The present article is a critical analysis of the strategic challenges and political dilemmas that Israeli society will have to face under its the new Netanyahu-led government.
The new Netanyahu-led coalition government of Israel is made of an alliance of hard-right nationalist and radical religious parties and embodies the sentiment of being the most right-wing pro-settler and expansionism government in Israel´s history.
It´s new cabinet is made of a series hard-right politicians that have allied themselves with Likud and that many on the Israeli right have criticized for being too extreme. Even members of Likud- such as Dan Meridor and Moshe Yalon have publicly opposed the new government positions on the settler issue, claiming it will only alienate the Jewish world and turn Israel´s international image into a negative one.
It must be said however that most of these figures were once politically aligned or allied to Netanyahu and thus hold some responsibility in regards to the current state of Israeli politics, however those who were once in the recent past considered to represent only the fringes of Israeli society are now in leadership positions within the Israeli state.
This coalition might also create in the long-term more problems politically for Netanyahu than benefits, since Netanyahu´s government is about to pass a series of legislative pieces that will change the governments responsibilities and give the other members of the coalition- Smotrich and Ben-Gvir- more power in leading Israeli offices to advance the settler expansion in the West Bank.
The new system that is being designed by this coalition will carve out for Smotrich extraordinary powers to make key decisions in security issues instead of the defence minister, making him able to rule over the “civil administration” dossier of the West Bank.
In turn, Smotrich- a hard-right ultra-nationalist and expansionist Zionist- will use his new powers to advance the demolition of Palestinian homes and towns and support the construction of new settlement colonies in area C of the West Bank.
Ben-Gvir, his other important ally, will in turn use his new institutional powers over the Israeli security apparatus to order extra-repressive measures to control Palestinian resistance.
This unrestricted advancement of the settlement expansion will create two immediate strategic problems for Israel. The first one will be that it will cause a conflict of interests within the security institutions of Israel where most of its leaders have divergent positions to the positions of the current coalition´s political project.
The second one will be that it will affect negatively the relation between Arab States and Israel with the advancement of the settlements and the growth of tension between Arabs and Jews that will result from it.
This highly inconvenient since it will only deter Israel from further developing its relations with the Gulf States in order to face effectively Iran, its main threat and regional enemy. It will also enter inevitably into confrontation with other major Arab states over the pressure that their people´s will make on the states to confront Israel regarding its treatment of Palestinians.
In addition to the inevitable conflicts that this coalition will have with the security apparatus of the state of Israel, another problem that will originate from such a situation is that it will make the security and intelligence decision-making process that much more difficult, slowing down the cooperation process between the various security institutions, which in turn will only put in jeopardy Israeli society.
Furthermore, the government will promote a series of settlement developments in all parts of Israel- in Galilee, the Negev, Golan, Judea and Samaria -promoting thus an openly extreme expansionist policy which will only result in increasing the tension between Arabs and Jews as a cost of the unrelenting ideological defence if the continuation of the annexation of Palestinian land by Israel.
Overall, it can be said that the present complex situation is ultimately, the result of the sentiment of the Israeli mainstream society which has lost since the early 2000´s and the third Intifada the faith in a peace with Palestinians and instead wishes for a full separation of their society from Palestinians.
On the other hand, there is one main strategic advantage to this government, since the coalition that it forms gives a level of political stability that Israel hasn’t had since Netanyahu´s 2015 government.
The previous Naftali Bennet-Yair Lapid coalition government managed to only last a year due to strong political divisions. In addition, the previous government failed to stop the advancement of the settlements or offer actual changes that could pacify the West Bank.
It should be taken into account that Israeli society has managed to remain functioning with the political instability for the last years even under the extreme conditions of the corona pandemic and the riots of 2020.
The question will be if under the present conditions and with the future tensions that will result from these governments policies, can Israeli society be able to maintain its resilience and manage to surpass its security challenges.
Adding to this is the extremely tense environment that exists today in Israeli society with 2022 having been the year that according to the UN has had more Palestinian casualties since 2005. In addition, the UN observers have condemned the “rampant Israeli settler violence and excessive use of force by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank”.
Consequently, a series of new Palestinian armed collectives have been founded in the last 2 years and polls show that about 72% of Palestinians support these new formations and 79% opposing their surrender to the Israeli state.
This data demonstrates firstly a reaction of frustration and anger by the Palestinian civil society towards the Israeli state. Secondly, it demonstrates in a very clear manner that Israel faces a greater wave of possible terror attacks against its society now and the average Israeli will live with a higher level of social insecurity as a result of Palestinian resistance, with the tensions possibly rising to a breaking point under this new government.
To further complicate the current scenario, the Palestinian Authority is having serious difficulty in handling and controlling the new armed resistance formations, with the situation being one that can easily get out of control and spill over all of Israel. In addition, with the rising tensions, the integration of Arabs in Israeli society will only become more difficult.
Lastly, this new government, although it represents a large number of Israelis and is ideologically cohesive has in its political vision the objective to push changes that will make the Israeli state more religious which in turn will only affect Netanyahu´s party more negatively since it will alienate its voting base which are mainstream Israeli secular jews.
It also most likely will alienate a great amount of the Jewish diaspora around the world and specially in the US, where most Jews are liberal and secular.
This type of changes will also complicate the strategic relationship that the US has with Israel, since the US has also provided aid to the Palestinians and at least officially believes in the two-state solution although the current administration has done little to nothing to solve the situation or intervene in the conflict with the exception of the comments made in regards to the 2020 April-June incident of riots throughout the country.
However, this new government will force President Biden into having a more open position towards the situation and with such a divergent government in terms of each one’s strategic visions for the region there will most likely be confrontations between both with the strong chance that this government might even cause harm to Israel´s strategic relation with the US.
In conclusion the new Israeli government will bring more challenges as a cost of its political vision and consequently although it has brought the benefit of political stability, it will bring with it heavy strategic problems.
By The European Institute for International Law and International Relations.
