Benjamin Netanyahu has always embodied an extremist position on major Israeli issues, not only on foreign but also internal policy issues. The world and Israeli society owe him several moments and stages of tension, conflict and death. Before and now.
I think not only of the 20,000 deaths in Gaza in just over two months (most of them children and women). Prime Minister Netanyahu's sinister agenda also includes the intention to end the independence of justice in Israel, and the suspicion that after the total inaction of Israeli security on October 7, there could be something very different from simple inefficiency. of the best defense and security system in the world.
Always confrontational, adverse to dialogue on substantive issues and essentially authoritarian, Netanyahu's intolerant logic partly explains Israeli policy. Many facts could be recalled, but three pearls are clearly illustrative of the threat that Netanyahu poses to the world, the Middle East and Israeli democracy, starting with the frontal opposition to a negotiated solution, the only way to make the two States in Palestine a reality.
1) Netanyahu's persistent and systematic opposition to any peaceful or negotiated solution to the Palestinian-Israeli tension.
Since the creation of Israel by the United Nations in May 1948 and the tension that this generated among the Palestinian people, there has not only been confrontation and tension. There have also been important rapprochements, negotiations and agreements between Israel and the representation of the Palestinian people. The fundamental core step was the Oslo Accords, negotiated during the 1990s with the mediation of Norway and US President Bill Clinton.
The so-called Oslo Accords were crucial. Signed in September 1993, in the White House by the then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the president of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Yasser Arafat, and before President Bill Clinton. The agreements were core in at least four fundamental aspects:
a) Mutual recognition between Palestine and Israel as valid negotiators; Arafat ratified Israel's right to exist there
b) Commitment of the Israeli Prime Minister to return the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank
c) A self-government called the Palestinian Authority was established in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and the commitment to the progressive withdrawal of Israeli armed forces
d) Preventive measures against acts of terrorism and hostilities between both states, as well as the guarantee of resolving, before May 1999, other controversial issues: Jerusalem, borders, refugees and settlements.
The ink of the agreements signed in the White House was fresh and Netanyahu's confrontational, agitated and extremist voice aggressively raised extremist and violent sectors of Israeli society against the Oslo agreements and against Prime Minister Rabin, whom he came to publicly accuse of being “far from Jewish tradition and Jewish values.” A few days later Rabin was assassinated in Tel Aviv by an extremist, Yigal Amir, in the midst of that confrontational atmosphere promoted by Netanyahu. With this, the peace process in which Rabin had actively participated was paralyzed. At Rabin's funeral, his son Yuval Rabin, in front of Netanyahu and looking at him, denounced the existence of “a mechanism that acted against Yitzhak Rabin, a mechanism of incitement and division that continues to hit us.”
This being the context, it is evident that only the path of a solution that points to the existence of the two States in the area, Israel and Palestine, will be able to generate stability and lasting peace. And for that to be the result, only the path of successful negotiation would offer consistency and solidity.
2) Another objective of Netanyahu: to end the independence of justice.
A year ago the Netanyahu Government announced the objective of “reforming” the justice system in Israel. That is, a government appointing “its” judges based on political affinity and targeting a government that is not accountable.
It sought to change the fundamental rules on substantial judicial matters and powers, thereby ending the independence of justice in Israel, subjecting it to the political control of the Government. Just as antidemocratic and extreme right sectors have been trying in these times in Latin America, in their own way, in Corrupt Pacts in Guatemala or Peru.
Netanyahu's “reform” sought to concentrate power in his hands. Its objectives, among others, were to give the Government absolute power in the appointment of judges and prosecutors; prevent the Supreme Court from reviewing the Basic Laws and limit the ability of the judicial system to review other laws and government decisions, by means such as allowing the Knesset (Parliament) to overturn Supreme Court rulings with a simple majority vote.
Despite the complexity of the internal situation in Israel, the truth of the facts is that the Supreme Court has occasionally provided a minimum of protection for the Palestinian population and other minorities in Israel. For example, overturning government attempts to ban Palestinian political parties from running in Israel's parliamentary elections. Justice has also allowed Palestinians facing forced eviction or forced transfer to obtain temporary court orders.
Netanyahu's authoritarian measure had an immediate reaction in the Israeli democratic community and, by the way, among judges and jurists and in international spaces such as the United Nations. As the UN special rapporteur on the independence of judges, a role I held until November 2022, I officially stated at the time that the proposed judicial reform “would seriously undermine the independence of Israel's courts, including the Supreme Court.” One of the most prominent from Israel has been Shimon Sheetret, professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and visiting professor at the most relevant universities in the United States and Great Britain.
The massive, months-long protests against the “Netanyahu reform” paralyzed the country at various times in one of the deepest political upheavals that Israel has faced in its history. Therefore, the decision adopted this Monday, January 1, by the Supreme Court of Israel that annulled the law promoted by Netanyahu that limited the powers of justice and concentrated them in the Government, is significant.
Given the push that Netanyahu gave to his project to cancel judicial independence, it is obvious that the tension will continue with the authoritarian and confrontational impulse of the prime minister. Two forces in opposition: a more religious and authoritarian one against a more secular and pluralist one, which in this case has ended up winning. Both this tension and the war against Gaza reflect some of the growing and acute contradictions and tensions that Israel is experiencing today.
3) The inaction of the Israeli intelligence and defense system in the face of the Hamas attack on October 7.
As is known, Netanyahu's collapse in the polls in Israel has to do with two crucial factors. On the one hand, the so-called “judicial reform” that generated overwhelming popular rejection. On the other hand, the inability to prevent or avoid the Hamas attacks of October 7 in which 1,200 people died. The latter despite having one of the best and strongest intelligence and security systems in the world.
Due to its size and logistical complexity, there are reasons to assume that the attack could – or should – have been detected in the face of events that were organized a few meters from the Israeli border and in are
as full of Israeli security forces.
Ehud Olmert, former Prime Minister of Israel (2006-2009), in an interview published in this newspaper, attributes the result to arrogance: “Israel had all the intelligence necessary to know what was happening. There were even concrete warnings from friendly services of the possibility of a very serious military attack by Hamas,” but that “the Israeli mentality was different and that is what allowed the massacre. Arrogance. “That was the problem.”
The fact is that until now it is not known if in-depth investigations are really underway and what could be the explanation that after three months of the attack there is no hint of the results.
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