Israel's New Government Is a Gift to Extremists—on Both Sides | Opinion

2022 was the deadliest year for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since 2005. Israeli security forces killed 146 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem this year. For Israeli Jews, too, the casualty count was high; 29 soldiers and civilians were attacked and killed by Palestinians.

And yet, there is reason to believe that things are about to get even worse. Israel's ousted Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has returned to power with the help of the most far-right government in the country's history. His election and his new governing coalition is nothing short of a gift to the extremists of both sides.

The government's agenda vis-à-vis the Palestinians is inflammatory and portends disaster. In a tweet summarizing the new government's governing agenda, Netanyahu wrote that "the Jewish people have an exclusive and unquestionable right to all areas of the Land of Israel," including the West Bank.

In other words, explicitly killing any possibility of a two state solution by advancing de facto annexation through settlement expansion will be a government priority, which we can expect to legalize outposts that Israel itself has hitherto considered illegal and put de jure annexation back on the table.

Where is the Israeli Left, you might ask? Dead and buried, and about to be even more so. The coalition agreements Netanyahu signed with his extremist partners include undermining leftist Israeli NGOs and human rights organizations and stripping "terrorists" of citizenship or residency to allow them to be forcibly deported to the West Bank. The coalition deal will also most likely lead to full immunity to Israeli soldiers and policemen from investigation or trial for opening fire, even if in violation of rules of engagement, and even when outside active duty.

There has been an outcry against this extremist agenda, within Israel as well as from the international community. Israel's own ambassador to France, veteran diplomat Yael German, resigned on Thursday in protest of the policies of Netanyahu's new government of hate, racism and division.

Yet the response from the U.S. has been disappointing. The Biden administration has chosen a "wait and see" approach, while the U.S. ambassador to Israel rushed to congratulate Bibi on being sworn into office on Thursday, extolling the "rock solid U.S.-Israel relationship and unbreakable ties."

But the real problem isn't whether or not Israel's far-right government will take action which crosses Washington's red lines. It's that this government's existence represents the biggest gift to Hamas and hardline militant groups in years, who advocate that only might makes right. The new Israeli government's extremism affirms Hamas's portrayal of Israel as a corrupt, racist, extremist state hellbent on destroying Palestinians, unresponsive to diplomatic or peaceful engagement.

On the Israeli side, even if the new government doesn't take any direct action against Palestinians, its existence will substantially embolden Israeli settlers to escalate their already alarming violence. And it will of course lead IDF soldiers and border police toward further brutality by promising them impunity.

Both settlers and soldiers see a champion in the Knesset's newest member, Itmar Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu's National Security Minister, who has been put in charge of the border police in the occupied East Jerusalem and West Bank. A messianic extremist convicted of supporting the terrorist organization Kach and inciting racism, Ben-Gvir is well known for once having a portrait in his living roomof Israeli-American terrorist Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers.

Ben Gvir himself pulled out a gun last October on Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah, and staunchly advocates for reshaping the status quo on Al-Haram Al-Sharif as well as for making it easier for Israeli soldiers to shoot to kill Palestinians and for deporting "disloyal" citizens.

Naturally, the soldiers love him for it. Three soldiers were suspended from duty just before the elections, one for assaulting a Palestinian and the others for failing to intervene. And in the immediate aftermath of the elections, two more soldiers were suspended, one for beating up an Israeli peace activist and another for telling Palestinian nonviolent resistance activist Issa Amro, "I hate left-wingers. Ben Gvir is going to sort things out in this place. That's it, you guys have lost... the fun is over."

Ben Gvir went to visit the second soldier's family to show his support and approval for the soldier's commentary. Three weeks later, IDF soldiers were filmed dancing jubilantly around Ben Gvir, giving him a hero's welcome.

But Ben Gvir is far from the only deplorable to ascend to an influential position in Netanyahu's cabinet. Israel's Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has assumed a second role in the government as the de facto Prime Minister of the West Bank, and he is no less dangerous. A supremacist theocrat, Smotrich once told Israeli Arabs "You're here by mistake... Ben-Gurion didn't finish the job and didn't throw you out in 1948."

In 2017, Smotrich proposed what he called "the subjugation plan" to "to erase all Palestinian national hope," which he derived from the biblical genocidaire, Joshua bin Nun. His plan would give Palestinians three options: Leave the occupied territories; surrender to living perpetually as inferior second-class non-citizens; or resist and be dealt with by the IDF.

What message does having these two extremists, almost in full charge of the occupied territories and Palestinian life, send to violent Israeli settlers and IDF soldiers other than a green light to act as they please? The government not only has their backs but is also giving them its blessings.

The presence of this extremist government, headed by a Prime Minister willing to do whatever it takes to evade accountability in his corruption trial, sends a message to Israeli radicals that there are no consequences if you are ruthless. Meanwhile, on the Palestinian side, the uglier it gets, the more popular Hamas and the other armed Palestinian groups become. After all, they feed on despair, rage, anger, and hopelessness.

Perhaps most dangerous of all, the religious fanaticism of Ben-Gvir, Smotrich and others in Netanyahu's cabinet fuels the false portrayal of the conflict as a religious rather than a political one, further rallying people around uncompromising hate and fear.

These factors together create the perfect storm: a stronger Hamas, a weaker and paralyzed Palestinian peace camp, more emboldened settler mobs, more IDF soldiers with itchy trigger fingers. All that's missing is a match.

The best way for Biden's administration to deal with this impending disaster isn't to sit tight and wait, then scramble to contain the damage. The time is long overdue to start leveraging billions of U.S. military aid to Israel and limiting interaction with extremist officials in the Israeli government such as Ben Gvir and Smotrich. Biden must make it clear that actions will have consequences.

The Biden administration must also take visible measures to emphasize its support of the two-state solution and the right of Palestinians to live in dignity and freedom. Biden must work to platform and increase support for Palestinian and Israeli human rights defenders and advocates of co-existence. He must find a way to help the peace camp, and protect it from dying irrevocably.

Muhammad Shehada is a writer and civil society activist from the Gaza Strip and a student of development studies at Lund University, Sweden. He was the PR officer for the Gaza office of the Euro-Med Monitor for Human Rights. He is a columnist at the Forward.

The views in this article are the writer's own.