March 2021 Israeli elections and "fifty shades of right"

Israel is going to have its fourth national Knesset elections in two years in March 2021. Whether this election will result in a stable government is anybody's guess. However, one thing is certain, rightwing will dominate the Knesset and the new government, irrespective of how long they last. This will be a case of "fifty shades of right." This means that any meaningful solution to the Israel-Palestine issue is unlikely, to say the least.

Following are excerpts from my article Upcoming Israeli elections and its impact on Palestinians published in Naya Daur: 

National elections will be held in Israel in March 2021 and these elections will again be dominated by the rightwing, making a solution of the Palestinian issue unlikely or impossible. This article unpacks why Israel is having the fourth national election in two years. Later, it analyzes the politics of various rightwing leaders and parties regarding the Palestinian issue to see whether this election can lead to a solution to the Israel-Palestine conundrum...

Today, Israel’s political space is dominated by rightwing parties, which Eran Globus’s an Israeli analyst termed, “fifty shades of right.”  The major rightwing party is the Likud party. It has been in government since 2009, with Netanyahu as PM. This party is expected to win the most seats (28 or 29) in the coming elections. Most of the rightwing parties, except religious parties, have come out of Likud as their leaders have been part of Likud and served in Netanyahu administrations. The most recent and the most important breakaway party is called “New Hope” and is led by Gideon Sa’ar, who until last month was a Likud member for 17 years and was Netanyahu’s Minister of Education (2009- 13) and Minister of Interior (2013-14). New Hope is expected to win the second largest number of seats (17 or 18) in the Knesset.

 Source: hk3.news

 

Yamina, the party/coalition that is expected to win the third largest number of seats (between 12 and 14) is again led by someone who was tutored by Netanyahu for a number of years. Nafteli Bennet entered politics in 2006 as Chief of Staff to the then Leader of Opposition Netanyahu and served him until 2008. He then served as leader of an Israeli settler organization before forming his own political party and remained minister with different portfolios in Netanyahu-led governments.

 

Two key religious parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism, expected to win seven or eight seats each, are also loyal allies of Netanyahu and are likely to support him in forming the next coalition government. Shas represents the Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish people (from Middle Eastern and North African countries) while the United Torah Judaism represents Ashkenazi Jewish people (from European countries). While most of the supporters of these parties are Ultra-orthodox religious Jewish, some modern orthodox and secular Jewish people also support them.

 

Next, we have Yisrael Beytenu, a party led by Avigdor Lieberman, another Netanyahu protégé.  From 1993 to 1996, when Netanyahu was the party leader, Lieberman served as Director-General of the Likud. After the Likud party won the election and Netanyahu was the Prime Minister, Lieberman became the Director-General of the PM's Office for a year (1996-97). In 1999, he formed his own party, Yisrael Beytenu, and has been part of numerous rightwing governments under Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, and Netanyahu. Yisrael Beytenu is expected to win five or six seats in March. As the table below shows, the rightwing is going to dominate the March 2021 elections winning between 76 and 82 of the total 120 Knesset seats.

 

 

Public Opinion Polls for March 2021 elections: Expected number of seats

Party	Minimum	Maximum
Likud	28	29
New Hope	17	18
Yamina	12	14
Shas	7	8
United Torah Judaism	7	7
Yisrael Beytenu	5	6
Total Rightwing seats	76	82

 

 

Many people think that Netanyahu is the biggest obstacle to peace in the Middle East. It might be true in the past but now there are numerous obstacles to peace. The leadership of all the parties discussed above has at various times opposed giving any concessions to the Palestinians. Lieberman resigned numerous times whenever even a small concession was given to the Palestinians. He was dismissed by PM Sharon for his harsh opposition to Gaza disengagement in 2004 and resigned in 2008 for resuming peace talks with Palestinians and again in 2018 for ending the brutal Gaza War. He has also given many statements against Palestinians and Israeli Arabs which were considered racist by many analysts. Bennet, the leader of the Yamina party, as mentioned above, served as leader of an Israeli settler organization and has been opposed to a Palestinian state and to the freezing or uprooting of illegal Jewish settlements. Similarly, Gideon Sa’ar of the New Hope party has always been to the right of Netanyahu. He has been a recalcitrant opponent of the two-state solution (calling it once a two-state illusion) and has shown an inability to show genuine concern for Palestinian rights. Religious parties, Shas and United Judaism, do not have a clear policy on the two-state solution but are against the division of Jerusalem and the freezing of Israeli settlements, making them unlikely partners in a peace deal.

 

The discussion above clearly shows that the new Israeli government will not be supportive of the two-state solution, so the ordeal of the Palestinians is, unfortunately, going to continue. The election campaign will force these parties to move more to the right to outflank each other, resulting in extreme and intransigent positions regarding a Palestinian state. 

The "othering" of Israeli-Arabs continues

Two articles detailing how Israeli-Arabs face racism in the Israeli society and how many officials of Israeli state encourages this racism. A recent statement by the Israeli Defense Minister demonstrates how Israeli-Arab are not considered part of the Israeli nation and how Isreali politicians, working at the highest level, have no moral or political compunctions in helping propagate and promote the 'othering' of around 20% of Israeli citizens (Israeli-Arabs) and brazenly working for an exclusive Jewish nationalism.

Akiva Eldar's article Israeli defense minister's comments highlight 'plague of racism' gives a general overview of racism and bigotry in the Israeli society and state's promotion of it:

In a Dec. 12 interview with my colleague Mazal Mualem, Liberman proudly held up a poll indicating that 93% of Israelis who had emigrated from the former Soviet Union in recent decades (one of his party’s main constituent groups) support his call to boycott businesses in Wadi Ara. 

If this poll is really accurate, the migrants are not alone. According to a comprehensive study conducted last year by the Pew Research Center, the cancer of racism has spread to Israelis of all stripes. The poll found that almost half the Jews in Israel, 48%, think Israel should expel its Arab citizens, who constitute some 20% of the country’s population. Eight out of ten Arab Israelis (79%) said there was widespread discrimination of Muslims by Israeli society. 

A study presented in July to Knesset members indicates that academia, one of the institutions expected to uphold democratic values, is not immune to racism, either. About half the Arab students said they encounter manifestations of racism and discrimination in colleges and universities they attend, and 40% reported expressions of racism by faculty members. One-third of the students reported that the institutions in which they were enrolled did not give them any leeway to help their integration — not even taking into consideration Muslim holidays and fasts, and 30% said they could not apply for scholarships they wanted because they had not served in the military (unlike Israeli Jews who are required to perform military service). 

In a September 2016 report, State Comptroller Josef Shapira wrote, “We have been experiencing the harsh phenomena of hatred, racism, violence, factionalism and intolerance.” The chief government watchdog went on to cite the disastrous results of historic racism against the Jewish people. “Human society, wherever and whenever it is, has no guarantee that the underbrush of racism will not turn into a dense forest,” he warned. Shapira upbraided the Education Ministry — the state arm tasked with eradicating racism, xenophobia and factionalism — for failing to turn education into a bridge between the various segments of Israeli society. The ministry only addresses these issues sporadically, on a case-by-case basis, and then only following extreme displays of racism, Shapira wrote. 

President Reuven Rivlin said in response that the report reflects the extent to which racism had become an acute and strategic issue for Israeli society. He complained that “the state is not doing enough to uproot severe phenomena of racism and hatred among youth.” Several months prior to the report, Education Minister Naftali Bennett derailed a program for the development of a “racism index” initiated by the ministry’s chief scientist, professor Ami Volansky, after the July 2014 murder by Jews of Palestinian teen Mohammed Abu Khdeir. The index was designed to allow schools to assess the level of racism among its students and to seek appropriate remedies. 

Bennett subsequently ordered his office to sever ties with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which runs programs for the prevention of racism, among its other activities. This week, his ministry ordered a high school in the northern town of Nesher to cancel a planned annual event with members of bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families, the Parents Circle Family Forum. The ministry forced the mayor, himself a bereaved father, and the school’s frightened teachers to prevent the students from meeting with six Jews and Palestinians who devote their lives to the struggle for peace and against racism. 

A Knesset committee is currently deliberating an article that would officially allow segregation, part of a proposed law that would define Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. It authorizes the state to “permit a community, including the members of a single religion or the members of a single nationality, to establish separate localities.” In an editorial titled “Israel’s Attempts to Preserve a Racist Heritage," the liberal Haaretz newspaper wrote: “It would be interesting to see Israel’s response if some other country passed a constitutional amendment letting communities that exclude Jews be established.… ‘Judaism’ isn’t a synonym for racism and elitism.”

Source: Liberman: 'Joint Arab List is a fifth column'

Mazal Mualem's article Liberman intensifies campaign against Israeli Arabs focuses on Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman. He is determined to become the next Prime Minister of Israel and is willing to throw Israeli-Arabs and Israel's peace and stability under the bus to fulfil his dream. 

At the request of Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, his associates prepared for him several lists concerning Israeli Arab Knesset members. These lists, containing details of past comments made by those members condemning Israel and also data on terrorist attacks perpetrated by Israeli Arabs, appeared on his desk in the Knesset on Dec. 11. He used this information in a speech to the Knesset attacking the Joint Arab List, even calling them "war criminals.” 

Among the people featured in Liberman's lists was former Knesset member Azmi Bishara. Appearing beside his name was the charge against him: "Accused of high espionage: making contact with a Hezbollah agent." There was Knesset member Jamal Zahalka who "while in the 12th grade was arrested and sent to prison for two years for membership in an illegal PLO group.'' Then there was former Knesset member Basel Ghattas, "a cousin of Bishara, who smuggled 12 cell phones to prisoners." Chairman of the Joint Arab List and Knesset member Ayman Odeh was listed as having "refused to attend the funeral of President Shimon Peres, calling Peres 'the murderer from Kafr Kanna.'" There were also quotes such as "within us, we Arabs refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state," which was attributed to a speech delivered by Knesset member Zahalka in December 2007 and later quoted by the website Checkpoint. 

Liberman's assertive speech came just a day after he used interviews with Army Radio and Reshet Bet radio to call for a consumer boycott of Arab businesses in the northern Israeli-Arab Wadi Ara region. Actually, this was a new stage in his longstanding campaign against the Israeli Arab community over the past few election cycles. This time, his attack was triggered by the violent demonstrations in Wadi Ara, which broke out in response to US President Donald Trump's Jerusalem proclamation on Dec. 6. During the course of these protests, Arab youths hurled rocks at police cars, private vehicles and buses throughout the Sabbath on Dec. 9. 

"Simply impose a consumers' boycott and don't go in there. Don't enter their restaurants or their businesses. Don't get your cars fixed there. The residents of Wadi Ara must understand that they're unwanted and that they're not part of us. They’re working from within to harm the State of Israel," said Liberman, adding fuel to the flames in an already tense atmosphere. 

All at once, Liberman removed the mantle of formality that he had donned upon entering the office of the minister of defense in May 2016. He went back to being chairman of a right-wing nationalist party Yisrael Beitenu who would rather exacerbate tensions instead of restoring calm. Politicians on both the left and right expressed their reservations about his remarks, including co-leader of the Zionist Camp Tzipi Livni, Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan of Likud and Education Minister Naftali Bennett. It was exactly what Liberman expected. It was what he had hoped to achieve.