Violence, destruction and death in Israel play right into Netanyahu’s hands

Another flare-up between Israel and the Palestinians is the inevitable result of Israeli political dysfunction and Palestinian perseverance.

Israel hasn’t had a stable government for years after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu successfully dragged his country through four elections without a clear result. Despite standing trial on corruption charges, his Likud Party still received the highest number of seats in the March election — but not enough to lead a majority in the Knesset.

The current dangerous escalation between Israel and Hamas, with dozens of Palestinians and Israeli citizens killed and a breakdown in Jewish and Arab cities, plays directly into Netanyahu’s hands. He’s a nationalist leader who can rally his people under slogans of standing “united in the face of a vile enemy”.

Sober Israelis realise there is no military solution to this crisis. Sadly these voices are almost impossible to hear now and most Western nations back Israel in its regular battles with Palestinians. At the United Nations, Australia is an outlier in its dealings with Israel, unwilling to ever condemn its actions. Arab dictatorships that made peace with Israel in the dying days of the Trump administration have little to show for it other than large defence contracts.

The Palestinian people are occupied and angry, led by the corrupt and repressive US and Israeli-supported Palestinian Authority (PA) — whose leader Mahmoud Abbas just postponed a much-needed election — and Hamas in Gaza which rules with an iron fist over its 2 million residents.

Ultimate control still rests with the occupying power, Israel, but I’m yet to meet a Palestinian in Jerusalem, West Bank or Gaza who doesn’t crave new, younger leaders with fresh ideas to end Israel’s occupation. As a result, there’s a growing, leaderless movement developing among Palestinians inside Israel and Palestine.

The wider context for the latest outbreak is the radicalisation of the Israeli public over the past two decades, a widespread belief in Jewish supremacy. The sight of state-backed, Israeli fanatics celebrating the destruction of Palestinian culture in the heart of Jerusalem this week was striking. On Jerusalem Day, a public holiday in Israel to commemorate the city’s reunification (and occupation) after the 1967 Six Day War, far-right activists danced with joy at the sight of a fire blazing in the al-Aqsa mosque compound.

The mood in Israel is angry. Jerusalem’s deputy mayor recently mocked a Palestinian activist and said it was a “pity” he wasn’t shot in the head. Netanyahu has formed a coalition with fascists to stay in power, a goal that is looking increasingly unlikely — although his possible replacements are little better. The problem isn’t just Netanyahu — despite many in the West believing that replacing him is the solution.

In a recent story in The New York Times on forced evictions of Palestinians from the East Jerusalem area of Sheikh Jarrah, Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, a deputy mayor of Jerusalem, happily acknowledged that the aim of legally discriminating against Palestinians was due to Israel being “a Jewish country. There’s only one. And of course, there are laws that some people may consider as favouring Jews — it’s a Jewish state. It is here to protect the Jewish people.”

I lived in Sheikh Jarrah from 2016 to 2020, just down the road from where the latest evictions may take place, and I constantly saw Israeli police harass Palestinians for the simple act of walking down the street. Back in 2009, during an earlier round of evictions, I saw Palestinians forced to sit on couches outside their own homes in Sheikh Jarrah after being kicked out by state-backed Jewish settlers.

On one level, the public discourse is shifting. Human Rights Watch recently declared that Israeli policies constitute crimes of apartheid and called for the International Criminal Court to investigate. It said nations should impose sanctions, travel bans and asset freezes on the responsible officials. The ICC is continuing with a separate investigation into alleged war crimes committed by Israel and Hamas in the occupied territories.

Only in the past few years have US politicians openly called for a reduction in US aid to the Jewish state if that money supports the abuse of Palestinians. US President Joe Biden has dismissed this idea as “bizarre”. Why Israel needs aid at all is a question that all-too-rarely comes up.

The recent decision by the Australian military to dump Israeli defence contractor Elbit due to security concerns was a rare case of Canberra publicly distancing itself from an Israeli company. Nonetheless, elements within the Australian Labor Party are mobilising to challenge the bipartisan consensus over Israel/Palestine and pushing for a settlement boycott.

It’s far from enough, and many Greens MPs are far more outspoken, but it’s a new development.

Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist, author and filmmaker who was based in East Jerusalem from 2016 to 2020. His next book, out in 2022, is on how Israel’s occupation has gone global.