First of all, my thanks to both of you and
@ScholesyTheWise to keep posting in this thread despite some unfair criticism and posters giving you a rough time. I can't imagine how hard it is for you guys at the moment, but your contribution is highly appreciated and I personally wish that there were more Israeli posters of your caliber on this thread.
People like them existed before, decades ago. Some of them got into politics, and even became members of the parliament - so they had some backing. But senior politicians looked at them in disdain and refused to have anything to do with them, so they have next to no power at all.
Netanyahu was one of those politicians. Now, though, he's opened them the door to the govenment and to power in order to survive.
So he's a huge part of it. As is the fractured nature of Israeli politics in recent years - all due to him. No wonder the Palestenian issue was put aside until October 7. Look at what happened in just the 4.5 years prior to that: Five rounds of election, a huge political upheaval, Netanyahu's trial, Covid, the judicial "reform". It's been nonstop. So who had the time to actually do anything meaningful?
I do not deny it. They exist in every single country and I would never pin Israel down on this particular point. I do however disagree with their supposed lack of influence. Netanyahu opened the door because the ultra-right (we can't even speak of far-right anymore) carries enough weight to keep him in power.
These guys are now in a position that allows them and their ideas to actually have a real impact. I mean, Smotrich is the minister of Finance and Ben Gvir is the minister of the National Security, both since 2022. Isn't the latter directly responsible of the administration of the settlements and their expansion? These are not peripheric positions in the government and that's something no democratic country, to my knowledge, has ever allowed to happen. Smotrich just announced a few days ago the seizing of 800 hectares in the Jordan Valley, the most fertile region of the West Bank. It's enormous for the site of the region and the biggest land theft since 1993, which somehow flew under the radar of the Western media,
once again.
Do you think that once Netanyahu and these two are booted out, the 800 hectares will be given back? I personally highly doubt it.
My question is how this guy who's been a notorious opponent to a two state solution for decades (I personally think that it has a lot to do with the death of his brother during the Entebbe Raid in 1986), a far-right, corrupt troublemaker has been democratically elected from 1996 to this day. All the domestic protests against him, which were fully justified, never included the elephant in the room that is the Palestinian question. As far as I know, he's been successful because he was "Mr. Security", to borrow ScholesyTheWise's expression, and people were okay with it, no matter how dirty his methods were and what it implied.
On the other hand, he intensified the settlement policy, with
most of the Israelis not even batting an eyelid. And it happened not only under his regime but also under every single previous one. Here's some interesting numbers:
- In
1948, there were about
2,800 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East-Jerusalem.
-
1972 (Five years after the end of the Six Days War and the occupation of the West Bank)
: 10,531
-
1983 (Menahem Begin was really hard-working):
99,795
-
1993 (Yitzhak Shamir at his finest and two years before Yitzhak Rabin's assassination):
269,200
-
2004 (One year before Ariel Sharon decided to pull out from Gaza)
: 424,000
-
2010 (One year after Netanyahu came to power, again and stayed there ever since)
: 512,000
-
2018 (Netanyahu's on a roll)
: 645,800
-
Today (Netanyahu's still on a roll)
: 733,000
I'm not even including the Golan Heights which should have been returned to Syria since 1967 and where
25,261 Israeli settlers are present as of 2019.
Source
In short, no matter which Party (either Labor, Likud or Kadima) was at the helm, the colonization of the West Bank and East-Jerusalem has never stopped since Israel declared its independence in 1948. On the contrary. Today it's ca. 8% of the Israeli population that exponentially grows each passing year, has no right whatsoever to be where they actually are, and every interest in a Palestinian State never seeing the light of the day. You just can't dismiss them as an Israeli leader and their voice will carry more and more weight in the future. That's a reality Israel will have to face, one day or another.