[News] A Man Without a Strategy: How Netanyahu is Provoking Armed Intifada in the West Bank

[Anti-Imperialist News]

palestinechronicle.com
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/a-man-without-a-strategy-how-netanyahu-is-provoking-armed-intifada-in-the-west-bank/>
A Man Without a Strategy: How Netanyahu is Provoking Armed Intifada in the
West BankMay 31, 2023
------------------------------
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Photo: Russia Presidential
Press and Information Office, via Wikimedia Commons)

*By Ramzy Baroud <https://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/ramzy-baroud>*
For Netanyahu, the frequent deadly raids on Palestinian towns and refugee
camps translate into political assets that allow him to keep his extremist
supporters happy. But this is short-term thinking.

After signing
<https://www.israelhayom.com/2023/05/18/gallant-instructs-idf-to-sign-decree-allowing-jewish-residency-in-homesh/>
a military decree on May 18, allowing illegal Israeli Jewish settlers to
reclaim the abandoned Homesh settlement located in the northern Occupied
West Bank, the Israeli government has informed the US Biden Administration
that it will not turn the area into a new settlement.

The latter revelation was reported
<https://www.axios.com/2023/05/23/israel-homesh-settlement-palestinians-west-bank>
by Axios on May 23. This contradiction is hardly surprising. While Israel’s
far-right ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, know precisely
what they want, Netanyahu is trying to perform an impossible political act:
he wants to fulfill all the wishes of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, but without
veering off from the US political agenda in the Middle East, and without
creating the circumstances that could eventually topple the Palestinian
Authority.

Moreover, Netanyahu wants to normalize with Arab governments, while
continuing to colonize Palestine, expand settlements and have complete
control over Al-Aqsa Mosque and other Palestinian Muslim and Christian holy
shrines.

Worse still, he wants, per the insistence of Ben-Gvir and his extremist
religious constituency, to repopulate Homesh and create new outposts, while
avoiding an all-out armed rebellion
<https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/29/palestine-israel-west-bank-armed-groups-huwara-lions-den-jenin-brigade/>
in the West Bank.

Concurrently, Netanyahu wants good relations with the Arabs and Muslims,
while constantly humiliating, oppressing and killing Arabs and Muslims.

Indeed, such a feat is virtually impossible.

Netanyahu is not a novice politician who is failing at appeasing all his
target audiences simultaneously. He is a right-wing ideologue, who uses
<https://www.abc.net.au/religion/benjamin-netanyahu-the-uses-and-abuses-of-history/101812764>
the Zionist ideology and religion as the foundation of his political
agenda. Anywhere else, especially in the Western world, Netanyahu would
have been perceived to be a far-right politician.

One of the reasons that the West is yet to brand Netanyahu as such is that
if there is a general agreement that Netanyahu is an affront to democracy,
it would be difficult to engage with him diplomatically. While the likes of
Italy’s far-right government of Giorgia Meloni, hosted
<https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2023-03-11/ty-article/.premium/netanyahu-receives-a-chilly-reception-from-italys-jewish-community/00000186-caf8-dc44-abe6-cffa9b200000>
Netanyahu last March, US President Joe Biden is yet to meet the Israeli
leader in person, months after the latter composed his latest government of
far-right religionists.

Netanyahu is aware of all these challenges, and that his country’s
reputation, even among allies, is in tatters. The Israeli leader, however,
is determined to persevere, for his own sake.

It took
<https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/30/middleeast/israel-elections-explainer-intl/index.html>
five elections in four years for Netanyahu to assemble a relatively stable
government. New elections carry risks, as the opposition leader, Yair
Lapid, is slated
<https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/article-732602>
to win a majority of seats, if a sixth election is held.

But satisfying Ben-Gvir and others is turning Israel into a country
governed by populist, nationalist leaders determined on instituting a
religious war. Judging by the evidence on the ground, they might get what
they want.

The truth is neither Ben-Gvir nor Smotrich has Netanyahu’s political savvy
or experience. Rather, they are the political equivalent of bulls in a
China shop. They want to sow the seeds of chaos and use the mayhem to
further their agenda: more illegal settlements, more ethnic cleansing of
Palestinians and, ultimately, a religious war.

Due to these pressures, Netanyahu, with an expansionist agenda of his own,
is unable to follow a clear blueprint regarding how to fully annex large
parts of the West Bank and render Palestinians permanently stateless. He
cannot develop and maintain a consistent strategy because his allies have a
strategy of their own. And, unlike Netanyahu, they care little for
overstepping their boundaries with Washington, Brussels, Cairo or Amman.

This must be frustrating for Netanyahu who, through over 15 years in
office, has developed an effective strategy based on several equilibriums.
While slowly colonizing the West Bank and maintaining a siege and
occasional wars in Gaza, he also learned to feign the language of peace and
reconciliation internationally. Though he had his own troubles with
Washington in the past, Netanyahu often prevailed, with the support of the
US Congress. And though he provoked Arab, Muslim and African countries on
numerous occasions, he still managed to normalize ties with many of them.

His was a winning strategy, which he bragged about shamelessly at every
election campaign. But it seems that the party is finally over.

Netanyahu’s new political agenda is now motivated by a single objective:
his own survival
<https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/23/middleeast/israel-judicial-reforms-prime-minister-law-intl/index.html>
or, rather, that of his family, several members of which are implicated by
charges of corruption and nepotism. If the current Israeli government
collapses under the weight of its own contradictions and extremism, it
would be nearly impossible for Netanyahu to recover his position. If
far-right parties abandon Netanyahu’s Likud, Israel will sink even deeper
into a seemingly unending political crisis and social turmoil.

For now, Netanyahu will have to stay the course – that of unprovoked wars,
deadly raids on the West Bank, attacks on holy shrines, repopulating or
establishing new illegal settlements, allowing armed settlers to unleash
daily violence against Palestinians and so on, regardless of the
consequences of these actions.

One of these consequences is widening
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/08/boundaries-between-west-bank-factions-blur-as-resistance-to-israeli-occupation-grows>
the armed rebellion to reach the rest of the Occupied West Bank.

For a few years now, the armed struggle phenomenon has been growing across
the West Bank. In areas like Nablus and Jenin, armed Resistance groups have
grown in power to the point that the PA is left with little control over
these regions.

This phenomenon is also an outcome of the lack of a true Palestinian
leadership that invests more in representing and protecting Palestinians
against Israeli violence, rather than engaging in ‘security coordination’
with the Israeli military.

Now that Ben-Gvir and Smotrich’s followers are wreaking
<https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/article-731648>
havoc in the West Bank in the absence of any protection for Palestinian
civilians, Palestinian fighters are adopting the role of protectors. The
Lions’ Den is a direct manifestation
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20221220-the-lions-den-is-not-a-fleeting-phenomenon-an-armed-uprising-looms/>
of this reality.

For Palestinians, armed resistance is a natural response to military
occupation, apartheid and settler violence. It is not a political strategy
per se. For Israel, however, violence is a strategy.

For Netanyahu, the frequent deadly raids on Palestinian towns and refugee
camps translate into political assets that allow him to keep his extremist
supporters happy. But this is short-term thinking. If Israel’s unchecked
violence continues, the West Bank could soon find itself in an all-out
military uprising against Israel and an open rebellion against the PA.

Then, no magic trick or balancing act by Netanyahu can possibly control the
outcomes.


*- Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.
He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé,
is “Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and
Intellectuals Speak out”. Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research
Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is*
*www.ramzybaroud.net* <http://www.ramzybaroud.net/>
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