{"id":13231,"date":"2023-04-13T21:29:05","date_gmt":"2023-04-13T18:29:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=13231"},"modified":"2023-04-13T21:29:11","modified_gmt":"2023-04-13T18:29:11","slug":"netanyahus-far-right-alliance-changes-the-facts-on-the-palestinian-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=13231","title":{"rendered":"Netanyahu’s Far-Right Alliance Changes the Facts on the Palestinian Issue"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jerusalem is the holy city of the three great monotheistic religions and this charges every inch of the old city. Just think that in Jerusalem, Quds in Arabic, Islam’s third holiest site, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, is located on the Temple Mount, the holiest site for Judaism. This year the charges are even more intense as Ramadan and Jewish Passover coincided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And matters were made even worse by the decision of a group of far-right Jews to climb the Temple Mount \/ al-Haram al-Sharif (as it is called in Arabic) last Wednesday. Traditionally, the position of most rabbis has been that Jews should not go up to the Temple Mount complex as purification ceremonies cannot be performed while the Temple is destroyed. They also held the view that the biblical sacrifices of lambs and goats should not be revived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, religious far-right activists who insist on claiming an increased presence have a different opinion. In fact, fifteen far-right rabbis requested on March 30 permission from the Israeli government to climb the Temple Mount \/ al-Haram al-Sharif at the beginning of the Jewish Passover. In fact, there is an entire far-right movement with the slogan “Back to the Mount” calling for Israel to take control of the Temple Mount \/ al-Haram al-Sharif complex. They even went so far as to offer rewards to anyone who would be caught trying to smuggle a lamb into the complex and even greater rewards to anyone who would succeed in sacrificing a lamb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result was, of course, great indignation among the Palestinians and major clashes with the Israeli security authorities at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. In turn, the images of Israeli police trying to storm the Mosque caused even more outrage among Palestinians and the Arab world as a whole (please read also the analysis titled “Erdogan with Hezbollah and Hamas instruments is hitting Israel hard<\/a>“).<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The escalating conflict<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, in recent months the confrontations between the Palestinians and the Israeli authorities have intensified. It had been preceded by large protests and confrontations over the efforts of the Israeli authorities to evict Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem – an area that has a special charge as the epitome of the occupation -, large and bloody police operations by the Israeli security authorities in the Occupied West Bank, but also a new wave of armed attacks by young Palestinians, who are suffocating in the condition of occupation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A role in all of this is played by the way that the new Netanyahu government relies above all on the representatives of the extreme right who also represent the settlers, the part above all that pushes for an even more aggressive line towards the Palestinians. After all, Netanyahu himself had roughly announced in the past the formal annexation of most of the West Bank. Of course, options such as the placement of far-right Itamar Ben-Gvir in the position of Minister of Security, who defiantly visited the Al-Aqsa Mosque in January, do not point to any “de-escalation” and who, following a relevant decision of the Cabinet, will also acquire armed force under his ministry’s control, in the form of the new National Guard corps, which many believe will escalate violence against Palestinians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of this creates greater concern but also indignation among Palestinians, especially the younger generation, who cannot reconcile themselves to the thought of being in this regime of citizens without rights symbolically (and practically\u2026) encapsulated in how the West Bank intersects constantly from the settlements, the fences and the roads of the settlers, while they themselves have to face the daily inconvenience of the check points to work in Israel and the authoritarian behavior of the Israeli police and soldiers.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rockets from Lebanon<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, it seems that the conflict is taking on other dimensions. On the afternoon of Thursday, April 6, 34 rockets were fired from South Lebanon towards Israel. Israeli air defenses \u2013 the “Steel Dome” system \u2013 managed to intercept 25, but five rockets managed to reach Israeli territory causing material damage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was the largest rocket attack on Israel from Lebanon since the 2006 war. The most recent major attack was in 2021 when Hezbollah sent 19 rockets into Northern Israel. Rockets were also fired from Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hezbollah itself denied it was responsible for the rockets, indirectly stating that Palestinian organizations were responsible. And it was no coincidence that the head of Hamas, Ismail Hamiye, visited on Thursday, April 6, and was hosted by Hezbollah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After all, as many point out, it would be very difficult for Palestinian organizations to proceed with such a large attack by Israel without the permission of Hezbollah, which controls South Lebanon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is clear that even in this case Hezbollah is sending the message that anything related to the Al-Aqsa Mosque is a red line that Israel cannot and must not cross, because then it faces even harsher attacks. For its part, Israel responded in the early hours of Friday, April 7 with airstrikes in Gaza and South Lebanon.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Israel’s double crisis<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These developments come to underline the double crisis in which Israel finds itself today. On the one hand, there is the political crisis concerning the large protests for the reform of the judicial system, which marginally took on the characteristics of an institutional crisis. Within this crisis, Netanyahu’s key strategic investment that Israel’s demographic dynamics amplify the voices represented by the far right translates into a worsening of the situation in relation to the West Bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This in turn exacerbates the second crisis which concerns precisely the reluctance to deal with the Palestinian issue in terms of a solution and not just alternating between escalation and limited calm. And this is because the line that supports colonization and repression, not only leads to the de facto cancellation of any perspective of a “two-state” solution, but also brings to the fore the very fact that from the Jordan and into the sea a region is being formed that the Israel controls it, without at the same time offering any guarantee that all the people who live in this area will enjoy the same human and democratic rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new wave of protests, conflicts and attacks shows that this occupation condition, which de facto turns the Palestinian population into a population with reduced rights, subject to oppression and over-exploitation, is far from acceptable, despite the inability of the Palestinian leadership to carve out an effective line of resistance and assertion. And this means that what seems like power will increasingly become a condition of crisis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jerusalem is the holy city of the three great monotheistic religions and this charges every inch of the old city. Just think that in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13235,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,834],"tags":[1087,1372,1110,153,1111,1668],"class_list":["post-13231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-geopolitical","category-middle-east-geopolitical","tag-benjamin-netanyahou","tag-hamas","tag-hezbollah","tag-israel","tag-lebanon","tag-palestine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13231","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=13231"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13237,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13231\/revisions\/13237"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}