Politics, World, Analysis, Middle East

The settlers' coup and the future of Israel

Israeli writer Gideon Levy has assessed for Anadolu Agency how the settler mentality, once considered as marginal, has acquired so much power - along with all its political, legal, and military institutions - by taking advantage of coalition governments where far right parties wield enormous leverage.

03.05.2016 - Update : 09.05.2016
The settlers' coup and the future of Israel

Tel Aviv

TEL AVIV

The young man is seen lying on the road, alive but injured, with none of the soldiers or medic present attempting to give him any first aid or pay him any attention at all.

Suddenly one of the soldiers – a paramedic – cocks his rifle and shots him in the head from close range, killing him. Although this happens in plain view of the soldiers and settlers milling about on the scene, nobody seems to take any notice.

The video of the seeming execution of Palestinian ‘Abd al-Fatah al-Sharif – who allegedly participated in a knife stabbing of an Israeli soldier in Hebron – a full ten minutes after he was disarmed and no longer posed a threat to anyone, quickly went viral on social media and put Israeli society in turmoil.

When it became known that the shooter had been arrested and was facing a military court, there was an immediate outpouring of support and solidarity with Sergeant Elor Azaria, who in Israel was perceived not only as a victim but as a national hero.

Supporters for his release gathered in the thousands at Tel Aviv’s largest assembly place, Rabin Square in the city centre.

They carried signs reading “KILL THEM ALL” and beat up journalists. This was the very square where Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated twenty years ago by another right wing extremist, Yigal Amir, who wanted to put an end to Rabin’s efforts to reach a settlement with the Palestinians and divide the land between the two peoples.

It is also the square that, thirty-five years ago, saw some 400,000 Israelis gather to protest the massacre committed by Christian Phalangists – under the watchful eye of the Israeli army – in the Palestinian refugee camps Sabra and Shatila in Beirut.

The recent history of Israel in a nutshell; all the sociological and political changes that Israel has been going through in the last decades played out on one square.

Although most of the Israeli society embraced Elor Azaria (who was later sentenced for manslaughter; verdict not yet given), there was also a tiny minority of Israelis who were shocked by the execution in Hebron.

It was not the first time that a Palestinian knife-stabber was killed rather than neutralized and arrested – nor will it be the last – but it was the first time it was documented on tape, where no room was left for doubt of what happened.

And so Israel was quickly divided between a majority who believes that Palestinian lives are worth nothing; that Israel has a God-given right to do whatever it wants; that the occupation is not an occupation at all, and the Israelis are the chosen people – vis-à-vis a shrinking minority who believes that Israelis and Palestinians not only should have equal rights but are also equal human beings.

Unfortunately, the latter has become an endangered species at peril of extinction.

With the most right-wing, nationalist government in Israel’s history in power; with almost no serious political alternative or opposition; with a free media which chooses to relinquish its ethics and integrity to pander to the masses for commercial reasons, and with an ongoing campaign to weaken and delegitimize independent agents critical of power, such as the Supreme Court, the civil society and the human rights NGOs, Israel is hurtling along in one unambiguous and disastrous direction, with no-one to stop it.

There could not have been a better illustration of this than the case of the soldier in Hebron – executioner and victim; murderer and hero.

The Israeli peace camp vanished in the second Palestinian intifada, which erupted in 2000 after then opposition leader Ariel Sharon made a politically charged visit to the Temple Mount, which is also the site of the al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest place in Islam.

The suicide bombers and the exploding buses that ensued, crushed the Israeli left’s narrative of a future of peaceful coexistence (which puts into question how solid and earnest in its intentions it was in the first place).

Labour’s Prime Minister Ehud Barak added to the peace camp’s demise when he returned from Camp David, the last serious effort to come to an agreement with the Palestinians, spreading the opinion that there is no Palestinian partner for peace.

The Israelis – including many in the so called left – were all too eager to believe him, and this put the last nail in the coffin of the Israeli peace movement. There has been no resurrection ever since.

Israeli society’s shift to the right is not only apparent in the elections, or in the polls, which one after the other shows the average Israeli heavily leaning towards nationalism and even racism; it does not only manifest itself in the political sphere.

It is the entire Israeli discourse which has changed dramatically and left very little hope, not only of achieving peace with its neighbours, but also of Israel becoming a real democracy – or even of Israeli society holding on to its current liberties –because after the death of the peace camp there quickly started to appear cracks in the democratic system of Israel.

It is here important to bear in mind that Israel has a very unique system, combining three separate governing structures in one state: a liberal Western-style democracy for its Jewish citizens; a discriminatory system for its Arab citizens, and an oppressive apartheid regime in the occupied Palestinian territories.

In recent years also the first regime of Israel – the one which Israel is so proud to present as an island of freedom and justice in the midst of Arab chaos and despotism; the only democracy in the Middle East – has started to crack.

Anti-democratic legislation, a systematic campaign to undermine civil society, the NGOs and the Supreme Courts, incitement towards Arabs and non-Jews as well as leftists, and an increase in violence and general lack of tolerance in Israeli Jewish society are irrevocably changing the face of Israel.

In 2016, in the 49th year of the occupation, in the 68th year of its existence, Israel is at a dramatic crossroads.The only state without defined territorial borders may go forward in a number of directions.

The continuation of the status quo means first of all the continuation of the occupation. This entails not only the ongoing inhuman suffering of the Palestinians living under its brutality; it also means that the strongest political group in Israeli society - the settlers and their supporters - will entrench their powers and continue to dominate the discourse.

Being almost the only active and energetic ideological group – doggedly working to advance their goals, by all means possible, legal or not – in what has become a lethargic and apathetic society, concerned mainly by its own leisure and material wealth, the settlers have over the years succeeded to take over the Israeli government and to thoroughly influence public opinion.

Make no mistake, the responsibility for this gradual, ongoing coup d’état lays solely on the majority, whose silence and indifference has enabled the settlers to move across the green line to the West Bank and capture the centre of the country.

Today, with almost 700,000 Israeli Jews living on Palestinian lands, with their people representing their interests in any possible hub of power and influence, from the Supreme Court to the parliament, the army, the police and the secret services, every Israeli is in a way a settler. We all carry responsibility. 

A lot of the damage done may be irreversible, but Israel can still save itself from turning into a fascist society.

Unfortunately, Israeli society seems to be neither interested in nor worried about its future. The mechanisms of brainwash are effective and life in Israel is good enough, all of which ensures that change will not come from within Israel.

This is horrifying news, at least for the last remains of Israel’s left.

The only hope of change will come from an international intervention. Only the international community is able to not only save the Palestinians from the Israeli occupation but to save Israel from its own violent settler mentality.

A continuance of the status quo – which one should bear in mind, is not really a status quo, since every single day the situation deteriorates, more settlements are being built and more Palestinians killed – means a point of no return is rapidly approaching.

The wakeup call will not come from within a society in blindness and moral coma. The wakeup call will most likely also not come from Israel’s biggest ally, the United States of America, which supports and finances all this.

The only nonviolent wakeup call can come from public opinions and governments in the very democratic club of nations which Israel considers itself to be part of.

In the first 49 years of occupation the wakeup call didn’t come. Will it, in the year of its anniversary?

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