sit as a
minister
Picking up on Ben-Gvir’s mantra of a bullet for a stone, freshman Jewish Power MK Zvika Fogel,
a retired brigadier general, had this to say: “An Arab who throws a
stone at a soldier needs a bullet in the head, a Jew who throws stones
needs to be educated.”
As for the prime minister who hopes to avoid jail for his own transgressions by pandering to the extremists, his views
too are clear: “The Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable
right to all parts of the Land of Israel,” said a policy statement from
his Likud party. It added: “The government will encourage and develop
settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel — in the Galilee, the
Negev, the Golan, in Judea and Samaria.” Judea and Samaria are terms,
more colonial than they are biblical, that the Israelis use to describe
the West Bank.
Netanyahu may believe he can rein in the extremists he has brought
into his government but already Itamar Ben-Gvir is busy at what he does
best, drawing attention to himself through acts of incitement. Yesterday
accompanied by the police force he now commands he pushed his way onto
the Al Aqsa Mosque compound , tweeting “The Temple Mount is open to
everyone.” Ben-Gvir is agitating to allow non-Muslims to pray at one of
Islam’s three holiest sites.
This was after Jordan’s King Abdullah had warned
that any attempt to change the status of Jerusalem’s holy sites was a
red line. The king has custodianship of Muslim and Christian sites in
East Jerusalem. “If people want to get into a conflict with us, we’re
quite prepared,” he said. “I always like to believe that, let’s look at
the glass half full, but we have certain red lines… And if people want
to push those red lines, then we will deal with that.”
With tactics like Ben-Gvir’s and a commitment to both expand
settlements and move fast toward West Bank annexation, it is not just
Jordan that needs to be alert to the threat that Netanyahu’s new
extremist regime poses for regional stability. The Israelis, aided and
abetted by the Trump presidency, had achieved a significant breakthrough
with the Abraham Accords.
Recognition from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco with
Sudan close to following suit appeared to have cut the Palestinian cause
adrift from these four Arab countries with indications that sooner or
later Saudi Arabia would jump on the bandwagon. Although the leaders of
these authoritarian regimes see great advantage for themselves in close
ties to Israel, those they rule over do not. One thing that was clear
from the Doha World Cup was that the people of the Middle East remain firm in
their support for Palestine. The tighter their leaders’ links to Israel
as it embarks on a violently aggressive strategy that is ever more
apartheid and colonialist, the more difficult it will be to sell those
links to their own people.