No such thing as leftist, centrist, or rightist in Israeli government

• 

With every Israeli occupation government that takes office, speculations begin to emerge, wondering what the new cabinet would mean to Palestinians.

Simply, the answer is that Palestinians will continue to be killed and detained, their houses will be demolished, and their lands will be stolen, and by who? By no other than an entity established on the blood and ruins of Palestinian people and cities, "Israel".

This will continue to be the case no matter what until Palestine is liberated.

Following his November 1 election win, Benjamin Netanyahu took office late last month at the head of a coalition with extreme-right and Zionist parties, some of whose officials now head key ministries.

This is Netanyahu's sixth term after he was ousted from power in June last year, ending his 12-year run as prime minister, making him the longest-running premier since the start of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

What are this government's plans?

Before even taking office, the Netanyahu government placed continued illegal West Bank settlement expansion at the top of its priority list and pledged to legalize a number of illegal outposts as part of its coalition agreement with extreme-right and Zionist parties.

The coalition agreement pledged a commitment to "advance and develop settlements in all parts” of occupied Palestine, including the occupied West Bank, knowing that the majority of the international community considers the Israeli occupation of the West Bank illegal.

Netanyahu promised to fully annex the West Bank "while choosing the timing and considering the national and international interests of Israel".

The agreement also included so-called “judicial reforms”, granting lawmakers more powers in terms of appointing judges and overriding Supreme Court decisions with a simple majority of 61 lawmakers.

It includes a commitment to expand and vastly increase government funding for the Israeli settlements in the city of Al-Khalil in the occupied West Bank.

The coalition deal includes a clause pledging to change the so-called “anti-discrimination laws”, allowing Israeli businesses to refuse to provide a service to people "because of a religious belief".

Now, Netanyahu's government is under scrutiny and is facing criticism over its controversial plans. On Saturday, some 20,000 illegal Israeli settlers took to the streets of "Tel Aviv" against the cabinet.

According to the deal, Otzma Yehudit leader and occupation Police Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Religious Zionism leader and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich - both known for their extremism - will be granted powers to influence the illegal West Bank settlement expansion.

Recently, Ben-Gvir said he instructed occupation forces to remove Palestinian flags from public spaces.

In a statement, Ben-Gvir, best known for calling for the killing of Palestinians, claimed that waving the Palestinian flag is an act in "support of terrorism".

"It cannot be that lawbreakers wave terrorist flags, incite and encourage terrorism, so I ordered the removal of flags supporting terrorism from the public space and to stop the incitement against Israel," he said.

Ben-Gvir’s decision is not new. In fact, under the premiership of Levi Eshkol, who belonged to the so-called “Labor Alignment”, the Israeli occupation banned Palestinian flags in 1967 immediately after the Six-Day War, which resulted in the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Former Israeli occupation Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was sworn in by the Israeli parliament as prime minister one more time as his government promised to further expand its occupation of #Palestine. pic.twitter.com/NWRIaKlNC6

— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) December 30, 2022

What decisions did this government begin with?

As a punitive measure, the Israeli occupation government announced on January 7 that it will seize some Palestinian Authority (PA) revenues and revoke the PA Foreign Minister’s special travel permit.

Among the retaliatory measures was seizing $39 million in tax revenues collected on behalf of the PA and transferring them to Israelis, deducting from the payments that the PA grants to the families of Palestinian martyrs and prisoners, and freezing Palestinian construction in the occupied West Bank.

Netanyahu’s government also said it will take action against organizations in the occupied West Bank that allegedly “promote terrorist activity or any hostile activity,” including groups that allegedly carry out “political and legal action against Israel under the guise of humanitarian work.”

At the PA's request, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) late last month passed a resolution requesting an opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the legal implications of “Israel's” illegal occupation of Palestine and its "practices and settlement activities affecting the rights of the Palestinian people," a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government took office.

The General Assembly voted 87-26 with 53 abstentions on the resolution. The ICJ is the highest UN court dealing with international issues. Its decisions are binding, but it has no authority to enforce them.

Before the vote, the Israeli occupation attempted to exert strained efforts to incite and lure several countries to prevent the resolution from being passed.

Netanyahu's office claimed that the cabinet was acting in "response to the Palestinian Authority's decision to wage political and legal war" against "Israel".

Commenting on the United Nations General Assembly resolution, Netanyahu said on Sunday that "Israel" was not bound by what he called the "despicable decision".

"The current government will not sit idly by in the face of this war and will respond as necessary," Netanyahu's office said.

Does it really matter if the government was centrist, rightist, or leftist?

Significantly, the year 2022 was “the deadliest year for West Bank Palestinians in nearly two decades," The Washington Post indicated in a report. The Gaza Strip also witnessed a three-day Israeli aggression in August.

It is noteworthy that these crimes were committed under a so-called “centrist” Israeli occupation government, proving that there is actually no difference between the policies adopted by the different governments toward Palestinians, whether leftist, centrist, or rightist.

For Palestinians, one can only expect that the planned policies of Netanyahu’s government and its extremist Zionist ministers against Palestinians – including prisoners – might lead to more tensions, thus instigating more violent confrontations with the Palestinian Resistance.

For example, in early January, Ben-Gvir stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, protected by a large number of Israeli occupation forces in a provocative move that saw international condemnation.

The new Israeli occupation government is making every effort to repress the emerging Palestinian Resistance groups in the occupied West Bank, especially in Nablus and Jenin.

A simple search on the internet reveals that the massacres against Palestinians before and after the 1948 Nakba were committed by Zionist gangs who defined themselves as Socialist/Labor Zionists.

In fact, Tikva Honig-Parnass, the former secretary of the Israeli so-called “United Workers Party,” considered in an interview for the International Socialist Review that the party that defined itself as Marxist was “calling for socialism on the one hand, and participating in the great theft of the lands of the Palestinians,” on the other.

Honig-Parnass also revealed that the so-called Zionist Labor movement, headed by the Workers' Party of “Israel”, “led the Zionist colonial project in Palestine during the pre-1948 period.”

After the Palestinian Nakba, 17 Israeli occupation governments were headed by so-called Socialist/Labor Zionists such as David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, and Yitzhak Rabin. These were the same governments under which “Israel” occupied Arab lands, such as the Egyptian Sinai and the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967.

Another Israeli war criminal who defined himself as a Socialist was former Israeli occupation Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who under his premiership, Israeli occupation forces shelled on April 18, 1996, a United Nations compound in Qana, Lebanon, killing over 100 civilians and wounding many more, most of whom were women, children, and elderly people.

In conclusion, no matter who leads any new Israeli government and what the ideology of that government is, the Israeli occupation will always be based on a settler colonialism system that relies on genocide and colonialism to forcibly expel Palestinians and bring in their place illegal Israeli settlers. It is never that an Israeli government would simply end its occupation of Palestine and other Arab lands in a goodwill initiative.

Therefore, speculating about the newest government’s plans yields nothing, as the results of any such plans are always the same, so attention should instead be directed toward liberating every inch of occupied Arab lands by “Israel”. It is about time to refrain from describing Israelis as leftists or rightists, given that all Israeli governments have massacred Palestinians and stolen their land under their Zionism project.

Leftist, centrist, or rightist, Israeli brutality will never cease to exist, and "Israel" will continue to shed Palestinian blood.

Read more: Israeli Supreme Court orders Netanyahu to remove key Minister