[News] War on Gaza is the glue that binds Israel's opposing camps

[Anti-Imperialist News]

972mag.com <https://www.972mag.com/gaza-war-israeli-opposition/>
War on Gaza is the glue that binds Israel's opposing camps
Amjad Iraqi - May 9, 2023
------------------------------
The Israeli right and center left have learned time and again that the best
way to paralyze the opposition is to launch an assault on the blockaded
strip.
[image: image.png]

It was only a matter of time before Jewish Israelis — socially
disintegrated, politically divided, economically sinking, and
diplomatically entangled — would once again gather around the common
denominator under which they can all embrace: the slaughter of Palestinians
in Gaza <https://www.972mag.com/topic/gaza/>.

Once again, Israel has set out to “eliminate senior jihadists.” Once again,
the army has killed women and children with indiscriminate air strikes. And
once again, Israel’s political opposition is cheering from the stands.

The circularity in which all of this is being carried out clearly proves
that Israeli political leaders are not looking for security. After all,
even the most foolish of the death mongers on both the right and left must
understand by now that these strikes are incapable
<https://www.972mag.com/hamas-sinwar-assassination/> of eliminating
Palestinian resistance, so long as oppression itself continues. Rather,
these leaders are looking for blood: revenge for the Palestinians’
insistence on existing, living, and demanding their freedom.

Subscribe to The Landline +972's weekly newsletter

The Israeli right has greeted the current round of carnage in Gaza with
horrifying glee. “A nice start,” said
<https://www.srugim.co.il/792173-%D7%91%D7%9F-%D7%92%D7%91%D7%99%D7%A8-%D7%A2%D7%9C-%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%91%D7%A6%D7%A2-%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%96%D7%94-%D7%94%D7%92%D7%99%D7%A2-%D7%94%D7%96%D7%9E%D7%9F-%D7%94%D7%AA%D7%97%D7%9C%D7%94-%D7%99>
Itamar Ben Gvir, our pyromaniac National Security Minister, as if it was
the punchline of a lame joke.

The bearer of the minister’s fuel barrel, MK Almog Cohen, used the moment
to pretend to be a considerate statesman, announcing that he would close
his office in the southern town of Sderot in compliance with the
instructions of the IDF Home Front Command. “It was an excellent response,”
Cohen gloated in an interview
<https://103fm.maariv.co.il/programs/media.aspx?ZrqvnVq=JEJDMK&c41t4nzVQ=GJL>
about the massacre that has so far claimed the lives of 13 people in Gaza.
“I don’t think this is the time to talk about politics. We should all
support the army, and congratulate the prime minister and the defense
minister.”
*‘A hasbara problem’*

As is customary in Israel, the motto of “This is not the time to talk about
politics” was immediately picked up by the opposition, too. The supportive
response <https://twitter.com/yairlapid/status/1655783365767749632> of Yair
Lapid on Twitter almost reads like a parody, as if the man did not even
bother to draft the statement himself but rather assigned the task to
ChatGPT:

I am supporting the security forces for the operation against [Islamic
Jihad] in Gaza. The terrorist organizations in Gaza learned this morning
that the intelligence community and the security forces are following their
every move and that they will be punished. A strong Israeli response at a
place and time that we see fit is the way to deal with the terrorism from
Gaza. We will support any operational activity for the protection of the
residents of the south.

[image: Flame and smoke are seen during an Israeli air strike on Islamic
Jihad targets, in Gaza, May 9, 2023. (Atia Mohammed/Flash90)]
<https://static.972mag.com/www/uploads/2023/05/F230509AM12.jpg>

Flame and smoke are seen during an Israeli air strike on Islamic Jihad
targets, in Gaza, May 9, 2023. (Atia Mohammed/Flash90)

Every sentence in this statement is a masterpiece of fraud and lazy
thought. Did the “terrorist organizations” only discover this morning that
the Israeli army is following their every move — something that even a
Palestinian child in Hebron
<https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2023-05-02/ty-article/00000187-d861-d9b4-abaf-f8ff77ad0000>
knows? Does Lapid really think that it was only this morning, through this
assault, that they suddenly became aware of the sophisticated facial
recognition technology
<https://www.972mag.com/amnesty-automated-apartheid-mahmoudi/> that Israel
uses to spy on its Palestinian subjects? And what is a “place and time that
we see fit” exactly? How will they face the Palestinian resistance forces
better this time than the countless previous rounds? How does this
operation protect Israeli residents of the south, who are once again forced
to flee to bomb shelters?

Lapid wasn’t even the worst of the opposition members who cheered the
current round of violence; that title probably goes to Labor MK Efrat
Rayten. “The IDF is carrying out a successful operation to eliminate senior
jihadists,” she wrote
<https://twitter.com/Efratrayten1/status/1655812446500581376?t=T4jZ965f1xNX6iNkVS8VaQ&s=08>
on Twitter. “Thank God our soldiers returned safely. I wish peaceful days
for the residents of Israel and especially for the residents of the
surrounding area [near Gaza]. Complex work for Israel in the context of the
killing of children, including a 5-year-old and women by our forces. Difficult
images for hasbara [to explain].”

One can almost marvel at Rayten’s ability to cram such amounts of vileness
into a few dozen words. Successful operation? By what parameter? Israel’s
southern residents are sitting in shelters, and the danger to their safety
has increased following the military assault. What makes it successful
apart from the mere shedding of Palestinian blood? And our soldiers
returned safely from where exactly? Did the air force pilots fight
face-to-face with Palestinian militants in the alleys of Gaza? From where
are the soldiers, who shell a civilian population using the most advanced
weapons and are protected to the bone, supposed to be safely returning?

It is also abominable and nauseating to see the killing of women and
children being discussed as a “hasbara problem.” Fortunately for Israel, it
now has, like the best dictatorships in the world, a propaganda minister —
our Minister of Information, Galit Distel Atbaryan — to deal with those
“hasbara problems,” those shattered families who will soon be buried in the
ground.
*Reaping the rewards*

The complete disintegration of the Israeli opposition in the face of a
military operation is not just a moral abomination, but political folly of
the first order. The Zionist center left has taught the right wing, time
and time again, that the best way to completely paralyze the opposing camp
is to start a war, because then
<https://www.mekomit.co.il/%d7%94%d7%a8%d7%a6%d7%95%d7%92-%d7%90%d7%9d-%d7%90%d7%99%d7%9f-%d7%90%d7%95%d7%a4%d7%95%d7%96%d7%99%d7%a6%d7%99%d7%94-%d7%95%d7%90%d7%99%d7%9f-%d7%a7%d7%95%d7%90%d7%9c%d7%99%d7%a6%d7%99%d7%94-%d7%91/>
“there is no coalition and no opposition.”

[image: Israeli politicians clap their hands after a speech of U.S. House
Speaker Kevin McCarthy during the opening of the summer session in the
assembly hall of the Knesset in Jerusalem, May 1, 2023. (Yonatan
Sindel/Flash90)]
<https://static.972mag.com/www/uploads/2023/05/F230501YS248.jpg>

Israeli politicians clap their hands after a speech of U.S. House Speaker
Kevin McCarthy during the opening of the summer session in the assembly
hall of the Knesset in Jerusalem, May 1, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Indeed, less than 24 hours since the gates of hell opened over Gaza again,
Netanyahu is already starting to reap the rewards. After threatening to
stop cooperating with the coalition, Otzma Yehudit, Ben Gvir’s party,
announced that it would return to support the government in the Knesset.
Anti-government protesters, too, announced that they were canceling a
demonstration planned for Tuesday in front of the Jerusalem Security
Conference in light of the operation.

The tragedy of the Jewish center-left camp in Israel is thus not only that
it does not know how to lead, but that it does not know how to serve as an
opposition. In this regard, it can learn a valuable lesson from the right.

A year ago under the Bennett-Lapid coalition, when the “settlement
emergency regulations” — the laws which institutionally apply
<https://www.972mag.com/settler-emergency-law-apartheid/> apartheid in the
West Bank — were about to expire, the right led by Benjamin Netanyahu did
not blink in voting against their renewal. Right-wing voters did not accuse
their leaders of neglecting the settlers, or harming vital national
interests, or even rejecting the apartheid laws. But politicians knew very
well that, when playing this game of “chicken,” the coalition would blink
first. They were right, of course: the “government of change” sacrificed
itself <https://www.972mag.com/netanyahu-apartheid-israel-government/> on
the altar of preserving apartheid in the occupied territories.

Today, there is no real political opposition in Israel, except for the Arab
political parties. And as long as Palestinian blood continues to be the
unifying glue of Jewish Israeli politics, no serious opposition can ever be
established here. Until that changes, the Jewish parties in opposition will
continue to be humiliated by their moral promiscuity and political exile.

*This article was first published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it* *here*
<https://www.mekomit.co.il/%d7%9b%d7%9c-%d7%a2%d7%95%d7%93-%d7%94%d7%93%d7%9d-%d7%94%d7%a4%d7%9c%d7%a1%d7%98%d7%99%d7%a0%d7%99-%d7%99%d7%94%d7%99%d7%94-%d7%94%d7%93%d7%91%d7%a7-%d7%94%d7%9e%d7%90%d7%97%d7%93-%d7%a9%d7%9c%d7%a0/>
*.*

Did you appreciate this article? Here’s how you can help
<https://www.972mag.com/members/?=the_box>.

We are in an unprecedented and dangerous era in Israel-Palestine. The
Israeli extreme right government has made its plans crystal clear. It wants
carte blanche to shoot-to-kill Palestinians on both sides of the Green
Line, legalize every settlement outpost, dismantle the independence of the
judicial system, deport African asylum seekers, delegitimize human rights
activists, and silence the free press.

This is an escalation we all should resist. But it is not an aberration or
a bug. *For the past 12 years, we at +972 have been warning against the
poisonous outcomes of Israeli society’s growing racism, the entrenched
occupation, and an increasingly normalized siege on Gaza.*

Our work has never been more crucial. And as dark as it seems, there are
still glimmers of hope. The popularity of outright fascism has woken people
up, both in Israel-Palestine and across the world, to the dangerous
repercussions of what may soon come. Palestinians and Israelis who believe
in a just future are already organizing and strategizing to put up the
fight of their lives.

* Can we count on your support <https://www.972mag.com/members/?=the_box>?
+972 Magazine is the leading media voice of this movement, a place where
Palestinian and Israeli journalists and activists can tell their stories
without censorship. Our journalism disrupts the skewed mainstream coverage
and aims to promote justice and equality for everyone between the river and
the sea. *
Palestinian school razed after campaign by gov’t-linked settler group The
residents of Jib al-Dib lost their years-long fight to save their
elementary school, leaving dozens of children without proper access to
education.

In partnership with

<https://www.972mag.com/gaza-war-israeli-opposition/mekomit.co.il>

On Sunday, the Israeli military demolished
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-05-08/ty-article/.premium/israel-demolishes-palestinian-elementary-school-in-west-bank-town-near-bethlehem/00000187-fad6-d768-a7bf-fef73ad70000>
the elementary school in Jib al-Dib, an unrecognized village adjacent to a
string of Israeli settlements in Area C of the occupied West Bank. Village
residents reported that soldiers arrived at the building at around 5 a.m.,
prevented anyone from approaching the demolition site, forbade any
documentation of the demolition, and then razed the school to the ground.

“They didn’t let anyone leave the village. They took a journalist’s camera
equipment by force, and they didn’t let him through to take photos of the
demolition,” said Fadia al-Wahash, a resident of Jib al-Dib. “They wouldn’t
even let people out to go to work. Starting at 5 a.m., they blocked off the
village. They declared [the area around the school] a closed military zone,
there were drones flying in the air, and they destroyed our kids’ school.”

The school, which was attended by 40 children between the ages of 6 and 10,
was built around six years ago, part of an initiative by the Palestinian
Authority to construct schools in villages whose residents are at risk of
expulsion by the Israeli military. According to the residents, before the
school was built, the children in Jib al-Dib had to walk an hour each way
to school.

Subscribe to The Landline +972's weekly newsletter

The right-wing organization Regavim, which was co-founded by Finance
Minister Bezalel Smotrich — who is also a minister in the Defense Ministry
and oversees the Civil Administration, the bureaucratic arm of the
occupation — spearheaded the legal fight against the school. Regavim
focuses on petitioning for Palestinian structures built without permits to
be demolished, and centers its fight on Area C, which is under full Israeli
military and administrative control. Accordingly, the organization
campaigned for the school to be torn down, first submitting a petition six
years ago with the Jerusalem District Court. In a relatively unusual move —
the court usually does not interfere with the Civil Administration’s
decisions on what structures to demolish and when — the judge accepted the
petition, apparently because of claims that the building was not safe for
children.

[image: Israeli security forces look on as bulldozers demolish the
elemntary school in Jib al-Dib in the occupied West Bank, May 7, 2023.
(Flash90)] <https://static.972mag.com/www/uploads/2023/05/F230507STR09.jpg>

Israeli security forces look on as bulldozers demolish the elemntary school
in Jib al-Dib in the occupied West Bank, May 7, 2023. (Flash90)

The school building was constructed without the permission of the military,
which rejects around 99 percent
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israeli-press-review-israel-reject-986-percent-palestinian-building-applications>
of the building permit requests submitted by Palestinians living in Area C.
This policy of rejecting nearly all permit applications prevents the
residents of villages like Jib al-Dib from legally building any structure,
forcing them to live in substandard conditions.

As a result, residents of unrecognized villages build all necessary
structures quickly and cheaply — without pouring concrete, and by using
materials like blocks and tin — for fear that the structure will be
demolished by the military and their investment in it will have been a
waste. These unsound structures can then be deemed “unsafe” by the
military, making them a target for demolition. Villagers say that such
claims around safety are a cynical move by Regavim, deployed only to
achieve the organization’s goal of expelling the Palestinian villagers.

Regavim celebrated <https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=791735819221237> the
school’s demolition online; next to “before and after” photos posted on its
Facebook page, the organization wrote that “this is only one out of more
than 100 illegal school buildings.” Right-wing outlets claimed that the Jib
al-Dib school was built in the Herodion National Park, but this is
incorrect: the school was not located within the borders of the park, but
was in fact adjacent to it, between the villages of Jib al-Dib and Beit
Ta’mir, and built on private Palestinian land that a local Palestinian
family had donated for the children’s benefit.

The Civil Administration refuses to recognize Jib al-Dib, even though,
according to satellite images, it existed before 1967, and residents say it
was founded in the 1920s. With the help of planners from the International
Peace and Cooperation Center (IPCC), a Palestinian urban planning and
rights NGO, village residents invested heavily to prepare a proposal for
the school’s construction, which they submitted to the Civil Administration
in 2012. The proposal passed through all the relevant committees but was
eventually held up with no explanation.

[image: Palestinians inspect the damage to the Jib al-Dib elementary school
in the occupied West Bank after Israeli authorities demolished it, May 7,
2023. (Flash90)]
<https://static.972mag.com/www/uploads/2023/05/F230507STR03.jpg>

Palestinians inspect the damage to the Jib al-Dib elementary school in the
occupied West Bank after Israeli authorities demolished it, May 7, 2023.
(Flash90)

There is, according to Emil Mishriki, a lawyer with the Society of St.
Yves, a Catholic human rights group that represents the village residents,
“a massive shortage of classrooms in the area. And yet the Palestinians in
Area C can’t build anything. No matter how hard they try to follow all the
requirements to submit applications for building permits, their request
will be denied. The residents have no choice.”

Aside from the effective ban on building schools and new homes, the
residents are also not allowed to connect to the electrical grid. The
electricity sometimes goes out and does not return until the following
morning, al-Wahash said. “Everything we do has to be carefully calculated.
In the summer we can’t use fans, because they use too much power, even
though the heat here can be hellish. In the winter, if there’s no sun, we
can’t use electricity to heat our homes.”

In response to a request for comment, the Civil Administration stated that
“[s]ecurity forces evacuated a school building this morning that had been
built illegally and without the approval of the relevant authorities, that
was found to be unsafe for the students and others inside it, and that was
designated for demolition by a court order.

“As part of the enforcement against illegal building, on April 19, 2017, an
order to halt construction was filed against the owner of the building.
Later, after the relevant committee heard his claims, a final demolition
order was issued. In spite of the decision and the orders, the school
continued to be used and was even expanded. Additionally, an engineering
evaluation determined that the building is dangerous and unfit for
habitation or use and was at constant risk of collapse due to climate
change.

“Prior to the enforcement of the order, numerous actions were taken against
the owner of the building, among them attempts to negotiate and even
granting advanced notice before the enforcement was carried out.”

*This article originally appeared in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here
<https://www.mekomit.co.il/%d7%94%d7%93%d7%97%d7%a4%d7%95%d7%a8%d7%99%d7%9d-%d7%a4%d7%a9%d7%98%d7%95-%d7%a2%d7%9d-%d7%a9%d7%97%d7%a8-%d7%95-40-%d7%99%d7%9c%d7%93%d7%99%d7%9d-%d7%a0%d7%a9%d7%90%d7%a8%d7%95-%d7%91%d7%9c%d7%99/>.*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20230511/d1368145/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 1099125 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20230511/d1368145/attachment.png>