All of Netanyahu’s political shenanigans, which served him well in the past, would fall short from allowing him to return to power.
Netanyahu must be restrained. If not, the Israeli genocide in Gaza will multiply into other genocides throughout the Middle East.
Netanyahu is desperate to show that Israel remains a powerful country and a regional power that deserves its often-touted status of having an ‘invincible’ army.
Certainly, what is taking place in ‘democratic’ and ‘stable’ Israel is truly unprecedented. Israel’s current vulnerability is accentuated by the massive and rapid changes to the political map of the Middle East and the world.
Though much of Israel’s self-proclaimed ‘independence’ was an outcome of unconditional US support, Israelis hardly acknowledge this fact.
To live up to Israel’s expectations and to ensure its survival, the PA is willing to clash directly with Palestinians who refuse to toe the line.
Now, armed with a stable coalition, immune from any meaningful criticism, let alone tangible consequences to his action, the Israeli leader feels ready to carry out his right-wing agenda without further hesitation.
For Netanyahu, the frequent deadly raids on Palestinian towns and refugee camps translate into political assets that allow him to keep his extremist supporters happy. But this is short-term thinking.
Time will tell what direction Washington will take in the future. But, considering the current evidence, support for Israel is dwindling at rates that are unprecedented.
It is the unity of those resisting on the ground, from Gaza to Nablus, and from Jenin to Sheikh Jarrah, that matters most.
While Israeli politicians and military strategists are openly fighting over who has cost Israel its precious ‘deterrence,’ very few seem willing to consider that Israel’s best chance at survival is peacefully co-existing with Palestinians.
Condemning Smotrich’s comments, while continuing to embrace Israel and celebrate Zionism is not only hypocritical, but also useless.
Ultimately, it took only six years for Africa to prove Netanyahu wrong, that Israel “did not return to Africa”. It is true, however, that Africa itself is returning to its anti-colonial roots.
With a rightwing, pro-war constituency that is far more interested in illegal settlement expansion and ‘security’ than economic growth or socio-economic equality, Netanyahu should, at least technically, be in a stronger position to launch another war on Gaza. But why is he hesitating?
While Palestinians are resisting Israel’s military occupation and apartheid, Ethiopian Jews should mount their own resistance for greater rights.
In truth, Israel has not changed much, either in its own self-definition or in its treatment of Palestinians. Failing to understand this is tantamount to tacit approval of Israel’s racist, violent and colonial policies in Occupied Palestine over the course of 75 years.
For Israel to change, a language of peace and reconciliation would have to replace the current atmosphere of incitement and war.
History has taught us that Muslims, Christians and Jews can peacefully coexist and collectively thrive, as they have done throughout the Middle East and the Iberian Peninsula for millennia. Indeed, this is a prediction, even a prophecy, that is worth striving for.
Israel is now facing the dilemma of either ignoring this new Palestinian factor, at its own peril, or accepting the inescapable fact that Israel can never enjoy stability while Palestinians remain occupied, confined and oppressed.
It turns out that morality cannot be divided based on geography, class, religion or race. It might be time for ordinary Israelis to accept this unavoidable truism.
So far, Bennett has proven to be another Netanyahu. Yet, if Israel’s longest-running prime minister ultimately failed to convince Israelis of the merit of his political doctrine, Bennett’s charade is likely to be exposed much sooner, and the price, this time, is sure to be even heavier.
While the Americans and the Israelis are busy engaging in the ever-familiar ritual of ‘putting lipstick on a pig’, the Palestinians remain irrelevant in all of this, as their political aspirations continue to be discounted, and their freedom delayed.
Whatever that is, it will surely be situated within the familiar context of Netanyahu’s angry army of Israeli right-wing zealots aided and abetted by Christian fundamentalists in the US and elsewhere. He may have won America, but — for now — he has lost Israel.
Netanyahu struggled to redeem his image. It was too late. As strange as this may sound, it was not Bennett or Lieberman who finally dethroned the ‘King of Israel’, but the Palestinians themselves.
With or without Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Israel is unlikely to produce a politically unifying figure, one who is capable of redefining the country beyond Netanyahu-style cult of personality.
Without a clear ideology, especially when combined with the lack of a written Constitution, Israeli politics will remain hostage to the whims of politicians and their personal interests, if not that of Netanyahu, then of someone else.
Although the ‘peace process’ has been declared ‘dead’ on multiple occasions, Abbas is now desperately trying to revive it, not because he – or any rational Palestinian – believes that peace is at hand, but because of the existential relationship between the PA and this US-sponsored political scheme.
Biden’s foreign policy is likely to be a continuation of Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’, though under a different designation. It is baffling that the Palestinian leadership is unable to see this, focusing instead, on steering the US back to a failed status quo, where Washington blindly supported Israel while paying Palestinians off for their silence.
The announcements are strategically timed, as they carry an unmistakable political message that Israel does not intend to reverse its settlement policies, regardless of who resides in the White House.
Certainly, for as long as Israeli leaders continue to see a war on Gaza as a political opportunity and a platform for their own electoral games, the siege will carry on, relentlessly.