{"id":12540,"date":"2023-02-02T15:46:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-02T13:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=12540"},"modified":"2023-02-02T15:46:06","modified_gmt":"2023-02-02T13:46:06","slug":"netanyahus-policy-leads-to-escalation-of-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=12540","title":{"rendered":"Netanyahu’s policy leads to Escalation of Violence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The new government of Benjamin Netanyahu, this time with a very strong presence of the extreme right who has taken over important ministries, already seems to be making choices that lead to an escalation of violence, especially when a key aspect of the ideology and practice of the extreme right is a strong rhetoric hatred against Arabs (please also read the analysis titled “Netanyahu is back: The Palestinians will have to wait for a tough war<\/a>“).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Israel’s own government, which is hosting US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken for talks, says it will respond decisively to the latest wave of deadly attacks in Jerusalem last Saturday, in which an armed Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem killed seven people near a synagogue, before being killed in his attempt to escape, while in the second a 13-year-old Palestinian wounded two Israelis. In fact, part of the measures being discussed are the expansion of the right of citizens to bear arms, the punishment of the families of those accused of terrorism, including measures such as the demolition of their houses and the withdrawal of social security rights of relatives.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Escalation of Israeli attacks<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, the attacks were preceded by an escalation of Israeli attacks in the occupied West Bank, where last Thursday 9 Palestinians \u2013 including a 61-year-old woman \u2013 were killed in a raid by Israeli security forces in Jenin in the West Bank, the most violent such raid since long enough. In addition, Israel later hit targets in Gaza in response to rocket fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Violence as a tool of political management of Netanyahu’s internal problems<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of this has to do with how Netanyahu handles such incidents and how to respond to the problems he faces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First of all, he has to deal with the large protests against the ongoing reform of the judicial system. These reforms, seen by many as Netanyahu’s own revenge against those who orchestrated his own prosecution, essentially include limiting the Supreme Court’s ability to overturn laws and government decisions and allowing a simple Knesset majority to reinstate these laws. It includes even greater ability of the government to appoint judges and limited ability of the courts to review government laws and decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of the proposed reforms is the division of the office of the Attorney General into two, where one will deal with the prosecutorial function and the other with legal advice to the government. The latter would allow Netanyahu to replace the current Attorney General with one of his own choosing who could review or even drop corruption charges against him and thus avoid conviction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, all of these are considered direct threats against the independence of the Judiciary and this was also seen in the way the President of the Supreme Court Esther Hayut declared that these reforms will be a mortal blow to the democratic identity of the country. Already the demonstrations that have been organized as a protest against the reforms in the judicial system are particularly massive with the participation of many thousands of citizens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, Netanyahu has to deal with internal divisions in the governing coalition. The confrontation between Likud Defense Minister Yoav Gallad and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is typical. Gallad ordered the demolition of an illegal settler outpost in the West Bank, while Smotrich, who is from the far-right Religious Zionist party, had asked his services to look into the case, without immediate demolition. At the same time, we must not forget that far-right Ben Gvir has under his responsibility other important parts of the security services, such as the Border Police.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The impasse continues<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The American government has expressed reservations about the escalation of violence on the Israeli side, and Washington would not like to see at this stage a rekindling of an issue that could invalidate various processes of consultation to form an “anti-Iranian” axis, as it turns out that the Palestinian is an issue that still has a lot of charge in the wider Middle Eastern public opinion. That is why Anthony Blinken, who is touring the region, starting on January 30 from Egypt, and will also visit Israel and the areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority, called for “calm” and “de-escalation”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Certainly, in view of Blinken’s visit, Netanyahu hastened on January 24 to visit Jordan and meet with King Abdullah II in Amman, declaring that Israel will respect the current regime regarding the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Istanbul and would like the restart of the peace process with the Palestinians. However, it was the far-right Itamar Ben Gvir, Netanyahu’s key government partner and Minister of National Security who caused tension not long ago with his provocative visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, it is clear that at the same time under pressure from his far-right government allies Netanyahu has acquiesced to a hard line towards the Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza. The proposals for heavy impact on relatives, the demolition of houses, the violent incursions of Israeli forces, the tolerance of settlement, but also the hate speech of the extreme right, all these point to a reluctance for any step of real dialogue. As a result, the cycle of violence is maintained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For their part, the Americans do not seem willing at this stage to pressure Netanyahu for a policy change. Blinken in his visit may have expressed a “rhetorical” support for the “two-state solution”, or indirectly criticized the reforms in the judicial system, but at the same time he reiterated the constant and robust support of the US to Israel and mainly condemned the attack near to the synagogue, but not the raid on Jenin, while refraining from criticizing the policy of the ongoing illegal settlements. In relation to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, he reiterated the firm position to maintain the existing regime, but without particular condemnation of Israeli practices that amount to a violation of this regime. On Netanyahu’s part, he did not fail to mention Iran, after all, his opposition to the agreement on Iran’s nuclear program is known, while he reiterated the firm Israeli position that they will do whatever it takes to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, all of this points to the fact that the US is not going to put much pressure on Israel at this stage to change its policy in relation to the Palestinian issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


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The new government of Benjamin Netanyahu, this time with a very strong presence of the extreme right who has taken over important ministries, already…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[823,390],"tags":[2441,153,1668,2401,1667,215,70],"class_list":["post-12540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle-east","category-politics","tag-far-right","tag-israel","tag-palestine","tag-palestinians","tag-plo","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12540"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12544,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12540\/revisions\/12544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}