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WAR FIRST, THEN ANNEXATION: IS ISRAEL PREPARING TO PERMANENTLY OCCUPY
GAZA?  
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Dahlia Scheindlin
April 3, 2024
Haaretz
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_ While expectations rise that surging protests could bring down the
Netanyahu government, the Bible-infused nationalists in power are
consolidating plans to resettle Gaza, following a well-worn Israeli
playbook. Who, or what, can stop them? _

A demonstration by right-wing settlers, the annexationist vanguard,
protesting against the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, in
February, Credit: Ilan Assayag

 

It's been a heady week in Jerusalem. Trains and public spaces have
been flooded with protesters noisily calling for the government to go.
This weekend, the protesters calling for the government to immediately
prioritize a deal to release the hostages held by Hamas joined with
anti-government protests calling for new elections, for a mass
demonstration.

Both groups of protesters are hoping for the perfect storm to help
boot the government out. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing
the fury
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the hostage families, having failed to secure a hostage release deal
since the initial agreement in November. He's had plenty of help from
Hamas in this failure, but Netanyahu is Israel's elected leader, and
he's been lying to its citizens that his policies will get the
hostages back. Instead, families have noticed that their loved ones
are still not home.

Then the U.S.-Israel crisis appeared to hit breaking point last week.
Worldwide opinion is sliding into Israel's global isolation. The
ghastly IDF killing
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seven workers from the international relief group World Central
Kitchen has brought fresh and searing global condemnation
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[Protesters calling for an immediate hostage deal and new elections
try to break through a police barricade near Prime Minister
Netanyahu's Jerusalem residence last weekend]

Protesters calling for an immediate hostage deal and new elections try
to break through a police barricade near Prime Minister Netanyahu's
Jerusalem residence last weekendCredit: Olivier Fitoussi

On the home front, the government has teetered due to a showdown
between its own ruling coalition parties over proposed legislation to
conscript ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students; there were no winners. The
High Court of Justice ordered the state to begin drafting the Haredim
posthaste, and to freeze funds to yeshivas that don't cooperate with
the draft. After 75 years of a free ride
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it cost the rest of us), the Haredi parties were thoroughly shocked,
sending tremors
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the government.

The various streams of protesters are hopeful that their pile-on of
pressure could finally bring the edifice down. In conversations, more
and more people say, "I smell elections."

ELECTIONS SLIP-SLIDING AWAY

But it's a long road to Canaan, so to speak. In the immediate phase,
there are plenty of factors working against the protesters' aim of
toppling the Netanyahu government. And in the long term, there are
numerous reasons to think the government can slog on while laying the
groundwork for its most grandiose plans.

After their initial shock, the ultra-Orthodox parties remembered just
how beneficial it is to be inside governing coalitions – especially
one that is devoted to propping up their isolationist society and
schools with public funds, and advancing theocratic aims. They may not
get a better deal and they're not leaving just yet
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* Will Israel's killing of World Central Kitchen aid workers be the
tipping point for Biden?
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* Why the latest anti-Netanyahu protests have not yet become a mass
movement
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* Israel's education minister: Calls to resettle Gaza are 'super
legitimate'
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* Why Netanyahu won't shut down the crazy talk about 'resettling'
Gaza
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The global crisis, too, is more bark than bite. What looked like a
high-stakes clash last week – the U.S. allowed the UN Security
Council to pass a resolution calling for a cease-fire, and Netanyahu
canceled a planned delegation to the White House to discuss a proposed
Rafah ground offensive – has been swallowed up by love this week.
Netanyahu reversed his decision
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cancel the delegation. The Americans will reportedly
continue stuffing Israel's military depots with munitions
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its hangars with fighter jets, which speak much louder than words.

The last major crisis in U.S.-Israel relations in 2015 had a similar
trajectory: Netanyahu addressed Congress, invited by Republicans
behind President Barack Obama's back – an unprecedented insult. But
it ended with a $38 billion 10-year military aid package as Obama's
goodbye gift.

[Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attending a cabinet meeting in
Jerusalem. His core supporters apparently still view him as a savvy
statesman.]

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attending a cabinet meeting in
Jerusalem. His core supporters apparently still view him as a savvy
statesman.Credit: Abir Sultan,AP

Israelis have never faced true global isolation, and Netanyahu's core
supporters apparently still view him as a savvy statesman. His numbers
have actually stabilized somewhat in surveys of Israeli public
opinion: he hit a floor in the first few months; now his ratings, his
party and his government
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stable, or even recovered a smidge
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It's natural for the government to want elections later rather than
sooner: the prewar coalition parties are still winning only 46-48
seats in serious polls, far from the 61-seat number they need and
miles from their winning 64-seat tally in the last election. More time
means potential poll recovery.

But the real reason this government wants to keep power is to advance
its broad agenda: Inequality by law (Jewish supremacy); theocracy;
annexation; gut the welfare state; legitimize corruption. To do these,
the government is rapidly consolidating executive power, stacking the
public sector with political loyalists and dismantling democratic
institutions
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The anti-government protests and their perfect storm can't force
elections. They may even act as an accelerator for the most coveted
part of this plan: annexation. And this time we're talking not only
about the West Bank; the big vision stretches into Gaza, too.

[Right-wing conference in Jerusalem in January promoting the
establishment of settlements in a permanently occupied Gaza, with a
map featuring their proposed communities]

Right-wing conference in Jerusalem in January promoting the
establishment of settlements in a permanently occupied Gaza, with a
map featuring their proposed communitiesCredit: Olivier Fitoussi

THE BIGGEST PRIZE, THE HISTORIC PRECEDENT

Most of the parties in the original Netanyahu coalition believe in the
cosmic right to a Jewish religious grip over all of historic
Palestine. If they could, they'd even cross the Jordan (eastward), to
the lands of the biblical tribes of Reuben, Gad and Manasseh. Historic
distinctions between the traditionally anti-state theology of
ultra-Orthodoxy versus the messianic, land- and
Jewish-sovereignty-fetishizing followers of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook have
faded over the decades.

Haredi urban sprawl over the Green Line
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armistice demarcation line before the 1967 Six-Day War) blurred the
geographic distinctions, while the Haredi-Nationalist groups bridged
the sociological lines. In today's Knesset there are religious Likud
ministers who defend a draft exemption for Haredim, and Haredim who
hold that Gaza settlements would "correct a historical injustice
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And when it came to settlements in land occupied in 1967, the state
was never far behind.

Likud, once a mostly secular party that drove a nationalist ethos
alongside a liberal constitutional order, has remade itself in the
image of the ultranationalist religious parties, just with less
bombastic religion. That matters for fighting over the conscription
law – but it's a perfect storm in _favor_ of annexation.

[Far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich addressing a faction meeting in
Jerusalem earlier this year.]

Far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich addressing a faction meeting in
Jerusalem earlier this year.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi

One of the government's first, but least headline-grabbing, actions of
2023 was to transfer
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held by the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank to far-right
minister Bezalel Smotrich. He's been frantically employing
bureaucratic mechanisms to advance permanent Israeli control: Last
month
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declared swaths of territory to be "state land," preventing
Palestinians from ever using it. He can't get enough, and did it
again this week
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It's impossible to keep up: As I was writing this, the Knesset passed
another seemingly banal, technical law
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budgets that again erases the distinction between settlements and
sovereign territory (along with other laws gouging democracy, such as
the law giving the prime minister the power to shutter media outlets
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Enter Hamas, the worst leaders Palestinians have ever had. Hamas gave
Israel the biggest possible prize: a chance to double its
annexationist fantasies by expanding to Gaza. Before October 7
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the government probably wouldn't even let itself dream of such a
scenario. Now its members – Likud ministers included – have openly
declared their intention to reoccupy Gaza permanently and rebuild
settlements.

[Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli airstrike on a building
in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip this week]

Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli airstrike on a building in
Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip this weekCredit: Mohammed Salem/
REUTERS

The plans may sound wild, but the pieces are all there.

First, Netanyahu rejected the idea that anyone can run Gaza except the
IDF. He still refuses all talk of a day-after plan or cease-fire, but
then released a plan that includes indefinite Israeli security
control.

Give that idea time to settle in (so to speak); Israel might propose
an occupation of 10 years
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Gaza, or 18 years, like the occupation of southern Lebanon. And
Lebanese territory wasn't even part of Israel's ideology or theology;
for some strange and unbiblical reason, Gaza is.

Back in 1967, the idea of 700,000 settlers in the West Bank and East
Jerusalem would have sounded like a pipe dream. So would brazenly
formalizing the annexation of both East Jerusalem and the Golan
Heights in the early 1980s. But there have been no material
consequences for either, other than giving Israel a bad image in the
world. Most Israelis just slough that response off as a sign of the
world's incurable antisemitism, or a prescription for
better _hasbara_.

THE LIMITATIONS OF DEMONSTRATIONS

Generations of Israeli leaders, consciously or instinctively, learned
a winning technique: Let radical-looking elements in society –
politicians, settlers or thugs – indulge in policies, and not just
on a theoretical level, that could never fly at the time, even at
home, like the first religious ideological Hebron settlers in 1968. Go
through the motions of reining them in, release trial balloons, let
them pop, then float them again.

This was not only the decades-old dance between settlers and the
Mapai/Labor government (see Gershom Gorenberg's meticulous
documentation of the process in "The Accidental Empire
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It was precisely the pattern for the creeping assault on Israel's
independent judiciary (which I documented myself
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For over a decade, radical forces in Likud, Habayit Hayehudi and
others were putting out rabid anti-judiciary testers, bills, policies
and op-eds. They were softening up their target of public opinion,
while all the while Netanyahu played at being good cop.

[Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, National Security Minister
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu and other Netanyahu
coalition lawmakers at the 'Resettle Gaza' conference]

Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, National Security Minister
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu and other Netanyahu
coalition lawmakers at the 'Resettle Gaza' conferenceCredit: Olivier
Fitoussi

Each trial, pop and new balloon bounces around in Israel's "lively
democratic debate," which feeds familiarity and, ultimately,
acceptance – happily by some, while others succumb, exhausted.

Israel's government is hardly troubled by demonstrations, even big
ones. Israelis held mass demonstrations against their leadership for
its collusion with the perpetrators of the Sabra and Shatila massacre
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first Lebanon war. They demonstrated for the Oslo Accords, and against
Netanyahu's regime coup of 2023.

Demonstrations sometimes have an impact, but they can unwittingly play
into the government's hands: They are evidence of Israel's "vibrant
debate" while prompting the government to just slow down or change
tactics to achieve its aims.

So, if the judicial reform didn't fly, break it down and snatch power
anyway, in different ways. If West Bank annexation can't happen
openly, overnight, do it bureaucratically, over time,
inch-by-physical-inch; show off some setbacks, display willingness for
concessions on constricted or impossible terms, and downplay the
quiet, creeping victories.

Why not repeat the formula for Gaza? When the government floats ideas
for the future, I advise testing them against this historic pattern;
if they fit, occupation and annexation are on the horizon.

[Protesters against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's
government and calls for the release of hostages held by Hamas outside
of the Knesset in Jerusalem last month]

Protesters against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's
government and calls for the release of hostages held by Hamas outside
of the Knesset in Jerusalem last monthCredit: Leo Correa,AP

Can anything stop the mad dance, or cause a change of course? Only the
unprecedented or the unknown.

Mainstream Israelis never legitimized the refusal to serve in reserve
duty before 2023. Most everyone rallied for the war after October 7,
but when Israelis are stuck in the mud of Gaza, facing a new
occupation, settlements and permanent Palestinian insurgency,
reservists or even conscripts might make different choices.

Further, countries around the world have loudly proclaimed that this
time, Israel truly must be reined in; a permanent political agreement
must end this conflict for good. Too bad they won't say _how_
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planning to make it happen.

But there's one condition for any anti-annexationist alternative to
come true: Netanyahu must go. He didn't invent most of these policies,
but if he remains in power, we barely have to imagine the future. Just
look at the last six months, the last year, the last 15 years, and ask
if you want this, or worse, to be Israel's fate.

_Follow Dahlia Scheindlin
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_Haaretz: News you can trust on Israel, Gaza and the Midleast.
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