Netanyahu’s game-plan

As Israel goes ahead with its sordid plan of razing buildings in Palestinian territories through aerial bombardment, attacking worshippers in Al-Aqsa Mosque and killing Palestinians including children in the latest round of terrorism, its oppression and cruelty is only dwarfed by the passivity and inaction of the international community including the ‘famed’ Muslim Ummah.

Their default response has only been to condemn the “violence” in even more confusing terms that raise questions about the morality of their position on the Palestine-Israel issue. The propensity to equate Israel’s brute military apparatus with hapless stone-throwing Palestinians does not just represent the imposing reality of naked power shaping the narrative but also seeks to further marginalise Palestinians by tarnishing their struggle for a state of their own with the tags of ‘violence’.

A brilliant opinion piece titled ‘Digital apartheid: Palestinians being silenced on social media’ by Omar Zahzah published on the Al-Jazeera website on May 13 established with facts and figures how social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Zoom are employing greater censorship to deny Palestinians what Edward Said called “permission to narrate”.

The Al-Jazeera article referred to research work conducted by Maha Nassar, a Palestinian-American professor at the University of Arizona, in which she analysed the opinion pieces carried by two dailies, The New York Times and The Washington Post and two weekly news magazines, The New Republic and The Nation, over a period of 50 years and concluded that “Editorial boards and columnists seem to have been quite consumed with talking points about the Palestinians, often in condescending and even racist ways – yet they somehow did not feel the need to hear much from Palestinians themselves.”

In a blunt tweet, Nathan J Robinson, former political columnist for The Guardian, called out The New York Times for its partisan reporting of the ongoing bloodshed in Palestine when he stated: “It is a journalistic malpractice of the worst kind to say a family was ‘caught up in the bloodshed’ when what actually happened was that the Israeli military dropped a bomb on them and blew them to pieces in front of their children. They were not ‘caught up’, they were murdered.”

Nathan’s must-read thread of tweets essentially captures the broad behavior and diabolical manner in which much of the American and Western media (exceptions apart) have chosen to portray the Palestine issue. The asymmetry of power on display speaks to the willingness of the media to become part of the Israel government’s determined efforts to drown out Palestinian voices in a cacophony of sounds that are the product of the massive influence that Israel commands in America and Europe across the political divide.

While the Biden Administration is likely to reverse some of the actions contained in the ‘Deal of the Century’ and announce some symbolic concessions for Palestinians, it will continue with the bipartisan policy of extending unstinted support to Tel Aviv.

What Trump’s ‘famous’ peace plan achieved was to free Netanyahu's right-wing government of any international obligation in his insatiable hunger for expansion of the illegal settlements. The consistent American support made sure that Israel can indulge in the annexation of Palestinian lands through forced evictions without being confronted with any action or even a serious reprimand.

Given the evolving nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is important to analyse the politics and strategy employed by Israeli PM Netanyahu vis-a-vis the marginalisation and dehumanization of Palestinians. Netanyahu, who remains at the heart of the apartheid and persecution of Palestinians, has prioritized security-first and right-wing ideology as components of his Palestine policy. Consider the following:

Benjamin Netanyahu is the foremost Israeli leader since the 1967 Arab-Israel war who has religiously pursued the expansion plan without any regard for the international law, and the consequences of his actions. His attempts to change the demography of the occupied territories have been undeterred and resolute in the face of the warnings from some of the European countries. The Nation-State Law encapsulates his vision for expansions by declaring that “the state views the development of Jewish settlements as a national value and will act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation.”

Netanyahu’s actions and statements reveal that he is not bothered by the earlier commitments and agreements made with Palestinians and is unrelenting in his desire to impose his vision anchored in illegal expansionism. A major example is his balking at following the Oslo accords as the framework for future negotiations. He practically scuttled the provisions of the accords such as limited autonomy to the PLO, the resolution of the border issue, Palestinian refugees’ right to return and the latter’s sovereignty over Jerusalem as the future capital of the Palestinian state.

In all his terms in office, Netanyahu has taken steps to make the possibility of a two-state solution less likely. This includes creating a split between the Palestinian factions, controlling the flow of foreign aid, gradually undermining the Palestinian Authority and, last but not the least, making Israeli and American endorsement of the Palestinian actions a prerequisite for progress in peace as part of the ‘Deal of the Century’. The only agreement he is keen to follow as the exclusive framework of the future talks with Palestinians is Trump’s peace plan that assigns paramount role to Israel.

Netanyahu has been at pains to invoke the perennial Arab fears of Iran and the expansion of its influence across the Greater Middle Eastern region. Together with the signing of the Abraham Accords, Tel Aviv has endeavoured to separate the Palestinian issue from its Arab context in what is clearly a bid to reimagine the nature of the dispute.

The Israeli PM has used his government’s unrelenting marginalisation and suppression of Palestinians to buttress his domestic support and kill criticism of corruption and instances of bad governance. Different polls held to date have indicated a surge in his domestic support, making him by far the leading figure in Israeli politics. He has set the bar of persecution too high, making it virtually impossible for any subsequent regime to deviate from the ‘new normal’.

The reframing of the terms that define the Palestinian struggle is not just an ideological mission but also a matter of political necessity. Netanyahu has capitalized on the surge of populism to articulate a discourse that seeks to denude the Palestinian struggle of its humanitarian character by tarring it with a brush of ‘terrorism.’ His government is likely to present peace agreements with the Arab countries as proof of Tel Aviv’s seriousness to promote peace and stability in the Middle East. The implication being that it is Palestinians that are throwing spanners in the peace efforts through their resort to ‘violence’.

Today, there is less appetite in the Arab world for a more decisive intervention in the Palestine-Israel matter, thanks largely to the dynamics that aim at upsetting the status quo. The Arab Spring in 2009-2011 meant that Arab regimes face potential dangers from inside that they can ignore at their own peril. In the Arab imagination, the security and ideological threats posed by Tehran are far greater than the ones posed by Tel Aviv. The normalisation process underway with active American support has further softened Arab governments towards Israel.

With these realities now informing the Middle East’s politics, the Palestinian struggle has reached a pivotal point. The resilience shown by Palestinians in the face of the heaviest of odds has kept the banner of freedom afloat. Their grit and determination has refused to be subdued and it is this resolution that has instilled undying hope.

Email: amanatchpk@gmail.com

Twitter: @Amanat222

The writer, a Chevening scholar, studied International Journalism at the University of Sussex.