Israel: “Solidarity among all who live here”

Submitted by martin on 28 March, 2023 - 7:52 Author: Martin Thomas
Anti-Netanyahu protest

On 27 March, Israel’s right-wing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, leading a new coalition government with heavy far-right representation, said he would delay until the next Knesset session (starting 30 Apr) the constitutional changes he wants.

The delay came after Netanyahu sacking his Defence Minister for suggesting such a delay - and after 12 weeks of street protests reaching a crescendo on Sunday 26th, a call for a full general strike by Israel’s Histadrut trade-union federation, and that strike starting on the Monday morning.

But the changes have only been paused, not dropped. The Jewish-Arab social movement Standing Together called for “solidarity among all who live here: we will not agree that in exchange for freezing the coup d’état legislation, a Kahane-ist [ultra-right] militia will be established to serve the racist vision of Ben Gvir” (the far-right Security Minister, who has been promised control over the National Guard as a quid-pro-quo for accepting the pause).

This Netanyahu government has already “legalised” four Israeli settlements in the West Bank renounced by Ariel Sharon in 2005.

It has appropriated more West Bank land for an Israeli army training range. On 26 March Israeli police raided the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem.

Netanyahu’s drive is to sustain his coalition, and to change the law to safeguard himself against the corruption case long brewing against him. His constitutional changes would enable the government to control appointment of judges and, with only the slightest parliamentary majority, to override Supreme Court rulings about conflict with Israel’s Basic Law.

Israel has long had a trickle of “refusers”, teenagers who refuse the military service compulsory for non-ultra-Orthodox Jewish citizens. Now large numbers of experienced reservists are refusing to report.

The air force has had to cancel a training exercise because reservists chose not to report. There is talk of career “special operations” soldiers resigning. Less specialist units have a 10 to 15 percent drop in people reporting for service in the West Bank. On 23 March, military-industry workers staged a protest outside a major military-equipment factory.

Former bosses of the police and of Shin Bet (Israel’s equivalent of MI5) have said that in a showdown between the Netanyahu government and the courts, their institutions will follow the courts.

Netanyahu has dissociated from some far-right members of his coalition who want to ban Christian advocacy in Israel (penalty: one year for talking with an adult, two years for a minor: Israel has a sizeable Arab Christian minority). But he has pointedly not kicked back against moves by ultra-Orthodox members of the coalition to narrow the definition of “Jews” eligible to enter Israel under the “Law of Return”.

The protests have been dominated by the “moderate” right, and political leaders who have never objected to the expansion of Israeli settlements and military control in the West Bank, or the blockade and bombardments of Gaza. The “mainstream” Israeli left, much diminished in recent years, has said little distinctive.

But Standing Together, a Jewish-Arab grassroots movement for “peace and independence for Israelis and Palestinians, full equality for all citizens, and true social, economic, and environmental justice”, has mobilised. It stresses that the moves against democracy within Israel are fundamentally linked to the increased aggression against the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, and the denial of the right of the Palestinians to an independent state of their own.

On 19 March Egypt hosted a conference with Jordan, the USA, the Palestinian Authority, and Israel, to talk about avoiding a lurch into full-scale guerrilla war in the West Bank, or renewed war (as in 2021 and many times previously) between Israel and Gaza, especially during Ramadan (22 March to 21 April). Arab governments linked to Israel through the “Abraham Accords” are limiting themselves to mild complaints.

The Palestinians in the West Bank have every right in principle to resist Israeli occupation arms in hand. However, the configuration under which the Palestinians are mostly assigned to 160-odd distinct areas, towns and villages with nominal autonomy, surrounded by an “Area C” under Israeli military control, means that military clashes are more likely to help Netanyahu recoup some support within Israel than to push him back. The way to win Palestinian rights is through an alliance between Palestinians and democratic and internationalist opinion within Israel, on the basis of recognising the rights of both nations, as against both Netanyahu’s all-too-real drive for "one state" marginalising the Palestinians, and the hopeless Hamas programme of overrunning Israel in favour of an Islamist and Arab conquest.

A serious danger must be that Netanyahu now gets a rotten compromise which gives him, not everything, but enough enhanced power to serve his immediate needs, and opens the way for him to press ahead with projects such as the formal annexation of most of the West Bank to Israel.

Much depends on the capacity of Standing Together and others to make the connections, and to build from the backlash against Netanyahu a positive mobilisation for democracy and for social equality.

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