Hayley Serpa/Staff Writer
On the 2nd of June of this year, with much at stake and the eyes of the globe on them, eight radically different Israeli parties would form a coalition to oust long standing Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu While many were overjoyed to see a bipartisan effort to remove the increasingly autocratic Netanyahu from office, this transfer of power within Israeli politics seems unpromising for the future of Palestine and shows that this new unlikely Israeli coalition is no cause for celebration.
Roughly a month before, the international community had been shaken to the core by the heightened violence of the Israeli occupation as witnessed in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, where eight Palestinian families of about 75 people were at risk of forced eviction by the Israeli apartheid state. These actions would be condemned by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). It would take place just mere weeks after Human Rights Watch (HRW) had denounced the Israeli government for crimes of apartheid and persecution against the Palestinian people.
At the domestic level of government, the State of Israel has recently been plagued with political instability and corruption, going through four different elections in under two years as PM Netanyahu consistently failed to form a coalition government under the leadership of his right-wing Likud. No political party or bloc within the Knesset was able to win enough seats to obtain the majority, showing again how divided the people of Israel are and how unpredictable the Israeli political scene is.
Within this context of increased political instability and international crisis, this coalition of right-wing, left-wing, centrist parties and for the first time in Israeli history, an Arab Islamist party named the Ra’am, would be formed. It is jointly headed by leader of the far-right Yamuna party Nafalti Bennett and Yair Lapid of the centrist Yesh Atid party. Bennett is supposed to assume the premiership for the next two years until 2023, after which Lapid is expected to assume the position.
The only common factor uniting these parties seems to be a shared desire of removing PM Netanyahu from power, making their proposed coalition government as unstable as the ones before them. Once Netanyahu or “Bibi,” as he is known in the world of international politics, is removed, these different parties will find themselves at a crossroads as they struggle to work together in the face of their considerable differences. As one New York Times columnist writing from Jerusalem points out, this new coalition “looks like a recipe for chronic instability.”
Yet, what does this new coalition mean for the victims of the Israeli state? Will the lives of Palestinians be drastically improved by this new government? With Nafalti Bennett as the next incumbent Prime Minister of Israel, this seems far from likely. Mr. Bennett is famously a former leader of the Israeli settler movement in the West Bank and has been an active supporter of the annexation of parts of the Sinai Peninsula and other territories that were captured during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
Not only does Bennett’s incoming premiership, with his long history of ties to modern-day forms of Israeli colonial occupation and it’s enablement, possibly place at risk the right of self-determination of Palestinians, it also is highly unlikely that moderate Lapid will take over in 2023. Looking at Israel’s recent track record with governments since 2019 and even before that proves just that. Even President Reuven Rivlin has commented that Israel is “caught in a maze– if not a political crisis,” and the next two years under Bennett seem uncertain.
It is difficult to conceptualize what the new government will look like and more importantly, how it will address the ongoing occupation of Palestine and the apartheid state that exists in Israel. The removal of Benjamin Netanyahu was long overdue but this change of government seems in no way stable or favorable to the Palestinian cause. In our celebrations of Netanyahu’s removal and the new bipartisan coalition we must not forget that thousands continue to suffer due to the choices these same politicians make.
DISCLAIMER:
The opinions presented within this page do not represent the views of PantherNOW Editorial Board. These views are separate from editorials and reflect individual perspectives of contributing writers and/or members of the University community
Photo by Yousef Salhamoud on Unsplash
About Post Author
