Israel/Palestine

Mass demonstrations against Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's hard-right prime minister, have continued, as the country lurches towards its fourth election in two years. Following a previous wave of anti-Netanyahu protests which highlighted the corruption allegations against him, due to come to court in January, the latest mobilisations have focused on his mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic, where a precipitous easing of lockdown measures and inadequate social provision has seen both infections and unemployment spike massively. An article in the left-wing 972 magazine notes that, although...

Amid deepening political and public health crises, Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reported by the daily Haaretz (23 July) to be set on calling new elections for 18 November. This would be the country's fourth round of general elections in the last two years. The next day Netanyahu denied the report, but tensions within the ruling coalition, agreed between Benjamin Netanyahu's hard-right Likud party and Benny Gantz's centre-right Blue and White party in May, and also involving Avigdor Lieberman's secular far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party and various religious fundamentalist...

Mass protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the coronavirus crisis have continued in Israel, with one protest converging on Netanyahu’s residence on Saturday 18 July. Demonstrators blocked roads and built barricades before being dispersed with water cannons. Netanyahu’s trial for corruption has now resumed, with the case expected to last years. Polling by the Israel Democracy Institute suggests just 29.5% of the Israeli public trusts Netanyahu’s handling of the pandemic. This backdrop of discontent and unrest has made it difficult for Netanyahu to proceed with plans...

The Israeli government’s plan to annex Palestinian territories remains stalled, with Israel coming under increasing pressure from other countries to change course. Egypt, France, Germany, and Jordan have all told Israel that pushing ahead with annexation would have “consequences” for diplomatic relations between the countries. Opposition from within the far-right settler movement, parts of which feel the annexation plan doesn’t go far enough, is also holding back government efforts. Meanwhile, public opposition to the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis is mounting. Tens of...

The 1 July date set by Israel’s hard-right government to launch its annexation of occupied Palestinian territories passed with what Palestinian journalist Amjad Iraqi, writing in +972 Mag., called “very little fanfare.” Iraqi wrote: “Disputes and unpreparedness within the Israeli government and the settler movement, along with growing international criticism in recent weeks, appear to have stalled the annexation process.” Speaking in a webinar, Iraqi added that debates within the government may also have contributed to limiting the Israeli state’s ability to act. “There are disputes between...

No one, I think, now denies that the story of Minneapolis cops learning neck-kneeling from Israel was a fabrication. But, in the wake of Rebecca Long Bailey’s sacking from the Shadow Cabinet, some still suggest — for example, in Momentum’s 1 July Zoom report-back from Labour’s National Executive — that it wasn’t antisemitic. Denunciations of Israel (so the argument goes) can’t be antisemitic, because only antisemites can identify Jews with Israel and consider a denunciation of the Israeli state as an attack on Jewish people. But here we have a very special sort of denunciation. That it’s...

The timetable set for itself by Israel’s Netanyahu-Gantz coalition government provides for moving formally to annex to Israel large parts of the Palestinian West Bank this week, on 1 July. Annexing large chunks of what is now “Area C”, under Israel control, will create new barriers to an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, other than in the sham form of a string of disconnected patches of land (Palestinian-inhabited cities, towns, villages) surrounded on all sides by Israeli territory and connected with each other only by Israeli-supervised channels. It still remains possible that...

A worldview which sees the hidden hand of Israel behind every social ill, and which radically inflates the power of the Israeli state, are key aspects of what Workers' Liberty and others have called "left antisemitism". The claim in the actor Maxine Peake's recent interview in the Independent, that "the tactics used by the police in America, kneeling on George Floyd's neck, that was learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services", belongs to that worldview. The claim itself is false. US police have attended conferences in Israel, and in other countries. There is no evidence to suggest the...