Netanyahu’s falls: Netanyahus are here to stay

King Bibi is finally out of Balfour Street after 12 years in power. On Sunday in Knesset, the Israeli Parliament voted to replace hardcore Zionist, Benjamin Netanyahu with a change coalition, a group composed of centrist and leftist, united only with only one set goal of pushing Netanyahu out. Netanyahu’s legacy for Israel cannot be […]

King Bibi is finally out of Balfour Street after 12 years in power. On Sunday in Knesset, the Israeli Parliament voted to replace hardcore Zionist, Benjamin Netanyahu with a change coalition, a group composed of centrist and leftist, united only with only one set goal of pushing Netanyahu out.

Netanyahu’s legacy for Israel cannot be judged in the same ranking as that of Ben Gurion. Both are staunch Zionist ideologues and savvy politicians. Unlike Gurion, Netanyahu did not lead the so-called ‘”war of independence” but rather merged militias into an army and constructed a “national narrative” to counter the international narratives, which helped Israel to justify its numerous crimes against the Palestinians.

The downfall of the Likud Party is nothing else other than Netanyahu’s feeling of superiority, despite redefining the support of Israel around the world, bringing together right-wing religious zealots and chauvinistic, Islamophobic, far-right and ultra-nationalist parties around the world.

Netanyahu, in the last 12 years, has dominated Israelis politics which sees the implementation of right-wing policies among which is the entrenching of Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria popularly called West Bank. During Netanyahu’s reign, Gaza has been one huge prison camp, hemmed in on almost all sides by powerful Israeli warplanes.

The Bibi’s camp narratives tell the world Israel is defending itself against Hamas shelling but of truth, this is a collective punishment, disproportionate use of force – violating international law, declarations and convention.

The long journey led to the formation of a hawkish coalition that includes four national elections, tough negotiations, a personal ambition that outweighs ideology, Donald Trump politics which supported Bibi when both were in power, eight disparate political parties spanning the political spectrum, including the United Arab List, which is the first Arab party to join an Israeli governing coalition.

Now, Netanyahu has gone but his likes are here to stay. A far-right advocate for the settler movement in the Palestinian territories, Naftali Bennett of the Yamina Party, who incites violence, demonises Palestinian children and a hardcore anti-Arab is now Israeli leader and in romance with the opposition leader, Yair Lapid a centrist, who is initially supposed to be the PM but decided to form a government in a power sharing agreement, which will see Bennett rule for two years of the four-year term before relinquishing power to Lapid for the remaining two years.

With an ideological make up from left to right including uniquely in the Israeli government, Palestinian citizens, it will be less stable than the other government, but it is important to stress at the very beginning that those close to Netanyahu are the same people who now occupied the Balfour Street and the Knesset.

Bennett-Lapid coalition will not lead to positive change for Israel nor Palestine. These are people that previously served Netanyahu. The new PM once served as Netanyahu’s Chief of Staff and Education Minister and later Defence.  Gideon Sa’ar who is likely to be Bennett Minister of Justice once served as Netanyahu’s cabinet secretary, not to mention Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid who spearheaded the coalition have both been ministers of Bibi in the past.

Bennett has been a strong advocate of annexing parts of the West Bank that Israel captured and occupied in the 1967 war, this means he is no less extreme than Netanyahu. He has a long history of anti-Palestinian bigotry and once told a Palestinian member of the Knesset on live television “when you were still swinging from trees, we had a Jewish state here”. Also, in 2018 he was asked if he would instruct the army to shoot and kill Palestinian children who breach the border fence, Bennett said “they are not children – they are terrorists. We are fooling ourselves. I see the photos”. This is a proper far-right racist comment made by the new Israeli Prime Minister who is still of the opinion that a two-state solution is a fantasy.

Netanyahu’s Netanyahus are here to stay because Bibi has trained a generation of right-wing, far-right and ultra-nationalist Israeli politicians, giving rise to such unruly characters of the coalition leaders and he will be back as he remains head of the right-wing Likud Party and leader of the opposition.

 

Zanna Samaila wrote from Damaturu