The latest escalation came after Israeli police twice raided the al-Aqsa mosque early this month as worshippers barricaded themselves into the mosque’s compound to pray during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
It was all so inevitable. When Israel’s newly elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formed his ultranationalist, hard-right religious coalition government in Jerusalem last January, an administration which included racist, anti-Arab ministers determined to annex all the Palestinians territories, there was bound to be trouble. Sure enough, violence has erupted across the whole of the country and Netanyahu now faces crises on multiple fronts which threaten his grip on power. He was elected on a platform promising order and security. So far he has delivered the exact opposite.
The latest escalation came after Israeli police twice raided the al-Aqsa mosque early this month as worshippers barricaded themselves into the mosque’s compound to pray during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Police stormed the compound and fired stun-guns at Palestinian youths who hurled firecrackers back. Inside the mosque, police beat worshippers, including women and children, using batons, chairs and rifles.
Al-Aqsa, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, is the holiest site in Judaism, revered as the location of Biblical Jewish temples. It is also the third-holiest site in Islam. Conflicting claims over the area have frequently spilled out into violence. Just two years ago, a similar incident led to an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian Sunni-Islam fundamentalist militant and separatist movement, after which both sides claimed victory.
Following the al-Aqsa mosque incident, Israeli citizens were rattled last week by rocket fire from Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, a roadside shooting that killed three British-Israeli women in the West Bank, and a car ramming in Tel-Aviv that killed an Italian tourist and wounded seven other people. These attacks came less than 24 hours after Israel launched a wave of airstrikes on Lebanon and Gaza after Palestinian factions in southern Lebanon had launched 34 rockets towards north-western Israel. The exchanges, which came during the Jewish Passover holiday, the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and in the run-up to the Christian holy day of Easter, represent the most serious escalation between Israel and Lebanon since their 34-day war in 2006. For several hours, there were real fears that a broader conflict would erupt between the two arch-foes, who have faced-off on various battlegrounds across the Middle East with increasing frequency over recent months.
This is a particularly dangerous moment for Israel, as rockets out of Gaza would have been expected after the incident, but rockets out of Lebanon is a different matter. Although the 34 rockets fired towards north-western Israel were probably fired by a Palestinian group in Lebanon, they would have not done so without the permission of a Lebanese group called Hezbollah, the most powerful non-state actor in the Middle East and financed by Iran. Formed about 40 years ago, Hezbollah is estimated to have an arsenal of more than 100,000 rockets and missiles of various kinds at their disposal and as such is by far the greatest danger to Israel in the region.
But seasoned watchers have noticed that since 2006 both Israel and Hezbollah have tried very hard to keep the frontier between Israel and Lebanon calm because they know that the implications of another war would be grave. They recall that heavy-handed policing by Israel in Jerusalem during Ramadan two years ago turned into a war in Gaza.
So why did the Israeli government take the risk of inciting retaliation for the al-Aqsa incident? Here all eyes are focussed on Benjamin Netanyahu, the longest tenured Prime Minister in the country’s history.
An external threat might not be too inconvenient for Netanyahu. After all, throughout history leaders with domestic troubles have frequently concocted external confrontations as a way of wriggling out of their problems. And Netanyahu is a man with a mountain of problems. On the personal front, he is currently on trial facing charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Three years in, the trial has no end in sight. Netanyahu knows that if he is eventually found guilty, Israeli judges will not hesitate to send him to jail. A predecessor, Ehud Olmert, was sentenced to six years in prison in 2015 for similar reasons, although this was later reduced to 18 months on appeal.
Netanyahu’s critics argue that this is why he urgently wants to destroy Israel’s independent judiciary. Justice Minister Levin’s plan, which has sparked widespread opposition, will introduce legislation to reduce the court’s ability to strike down laws, while also giving politicians control over who is picked to sit on the bench. President of Israel’s Democracy Institute, Yohanan Plesner, claimed last week that “the legislative package advanced by Minister Levin will lead to a judiciary controlled by the executive branch, decimate the separation of powers in our democracy, and prevent the Supreme Court from defending the rights of individual citizens”.
Reaction to Netanyahu’s plan has seen hundreds of thousands of Israelis on the streets week after week and a general strike that even resulted in flights grounded at Israel’s main airport. The Jewish community around the world is loudly condemning Netanyahu’s plans. British Jews across the political spectrum are deeply troubled by “dangerous extremists” in the Israeli government. The eminent British historian, Simon Schama, insists that all UK Jews must “speak out over the complete disintegration of the political and social compact that underpins the state of Israel”. Schama argues that Israel is at risk of becoming a “nationalist theocracy” with the inclusion of ultra-religious far right parties in the coalition government. He points to the key government posts given to extreme hardliners Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, both ideological settlers committed to Israeli annexation in the occupied territories and the expulsion of Palestinians.
This gets to the heart of Netanyahu’s problems. His current coalition has 64 seats, a majority of 4 that includes 14 held by two right-wing extremist parties: the Religious Zionism Party, chaired by Smotrich; and the Jewish Power Party, headed by Ben-Gvir. Without them, Netanyahu would not have a majority in the Knesset and therefore not be able to govern. When Netanyahu reversed his decision to fire defence minister, Yoav Gallant, for warning that the judicial overhaul was harming the military, a furious Ben-Gvir threatened to resign and bring down the government unless Netanyahu agreed to the establishment of a National Guard of 2000 men accountable to him. Netanyahu meekly concurred.
This further alarmed those citizens who argue that “Netanyahu’s present” to Ben-Gvir is simply an armed guard that will be directed against anyone who expresses an opinion other than religious Zionism or against Ben-Gvir and his people. The National Guard proposal has also led to alarm bells going off within the Israeli police. Its head, Kobi Shabtai, warned of dire consequences. Former police chief Moshe Karade was even stronger in his opposition, suggesting Ben-Gvir could harness the National Guard to carry out a “coup”.
For more than fifteen years, a risk-averse and cautious Benjamin Netanyahu has defied political gravity. He has always prided himself in his ability to triangulate, to read the political scene correctly and stay within the broad outlines of what the public might tolerate. This has all dramatically changed and he now finds himself under siege from his long-term enemy Hezbollah and trapped by his two coalition partners whom he cannot sack for fear of losing power and the real possibility of jail. His recent inability to grasp the scale of the public hostility to the anti-democratic plans, coupled with his struggle to cajole belligerent elements of his coalition pushing for changes, has also exposed a weakness that wasn’t there before. What has altered Netanyahu’s behaviour is a source of mystery and speculation. Is it his trial, or is it, as Ehud Barak argued recently, more the consequences of a quest for absolute power that corrupts absolutely? Whatever the cause, Netanyahu has created possibly the gravest internal crisis in Israel’s history.
No wonder Hezbollah’s leader, Hassam Nasrallah, claimed last month that “recent events in Israel show the nation is nearing its end”. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but with Netanyahu’s coalition of convicted racists and self-proclaimed homophobes in control, Israel, the only nuclear power in the Middle East, is indisputably on edge.
John Dobson is a former British diplomat, who also worked in UK Prime Minister John Major’s office between 1995 and 1998. He is currently Visiting Fellow at the University of Plymouth.