By Ariel Gold
June 15, 2021 "Information
Clearing House" - After 12 years,
Israel finally inaugurated a new prime minister.
While being hailed by many as the opportunity for a
fresh start, Naftali Bennett is at best a continuer
of Netanyahu’s policies and at worst an ideologue
whose positions are to the right of Netanyahu’s.
In 2013, as Middle East peace talks were set to
resume after a five-year freeze, Bennett reportedly
proclaimed to Israeli National Security Adviser
Ya’akov Amidror, "I’ve
killed lots of Arabs in my life – and there’s no
problem with that."
In 2014, Bennett, who had previously been the
director of the Yesha Settlements Council,
contradicted Netanyahu by
asserting that all Jewish Israelis living in the
West Bank, even those living in outposts that
violate Israeli law, should remain under Israeli
sovereignty, and called for more settlement
construction. "This is the time to act," he said.
"We must continue building in all corners of the
Land of Israel, with determination and without being
confused. We are building and we will not stop."
In 2016, as Israel’s Minister of Education,
Bennett
called on Israeli Jews to "give our lives" to
annex the West Bank. While this might seem
relatively innocuous, it was not. Bennett’s remarks
invoked Kahanism, a Jewish supremacist ideology,
based on the views of
Rabbi Meir Kahane, that calls for violence and
terrorism to be used to secure Israel as an
ethno-nationalist state. In 1994, Israeli settler
and Kahane follower Baruch Goldstein
massacred Palestinians in the West Bank Ibrahimi
mosque. In 1988, the Kach party was
banned from running for the Israeli Knesset. In
2004, the US State Department
labeled Kach a terrorist organization.
Sunday, June 13, 2021, right before he was
inaugurated to replace Netanyahu as the prime
minister of Israel, Bennett doubled down on his
anti-Palestinian views
proclaiming that his government would
"strengthen settlements across the whole of the Land
of Israel."
No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is
Independent Media
It’s not only on the Palestinian issue that
Bennett is a far-right ideologue. Bennett uses his
adherence to orthodox Judaism as cover for his
opposition to gay marriage. "Judaism doesn’t
recognize gay marriage, just as we don’t recognize
milk and meat together as kosher, and nothing will
change it," he
declared. Netanyahu, by contrast, touts himself
as being pro-LGBTQ+ rights. As recently as 2018 he
wrote: "I am proud to be the prime minister of
one of the world’s most open and free democracies…
Israel consistently upholds civil equality and civil
rights of all its citizens regardless of race,
religion, gender or sexual orientation."
So why then are progressive politicians and
organizations responding so positively to the change
in Israel? Bernie Sanders, known for his progressive
stances and for being a congressional champion of
Palestinian rights,
said in a video that he was "hopeful" that the
new government would be one "we will be better able
to work with." Americans for Peace Now, the sister
organization of Shalom Achshav, Israel’s preeminent
anti-settlement/pro-peace organization, released a
statement that it "welcomes the swearing-in of
Israel’s new government." On Sunday night after the
new government was sworn in, thousands of Israelis
took to
the streets in Tel Aviv – considered Israel’s
bastion of secular liberalism – and celebrated into
the night.
One answer lies in how fed up people inside and
outside of Israel had become with Netanyahu’s rule.
His tenure was marred by corruption charges and
shrewd maneuvers to remain in power, and what had
become an endless cycle of Israeli elections, during
which the government was paralyzed and unable to
pass a budget for the past three years.
The other answer, however, is that this was the
best change that could be obtained from a government
that prevents about five million people living under
its rule from being able to vote. Here’s the
situation:
About 20% of Israeli citizens are Palestinian.
They can vote in all Israeli elections and have
representation in Knesset. This election saw the
first Palestinian party join an Israeli majority
government coalition. However, Palestinians with
Israeli citizenship represent only about one-third
of the Palestinians living under Israeli rule and
military occupation.
Though the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are
the official governments of the West Bank and Gaza,
respectively, Israel is the absolute power in
charge. Israel controls the borders, the currency,
and the central bank. It collects taxes on behalf of
the Palestinian Authority (PA), maintains the right
to carry out military operations on Palestinian
land, and controls the amount of freedom, or lack
thereof, that Palestinians are granted.
Israel approves only about
half of the permits that residents of Gaza apply
for to travel outside of Gaza for vital medical
treatment. In 2017, 54 people died while awaiting a
permit to travel for medical treatment, leading to
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Medical
Aid for Palestinians (MAP), Physicians for Human
Rights Israel (PHRI), and Al Mezan Center for Human
Rights, to release a joint
statement calling for the blockade of Gaza to be
lifted.
Reasons for denying people in Gaza necessary
medical treatment are often absurd, such as denying
travel because a relative at one time
moved from Gaza to the West Bank without Israeli
permission. Even when not carrying out a massacre,
such as the May 2021 one that
killed 256 Palestinians, Israel regulates the
fuel and building materials available to Gazans. At
times, it has even controlled the number of food
imports according to the number of
calories Gazans should consume.
Israel controls not only the exterior borders of
the West Bank but what goes on inside as well. While
the Palestinian Authority manages utilities and
infrastructure for much of the West Bank, Israel is
the ultimate authority. Israeli settler regional
councils control
40%
of West Bank land. Even in areas like Ramallah,
supposedly under complete Palestinian Authority
control, Israel reserves the right to enter the city
at any time, close streets and shops, burst into
homes, and make warrantless arrests.
While the PA does maintain a judicial and penal
system, one that itself is incredibly repressive,
Palestinians are also subject to Israel’s military
court system and laws such as
Military Order 101, which bans peaceful protest.
Though they are prosecuted in Israeli military
courts and serve time in Israeli military prisons,
Palestinians have no say over who is appointed to
run the Israeli military, let alone the military
courts.
Jerusalem was captured by Israel in 1967 and
formally, and illegally, annexed in 1980. Common
sense might follow that Israel would have then
absorbed the East Jerusalem Palestinians, now
numbering around
370,000, and made them Israeli citizens.
Rather than holding citizenship, however,
Jerusalem Palestinians hold the status of permanent
residents, allowing them to vote in municipal, but
not national, elections. While this may at first
seem a move in the right direction, a closer look
reveals careful manipulation of demographics to
ensure an at least a 70% Jewish majority at all
times. Through such policies as exorbitant taxation,
requiring constant proof of residency, and denial of
family unification, since 1967 Israel has managed to
revoke the residency of
14,595 Palestinian Jerusalemites.
Right now Israel’s courts are in the process of
ethnically cleansing the East Jerusalem neighborhood
of Sheikh Jarrah. Before the Nakba, when over
750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes
and lands to establish the state of Israel, two
Jewish trusts purchased a plot of land in the Sheikh
Jarrah neighborhood. When Israel was established,
the Jewish families living in Sheikh Jarrah left for
West Jerusalem as that section of the city was now
part of the new state of Israel while East Jerusalem
came under Jordanian and UN control. In 1956, Jordan
and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine
Refugees resettled 28 Palestinian families who had
been forced out of their homes inside the new state
of Israel into Sheik Jarrah. In exchange for giving
up their rightful refugee status, the 28 families
were to receive ownership of the Sheikh Jarrah
properties, but they never got the deeds to their
properties. Israel is now trying to return the
properties to the Jewish trusts who later sold them
to Nahalat Shimon, a real-estate company registered
in the US state of Delaware. The kicker is that
while Israel regularly uses this tactic to remove
Palestinians from East Jerusalem, Israeli law bars
Palestinians from recovering property they lost in
the Nakba, even if they still reside in areas
controlled by Israel.
2021 marks 54 years of occupation, including 14
years of the siege of Gaza, and 28 years since the
signing of the Oslo Accords that were supposed to
create a Palestinian state.
600,000 Israeli citizens now live in the
approximately 200 illegal Israeli settlements that
cover the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
A breakdown of who is and isn’t allowed to vote
between the Jordan river and the sea reveals
Israel’s motivations:
- Number of Jewish Israelis living in Israel
proper, and East Jerusalem, and West Bank
settlements: 6.589 million (Israeli Central
Bureau of Statistics)
- Number of Palestinian citizens of Israel
(Palestinians who can vote in national
elections): 1.5 million (Israeli Central Bureau
of Statistics and Jerusalem Municipality)
- Number of Palestinians in the West Bank,
East Jerusalem, and Gaza who cannot vote in
Israeli national elections: 4.88 million
(Palestinian Authority Central Bureau of
Statistics)
As we get to know Israel’s new prime minister and
government, as we continue to watch Israel forcibly
remove Palestinians from East Jerusalem, as we worry
about a next massacre in Gaza, and as we continue to
hear the absurd label of Israel as a democratic
state, let’s not forget that the right to vote is
only granted to 60% of the total population and only
one-third of Palestinians who live under Israeli
rule had any say Naftali Bennett becoming Israel’s
thirteenth prime minister.
Ariel Gold is the national codirector and
senior Middle East policy analyst with
CODEPINK for
Peace
Registration is necessary to post comments.
We ask only that you do not use obscene or offensive
language. Please be respectful of others.