My monthly column for the UK outlet, Middle East Eye:
Naftali Bennett, the former Israeli prime minister and aspirant for the top job in this year’s election, was upset.
He slammed Benjamin Netanyahu after the recent announcement of a deal between Tehran and Washington, arguing that the current prime minister had squandered a unique opportunity.
Bennett praised the “extraordinary performance” of the Israeli army and security forces on the front lines during the war with Iran, “and the courage of the Israeli public on the home front”.
But in the end, Bennett said, “the government is once again incapable of turning all of that into lasting security achievements”.
The political era of Netanyahu has been the longest in the country’s history. His vision for the occupied West Bank and Gaza has been to crush the ambitions of the Palestinian people, forcing them to accept second-class status in perpetuity.
…
I recently visited the occupied West Bank and Israel, conducting research for my next book, and found Palestinians often scared, with no political leadership, and worried about displacement – or worse.
One day, I met the Makhmari family in the southern West Bank, with famed journalist Gideon Levy and photographer Alex Levac. The community of al-Mirkaz is incredibly remote, and it took us an hour to reach it by car on a rocky, hilly track from at-Tuwani in the area of Masafer Yatta.
Four farming families, about 40 residents, live there in caves, and they experience daily attacks and harassment from Israeli settlers who reside in nearby illegal outposts. I saw some of these long-haired extremists up close as they drove up to us, smiled, laughed and sped away.
The Palestinian residents recounted, as we sipped piping hot tea, how settlers routinely come to beat their sheep, destroy property and warn them to leave. This violence started before 7 October 2023, but it has intensified dramatically since then.
One of their dogs was recently beaten by a settler, the abuse captured on a video that went viral in Israel – and as a result, there was rare Israeli concern towards the dog (but not the Palestinians). The Makhmari family was both pleased and mystified. They knew that their existence didn’t register in the mainstream Israeli consciousness.
The landscape is dry and arid, and water has to be trucked in at a substantial cost, often getting stopped by settlers. It was eerily peaceful when we arrived, guided by field researchers from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. Families here have set up cameras to alert them when settlers strike, but they are essentially unprotected and highly vulnerable.
Like so many Palestinian villagers in the last few years, they’re unlikely to be able to withstand extensive settler assaults, and may eventually be forced to leave.
Read the whole piece: Even if Netanyahu is voted out, Israel’s ethnic cleansing agenda will continue apace |