Isaac Chotiner
The New Yorker / January 4, 2023
Critics fear that Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line coalition will damage the country’s democracy and inflame tensions in the West Bank and Gaza.
Last week, Israel’s new government was sworn into office, with Benjamin Netanyahu—already the country’s longest-serving Prime Minister—at the helm for the sixth time. Netanyahu has assembled the most far-right cabinet in Israel’s history, with notable posts given to ultranationalists: Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is the new minister of national security (a position that oversees the police), and Bezalel Smotrich, who will have significant power over Jewish settlements in addition to his role as finance minister. The government has promised to expand those settlements, and to weaken the authority of the judiciary; members of the new coalition have also made extensive comments denigrating the L.G.B.T.Q. community, and called for stricter definitions of who qualifies as Jewish. Making its larger vision clear, the government released policy guidelines last week announcing the Jewish people’s “exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the land of Israel.”
To talk about what the new government will mean for Palestinians, I recently spoke by phone with Raja Shehadeh, a Palestinian lawyer and activist who co-founded the human-rights organization Al-Haq. His latest book, out next month, is called “We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir”. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed what will and will not change for Palestinians in the West Bank, the increased discrimination that Palestinian citizens of Israel are likely to face, and how to think about the Netanyahu government in the context of other far-right movements around the world.
What are your concerns specifically about relations with the Palestinians under this new government?
I think the new government is going to more strongly affect—and have a deleterious effect on—Israel than it will the West Bank and the Palestinians. But, first of all, let’s not speak about the Palestinians in general, because there are Palestinians in Gaza, there are Palestinians in Israel, and there are Palestinians in the West Bank. The effect on each is different. To start with Gaza, the worst thing is that this government may make war—or is very likely to make a war. And that of course will affect Gaza.
For Palestinians in Israel, the effect will be strong because they are going to be subject to more racist attitudes. The government is already planning to have more Jewish settlers and Israeli Jews in the Galilee, and fewer Palestinians. Palestinians can also be affected by the budgetary allocations of their local councils. They can be affected by the allocations for placements in jobs, in medical schools, and so on. The discrimination against Palestinians in Israel is very likely to happen, and already there is fear that the situation will be worse than it is now.
As to the West Bank, the situation is, I think, less structural and more a question of degree, because we have had already, since 1979, changes in the structures of the government of the area, whereby the settlers have been separated from the Palestinians and placed under a different regime and annexed to Israel, effectively. And so all the discrimination affects the Palestinians and not the Israeli settlers.
These structures are already there, and this new government is not going to create new ones but will use its powers of civil administration to increase the difficulties for the Palestinians. Under the existing rules, planning in Area C, which is about sixty per cent of the West Bank, is under the Israeli civilian administration. Smotrich will take power over this administration, and will apply stricter rules as to what is allowed and what is not allowed and how many more settlements and outposts will be legalized, and so on. And, of course, allocation of funds is in his hands, and so he would give more funds to build more settlements.
There is also the fear that Palestinians will be thrown out of the West Bank and Gaza. Members of the right-wing coalition have been very outspoken about the need to throw “extremist” Palestinians out of the land. They will use any opportunity to do that. One of the biggest opportunities would be war, of course, but short of a war they can make changes in the regulations whereby Palestinians who are unwanted can be thrown out to Jordan or from the West Bank to Gaza.
Just to take the West Bank first, you seem to be saying that this new government will use the existing structures to exacerbate policies that are already in effect. But short of a war or something like that, you think it’ll be a change in degree rather than a change in kind, because the status quo is already so bad. Is that accurate?
Yeah, this is what I think, and this is what I believe. Already the existing structures are so biased and so discriminatory and give Israel great powers—they don’t really need to change them. They’re already there, and they will just use the powers more extensively and more liberally in favor of the settlers and against the Palestinians.
When you think about the last forty-plus years, do you feel that the change in governments in Israel has had a big effect one way or the other on the lives of Palestinians? Or is it that Israel nominates a new Prime Minister, it forms a new government, and it might have a Labor-led government or a Likud-led government, but fundamentally things don’t change?
Well, let’s start with 1967, when the Israeli cabinet decided in secret meetings, the minutes of which have now been revealed, to erase the Green Line from Israel’s official map. The Green Line was the demarcation line drawn as a result of the armistice agreements after the Arab-Israeli War of 1948 that essentially functioned as the border between the West Bank and Israel. By deleting it, and by making all the official maps include Greater Israel, this indicated that they had in mind to expand Israel into the West Bank.
Now, this didn’t go through directly because there were times when they thought that maybe they could make some sort of arrangement for the Palestinians. There were different phases in the relationships between Palestinians and Israelis and Israel and the neighboring countries, so it’s not consistent. The only consistent thing is that it has moved increasingly toward annexation. But the extent of the pressure on the Palestinians has varied over the years. With some governments it has been less strong. With others it has been worse.
The people in the civil administration have made a difference. I have dealt with a lot of these people. Ephraim Sneh, for example, was an early civil administrator in the West Bank, and he was a person who you could argue with, who sometimes thought that it’s best to give Palestinians more leeway and more privileges and more possibilities to expand their areas, and so on. He was reasonable. And then he was replaced by somebody less reasonable. And now there’s no reasonable people at all. Now Smotrich is the one who will appoint the head of the civil administration, and he is likely to appoint the most extreme kind of person who would not give any concessions to the Palestinians. This will make a difference in the lives of the Palestinians, of course.
The last government, which was a coalition of some far-right and not far-right parties, brought Arab [Palestinian] parties into the government. I don’t know whether that engendered a lot of hope, but it was something new in modern Israeli history, and I’m curious how you think that experiment went. Are there any lessons that you feel were learned from it?
I was reviewing the record of that government in terms of the violence in the West Bank—the treatment of civilians and the killings and the house demolitions and so on. And the record is terrible, terrible, terrible. Really worse than any other government, I think. The minister of defense was brutal toward the Palestinians. Now, whether in Israel itself Palestinians were able to do a little better under the government, I can’t really say. Maybe the presence of Palestinians within the government gave them some leeway to pressure for concessions at certain times. That’s how politics works: you are able to exert some pressure and get some concessions.
But those concessions would’ve manifested within Israel, within Israel proper, rather than in the West Bank?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And the sad thing, Isaac, is that there’s never been a government in Israel which has been for coexistence and for peaceful resolution of the conflict. And this is manifest in the [educational] curriculum. If you want to make peace with the neighbor, with the enemy, with the adversary, you start by teaching the children in school about that nationality, that group. You tell children about them and you try to improve their image and you try to teach the language. Very little of that happened. Most of the people in Israeli schools who took Arabic, as far as I know, were those who were interested in going into the security services. The previous government was not a government that was leaning toward peace and peaceful relations with the Palestinians.
It’s interesting to hear you say that, because one critique of the Palestinians is “Oh, if you want to know why they don’t want peace, look in their textbooks. They teach their children to hate Jews.”
The Palestinians don’t have to teach their children to hate Israelis. They hate Israelis because of the way they see Israelis treat them. It’s much more powerful than teaching in the textbooks, unfortunately. And the fact is that by now there is a whole generation, if not two generations, who have only experienced Israelis as soldiers or settlers—and in both cases in violence.
To have relations, human being to human being, the chances are almost nil now, which wasn’t the case before. In the sixties, seventies, and eighties, there was much more interaction. People knew each other on a personal level much more. Now it’s only settlers and soldiers, and they only see violence from the other side.
To go back a bit, how exactly do you think that the lives of Palestinians within Israel are likely to change under this new government?
There are plans, as I mentioned, to increase the number of Israeli Jews in the Galilee, because now in some areas there’s a majority of Palestinians. To do that, they’re going to make it more difficult for the Palestinians to expand in these areas and increase incentives for the Israeli Jewish population to move there. It’s not as though, side by side with these new policies, there is an attempt to make good neighborly relations. It’s adversarial, unfortunately, and it’s so sad to see it like that. And then, of course, the Palestinians are totally dependent on the Israeli system and Israeli government for their livelihood, for their well-being, for their advancement. The Israeli government can stop that advancement on many levels and in many areas.
This current Israeli government has been compared to other right-wing movements across the world that we’ve seen sprout up in the last ten years. Is that a helpful way of thinking about what’s going on in Israel and the Palestinian territories now?
I think so, but I think the stakes are much higher in Israel and for the Palestinians. In America or in Europe, in the places where there have been right-wing governments, the danger to democracy is strong, of course. And that’s something to worry about—and the same thing is true in Israel. But in Israel there’s always the danger that the right-wing government, through its lack of concern for the other side, might create violence and violent reactions. Smotrich said that the Palestinians are here by mistake, that Ben-Gurion wanted to get rid of them and he didn’t, and that was a mistake in 1948. When Palestinians hear something like this, it makes one’s blood boil. More of these statements by officials in the government and more restrictive policies by the government will create a reaction. And the reaction could mean flare-ups. We are in a place where we should be working toward peace and coexistence, and right-wing governments do exactly the opposite.
On one level you’re saying that the situation with Israel and the Palestinians is so bad that having a far-right government creates higher stakes than it does in the U.S. or elsewhere. At the same time, you were saying at the beginning of our conversation that things are already so bad that nothing may change, fundamentally. Is there any tension there?
Yeah, I see, I see. I mean, there isn’t any fundamental structural change. But structural change is not the only thing. There’s going to be more policies that are more restrictive and will create tensions. The most likely flash point with Ben-Gvir responsible for security is Al-Aqsa. Any reneging on Arab and Palestinian rights over that important religious site would very likely cause a tremendous reaction. [On Tuesday, after our interview, Ben-Gvir visited the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which both Muslims and Jews, who call it the Temple Mount, view as holy. The visit was condemned by Palestinians—and by Yair Lapid, the Israeli opposition leader—as a provocation.]
I am also worried about more cases of illegal outposts getting legalized, settlers taking back outposts and settlements evacuated by decision of the Israeli Supreme Court, changing the Army’s rules of engagement to the further detriment of the safety of Palestinians, increasing government subsidies for Jewish settlement in the occupied territories, an increase in the orders for transfer of entire Palestinian communities, completion of the normalization of settlements—as in the case of Ariel University and its closer cultural relations to Israel—and massive land expropriation and incorporation into Israel of the Jordan Valley.
There is also the fact that the minister of defense is no longer set to be in control, exactly, over the border police that operate in the occupied West Bank. [According to a deal struck between Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir, those officers will be moved to the jurisdiction of the ministry of national security.] The minister of defense will always make sure that things do not get beyond a certain point, beyond the red line. Even when the human-rights violations are endemic, there is usually a calculation by the chief of staff of the Israeli Army responsible to the minister of defense as to how far the Army can go before an eruption by the Palestinians would take place. Because if such an eruption takes place, the military is ultimately the one responsible for handling it. Without this leverage, we are bound to see more extreme forms of suicidal reactions by Palestinians who feel that their backs are to the wall. The pace and the temperature and so on are going to be hotter and worse. And that’s not to be underestimated.
What political changes do you expect from Palestinians, in the West Bank especially, if this government starts to do the types of things that you’re concerned about?
Well, there could be another intifada. People are tolerant, and tolerant, and tolerant, unless they see all avenues closed and no way out. If there’s no way out and it can’t be worse, then they just become suicidal. We can get all kinds of suicidal violence and extremist resistance. Right now, even though it’s been bad, the political powers in Israel keep control over how bad it can be.
The government is worried about eruptions. At certain points, they don’t want war. They don’t want bad relations with America and the West based on how they see things here. And so they temper things. But this government doesn’t seem to be concerned about that, and so, in a way, there’s little to deter them. They don’t seem to care about what the West thinks. They announce their racist policies openly.
Neighboring countries’ concern for the Palestinians has been spotty over the past decades, but it seems especially spotty now that Israel has made economic and security partnerships, essentially, with these countries, such as the United Arab Emirates. It seems less likely that these governments will put up much of a fuss about mistreatment of Palestinians than ever before in the post-1948, certainly the post-1967, era. Does that seem accurate to you?
Yes, absolutely. They think of human-rights organizations as the enemy, as Smotrich also said. Israel is trying to restrict the funding of these groups and put pressure on them and so on. That also will make a difference because human-rights organizations are very important in at least informing people in the world about what is happening here. And if they’re clamped down on, there’s nobody to tell what is happening.
The current government seems to have very particular, strict ideas about Judaism and what Judaism should be, and has ambitions to make Israel into an even more religious state. Even if that doesn’t cause an immediate structural change, what do you think it might mean over the long term for the coexistence of Israelis and Palestinians?
I don’t think it has a great influence on us, really, because Israel, as far as we are concerned, is biased and discriminatory toward non-Jews in principle and in structures. But I think that with Israel becoming more geared in that direction, they’re going to lose out, because the power of Israel and what made it succeed so far was the democracy that it had for the Israelis, the power to make people feel happier in their surroundings and more tolerant and so on. And now, as they clamp down and become more strict—more like Iran, really—they’re not going to be as successful. It’s not going to be good for Israel. But a long time can be a long time.
Raja, thank you for talking.
There is one more thing. I was speaking today to somebody I trust, an Israeli journalist, and I said, “What is the chance of there being a reaction in Israel against these things and resistance to them?” And she said, “Very little.” I was very disappointed. I was asking whether she thought there would be real civil resistance. Resistance among Israelis would be helpful to us, of course. But she thought there was very little chance. This distressed me. ♦
Isaac Chotiner is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he is the principal contributor to Q. & A., a series of interviews with public figures in politics, media, books, business, technology, and more
