THE new right-wing Israeli coalition government, just formed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, will be belligerent and work against peace, a senior Palestinian official said on Thursday.
The government ‘will be one of war which will be against peace and stability in our region,’ continued the Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.
‘This government will set its sights on killing and reinforcing settlement activities,’ he said, referring to Israel’s ongoing construction on Palestinian land that is wanted for a future Palestinian state.
His remarks came after Netanyahu managed to form a coalition just ahead of a midnight deadline, giving him a majority of just one seat in parliament. Netanyahu has got the backing of the even more right-wing Bayit Yehudi settlers party to give him the necessary 61 seats. The leader of Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home), Naftali Bennett, has demanded the justice ministry in return for support from his eight MPs.
He opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state, has the support of the mass of heavily armed Israeli settlers in the West Bank and has called for the annexation of major parts of the occupied territories.
Under the new, even more right-wing and unstable Netanyahu regime, the drive to build more settlements and organise new wars will be speeded up. At the same time as the government was formed, it was announced that the Israeli high court has rejected a request to halt the demolition of a Palestinian West Bank village.
The village of Sussiya in the southern Hebron Hills has been labelled unauthorised by the Israeli Civil Administration so that it can be levelled and then rebuilt as a Zionist settlement. The High Court of Justice issued a ruling on Monday, rejecting the request filed on behalf of the Rabbis for Human Rights and Sussiya residents on February 2014 to prevent the planned demolitions.
The Sussiya community has a long history of struggle with the Israeli authorities. The village was initially forced to relocate in 1986. The residents rebuilt their homes just a few hundred metres away from the site, occupying the agricultural land they also owned.
Nonetheless, the Israeli Civil Administration ended up destroying the village back in 2001. Villagers once again rebuilt their homes, but another 14 buildings were destroyed in 2011. This is in embryo the history of Palestine since 1948. Israel’s operation ‘Protective Edge’ last summer, in which thousands of civilians in Gaza were killed, was organised by Netanyahu.
Israeli soldiers have since given evidence that they were told to kill any Palestinian, from the very young to the very old, that crossed their path. The whole area was destroyed and Israel has seen to it that not a single one of the thousands of homes that were destroyed has been rebuilt.
The emergence of a new, more unstable, even more desperate right-wing Netanyahu government, ready for any adventure, cannot be separated from the crisis throughout the Middle East.
Already Israel has given its support to the Islamists that are battling, at the behest of Saudi Arabia, to overthrow the regime of President Assad in Syria.
It already opposes the attempts of the US to make a nuclear accord with Iran, and is in fact manoeuvring, along with Saudi Arabia, to sabotage the deal in favour of an immediate attack on Iran. The Saudis now want the UN Security Council to support and sponsor a military ground attack on the Yemen, a provocative invasion that Iran could not ignore.
These are desperate times for the peoples of the Middle East, who are being murdered by imperialism, the Gulf feudalists and Israel. The British trade unions must support those that are being oppressed and condemn their oppressors.
If Labour becomes the government in the UK, the unions must demand Labour immediately halts all arms sales to Israel and Saudi Arabia, and insist that Labour immediately recognises the state of Palestine and demands that Israel withdraws from all of the occupied territories. As well, Labour must insist that there be no ground war invasion of the Yemen. These would be the first steps towards a socialist foreign policy.
