Alwaght- These days, Palestine is pregnant with new developments. The increase in the number of Palestinian deaths as a result of Israeli attacks in the West Bank are expressive of severest tensions in this part of Palestine. In its latest figures, the Palestinian Health Ministry said 217 Palestinians were killed since the start of the year, with 165 killed in the West Bank by the Israeli attacks. The escalation of tensions comes as Tel Aviv has been trying to take over the security control of the West Bank over at least the last six decades to provide an opportunity for the expansion of settlements. But this expansion of tensions indicates that Tel Aviv has failed in achieving its goals in bringing under its control the security of the Palestinian region.
Here are three reasons why Tel Aviv initiatives in the West Bank have so far failed: The failure of the Palestinian Authority as a proxy of Tel Aviv, the failure of the traditional policy of providing economic incentives to the West Bank, and the rise of far-right and hard-line politicians in the Israeli government and parliament.
The failed Palestinian Authority
The Palestinian Authority has lost its legitimacy and place along the Palestinians in the West Bank. Many observers suggest that it is turned into a proxy implementing indirect Israeli occupation. Today, this institution more than being responsible for protecting the security of Palestinian citizens is responsible for ensuring the security of the Israelis by suppressing the Palestinian resistance in exchange for benefits and economic privileges. In fact, the the Palestinian Authority has lost its legitimacy among the Palestinian citizens, and they consider it a servient and corrupt institution.
In 2005, the Palestinian Authority showed that it is not interested in holding presidential elections, and also it disapproved of the 2006 parliamentary elections after Hamas and other resistance groups won, and also cracked down on the critics. Growing tyranny, coordination with Tel Aviv, and lack of a strategy to help end the Israeli occupation is frustrating to the Palestinians, including some in Palestinian Authority’s ranks. Some of its administration’s members are extremely discontented with this situation. Carnegie Foundation in a report maintains that according to polls conducted in June this year, over 75 percent of the Palestinians wanted Palestinian Authority’s President Mahmoud Abbas to step down, 59 percent find the Palestinian Authority a burden on the Palestinians, and almost half of them support its dissolution.
Collapse of Moshe Dayan solution
The traditional presumption of the Israeli leaders is that the main driving force behind the political unrest and opposition to Tel Aviv is the Palestinian citizens’ financial deprivation. This thought was advanced by the Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan between 1967 and 1974. An Israeli military report published in 1970 held that the only way to contain possible revolt by Palestinian social forces is a constant effort to improve their living standards and provide them with services.
Despite these proposed methods, the recent wave of attacks against the Israeli occupiers has exposed the shortcomings of Tel Aviv’s policies and the failure of these policies to bring the Palestinians to their knees. Palestinian armed resistance by young people living in the West Bank, particularly after the attacks on Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem in May last year, has multiplied and today Palestinian armed groups, especially in Nablus and Jenin in the north of the West Bank, carry out armed operations against the Israeli forces almost every week. In the West Bank, an armed group calling itself Arin al-Asud, or the Lions’ Den, has been established in the old city of Nablus, and this group, which includes armed youths from different Palestinian layers, works under a united anti-occupation agenda. The group is popular among Palestinians, to the extent that it is considered a “great challenge” to the Israeli regime.
It is not difficult to figure out the reasons driving tensions in the West Bank. The unrelenting violence of the military and security presence of the Israelis in the Palestinian camps, night-time attacks, land seizures, dispossession of house owners, forced demolition and displacement, economic marginalization, mass arrests, the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements, illegal killings, and waging five wars on Gaza in the last fifteen years are all the best answers to questions probing the roots of the current tense situation in the West Bank.
Rise of far-right in Tel Aviv
Since the past two decades, the far-right parties gradually took over the control of the political institutions and currently the most hard-line far-right coalition led by ex-PM Benjamin Netanyahu is in the making. Netanyahu, who managed to get only 34 seats in the recent Knesset elections, needed 64 seats to form his desired cabinet, and therefore he has moved towards a coalition with hard-line figures such as Itamar Ben-Gvir. Together with Bezalel Smotrich, the head of Tkuma, Ben-Gvir’s party has about 14 seats in the new Knesset and from this point of view it is vital for Netanyahu to form an alliance with them. To this end, Netanyahu has promised the post of the Ministry of Internal Security to Ben-Gvir and the Ministry of Finance to Smotrich so that he can form his desired cabinet with them.
As a hardliner, Ben-Gvir for some time has been seeking to change the status of the holy Al-Quds Mosque and, indeed, his new role would strengthen the extremist movements of settlers and step up crackdown on the Palestinians. The Israeli settlers movement is now stronger as it knows it holds the power in Tel Aviv.
In addition to Ben-Gvir, Smotrich is another hard-line minister in the Netanyahu’s cabinet. Israeli expert Miko Peled, referring to Smotrich’s position in Tel Aviv, told New Arab news outlet that “everything that governs the lives of the Palestinians will be divided between Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. The destruction of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the construction of a new temple are on the list of their work priorities.”
Along with radical groups, Ben-Gvir has several times raided Al-Aqsa Mosque and held Jewish religious rituals there. He said that he will change the status quo of the Jewish religious rituals and grant a longer time to Jews in the holy Muslim site, a move inclined to fuel tensions in Al-Quds (Jerusalem). In 2007, Ben-Gvir was charged with racist incitement against the Palestinians. He also advocates anti-Palestinian assassinations, live fire on the Palestinians throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at the Israeli forces, and revocation of the citizenship from the 1948 Palestinians. Indeed, Palestine is pregnant with further tensions as far-right is assuming the power.
