On 13 January 2023, Niu Song, a researcher at the Middle East Studies Institute of Shanghai International Studies University, published an opinion piece in the Workers' Daily, ‘The future of the Palestinian-Israeli issue is feared to be more difficult’ (see Workers' Daily, 13 January 2023, page 8), which reads as follows.
The future of the Palestinian-Israeli issue is feared to be even more difficult
On 3 January, Itamar Ben-Gevir, Israel's first Minister of National Security and leader of the far-right Jewish Power party, made a powerful ‘visit’ to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem (the Noble Sanctuary in Muslim parlance) The move to the Al-Aqsa Mosque Square has ‘stirred up a thousand waves’ and has created a ripple in the increasingly tense Palestinian-Israeli relationship. This means that not only are relations facing a difficult start to the year, but there is little chance of a significant rebound throughout 2023. The renewed tension in Palestinian-Israeli relations is the inevitable result of the accelerated rightward shift in Israeli politics, and is also directly related to the far-right ‘undertones’ of Netanyahu's new government and regional developments.
The rightward shift in Israeli politics and the dilemma of parliamentary politics
The deterioration of Palestinian-Israeli relations has been normalised in the context of the rightward shift in Israeli politics. The rightward shift in Israeli politics in recent years is an indisputable fact, and this trend has been further accelerated by the Israeli parliamentary electoral political system and practice.
The Israeli parliament is unicameral, with a cabinet based on the results of parliamentary elections, and in the 1990s Israel briefly switched to a system of direct elections for the prime minister, but the results were ineffective and the system has since reverted to the old system.
Israel's parliamentary elections are based on party-based proportional representation, which has two consequences: firstly, the leaders of Israel's political parties have a significant role in the elections, and their personal vendettas and other factors play an even more confusing role in parliamentary politics.
The second is that there are many small parties in Israeli politics, and even though the minimum threshold has been raised in recent years, this ‘fragmentation’ has not fundamentally changed. As a result, small parties in the Israeli political arena are often in a special position of being a ‘critical minority’ and can easily become ‘kingmakers’ when it is difficult for large parties to form a government on their own.
These two points have been evident in the five parliamentary elections held in Israel since April 2019.
After the June 2021 parliamentary elections, Netanyahu's Likud bloc, the first to be given the right to form a cabinet, failed to do so on schedule, while the eight-party coalition that Bennett and Lapid then forged, spanning the left-centre-right, was able to do so by coalescing around the common goal of ‘anti-Netanyahu’. The defeat of Netanyahu and the success of the Lapid-led eight-party coalition were closely linked to Bennett's ‘defection’.
Bennett is widely seen as a ‘close friend’ and ‘protégé’ of Netanyahu, but his views on Palestinian-Israeli relations are more ‘right’ than Netanyahu's. As early as 2009, Bennett clashed with Prime Minister Netanyahu over his slowdown in Jewish settlement construction, and the collapse of the eight-party coalition government in June 2022 was also linked to his internal differences on Palestinian-Israeli relations, such as the two meetings between Gantz, the leader of the Blue and White Party as Defence Minister, and Palestinian leader Abbas, which sparked strong resentment from right-wing forces within Bennett's government.
In order to avoid a repeat of the ‘win the vote, lose the election’, Netanyahu formed the ‘most right-wing’ government in history after the November 2022 parliamentary elections, but this inevitably cast a new shadow over Palestinian-Israeli relations.
The arrival of Netanyahu's 'most right-wing' new government
On 29 December 2022, a new Israeli government was sworn in and Netanyahu was re-instated as Prime Minister. The arrival of the new Netanyahu government, comprising six right-wing and far-right parties, including the Likud, Shas, Jewish Power and the Religious Zionist Party, has inevitably put enormous pressure on Palestinian-Israeli relations.
The international community is particularly concerned about the appointment of Smotrych, the chairman of the Religious Zionist Party, who holds the post of Finance Minister in the new government and is responsible for ‘civil affairs’ in the West Bank, and Ben Gevers, Israel's first Minister of National Security. The latter had publicly announced his intention to expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank after Netanyahu's announcement of his successful cabinet formation and before he officially took office.
At the beginning of the new year 2023, Ben-Gvir's visit to Al-Aqsa Mosque Square confirmed the concerns of the international community.
Netanyahu was Prime Minister of Israel for 15 years, and during his tenure he interacted closely with US President Donald Trump, constantly crossing the ‘red line’ in Palestinian-Israeli relations over the capital of Jerusalem and Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Although Netanyahu lost his premiership in June 2021 and the new Bennett government eased up on Israeli-Palestinian relations, Prime Minister Bennett, as leader of a unified right-wing coalition, welcomed the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank in May 2022.
In other words, the eight-party coalition government that replaced Netanyahu has generally continued the basic ideas of Netanyahu's policy on Israeli-Palestinian relations. It is also likely that Netanyahu will further acquiesce to or cater to the provocative behaviour of the far-right in Israeli-Palestinian relations, based on considerations such as avoiding the collapse of the ‘right-most’ ruling coalition.
The complex evolution of the situation in the Middle East
The complex evolution of the current situation in the Middle East also has an impact on Palestinian-Israeli relations. Israel will continue to walk a tightrope between Palestinian-Israeli relations and Arab-Israeli relations, i.e. it will attempt to separate Palestinian-Israeli relations from Arab-Israeli relations and promote new developments in Arab-Israeli relations while increasingly marginalising the Palestinian issue. In this process, Israel's basic idea is to continue to shape and portray the Iranian ‘threat’.
In May 2022, Israel signed a free trade agreement with the UAE in Dubai, the first FTA between Israel and an Arab country.
In addition to this, Israel has taken advantage of the US-Iranian conflict and the conflict between Iran and many Arab countries to actively promote its relations with the relevant Arab countries.
With the support of the US, Israel has been promoting the formation of a ‘Middle East Air Defence Alliance’ to Arab countries, targeting Iran. Although no details have been made public, in September 2022 it was announced that Israel had sold the Spider air defence system and anti-drone technology to the UAE.
In general, Israel expects to improve and upgrade its relations with Arab countries to reduce its resistance to Palestinian-Israeli relations, but Arab nationalist sentiment and contradictions within Israel's ‘most right-wing’ government will also, to a certain extent, put a brake on Netanyahu's new government.
Source: Workers' Daily
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author or the interviewee and do not represent the position of this research institute)
