BNEI BRAK, Israel – A recent wave of terrorist attacks in Israel, the deadliest in seven years, poses a major challenge to Israel’s fragile coalition government, which has been criticized from both sides of the political spectrum for policies that critics say have exacerbated the threat. risk of violence.
On the right, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has been criticized for bringing an Arab party into the coalition, a decision that right-wing critics say has dampened the state’s willingness to control Israel’s Arab minority and its ability to respond to the recent attacks. limited, two of which were conducted by Arab citizens of Israel.
On the left, Mr Bennett has been criticized for making minor concessions to the Palestinians, while excluding peace talks or any steps towards the formation of a Palestinian state – an approach that left-wing critics say has increased Palestinian despair and has left a minority. encouraged to respond with violence.
Mr. Bennett has also been limited in his ability to respond to the violence due to the composition of his ideologically diverse coalition, an eight-party alliance that includes right-wing people like Mr. Bennett, centrists, leftists and a small Arab Islamist party, Raam – the first independent Arab party to join an Israeli government. Ten months into their tenure, the alliance has consistently found ways to get around their differences, but the violence has accentuated the gaps in their worldview.
The attacks that killed 11 people in 10 days have also been a reminder that, as much as Israelis want the problem to disappear so they can live in peace, polls show, the Palestinian issue remains unresolved and a possible powder keg.
Mr. Bennett, like his predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu, has put the matter on the back burner, treating the conflict as a problem to be managed rather than solved.
The last peace negotiations failed in 2014. The Palestinian leadership, split between Gaza and the West Bank, has failed to form a united negotiating position, while key Israeli leaders, including Mr Bennett, have been blunt about their opposition to a Palestinian state.
But the wave of violence has prompted some Israeli commentators to recognize the inherent instability of the status quo, even if that realization has only hardened people’s pre-existing views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“It’s in many ways a tired conversation with few new arguments,” said Ofer Zalzberg, director of the Middle East Program at the Herbert C. Kelman Institute, a research group in Jerusalem. “You don’t see people changing positions given the events,” he added. “They choose their position based on where they sit.”
For some witnesses and survivors of the most recent shooting in Bnei Brak, a city in central Israel, the attack by a Palestinian in the West Bank, which killed five people on Tuesday, has heightened the perception that Israel has no partner for peace. among the Palestinians and that the creation of a Palestinian state would only make the lives of Israelis more dangerous.
While Mr. Bennett also opposes Palestinian sovereignty, he has been heavily criticized for his partnership with Raam and for giving tens of thousands of additional permits to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to work in Israel.
Posters have popped up all over town urging residents not to hire Palestinian workers, and a placard next to a memorial to the victims called on Mr Bennett to resign. In nearby towns, one mayor closed municipal construction sites that often employed Palestinian workers, and another called on contractors not to employ Palestinians.
“We need harsh sentences for the families of the terrorists,” said Moshe Waldman, an accountant in Bnei Brak who witnessed part of the attack. “Destroy their houses. Let’s do real deterrents.”
“The world always tells us, ‘You have to sit down and negotiate,'” he added. “But that’s not the reality here. We are being killed because they hate us.”
But when some criticize Mr Bennett for working too closely with Arab Israelis and making too many concessions to the Palestinians, others blame him for not doing enough.
In addition to work permits, the Israeli government has granted legal status to thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank who previously lived in legal limbo; $156 million lent to the Palestinian Authority, which controls parts of the West Bank; allowed families in Gaza to visit relatives in Israeli prisons; and met and communicated more publicly with Palestinian leaders than the previous administration did.
But critics argue that this approach, which Mr. Bennett has described as “minimizing the conflict,” improves little on fundamental aspects of Palestinian life under occupation.
The Israeli military continues to conduct daily raids on areas nominally administered by the Palestinian Authority. Israel still maintains a dual legal system in the West Bank: one for Palestinians and one for Israeli settlers. And the Palestinian dream of a state of its own remains as distant as ever.
“There is utter despair and lack of political horizon on the Palestinian front,” said Mairav Zonszein, senior analyst in Tel Aviv for the International Crisis Group, a research organization in Brussels.
“Israelis have become accustomed to perpetuating the status quo without having to pay a price,” added Ms Zonszein. “But without any political process, the climate is more conducive to violence.”
In the short term, Mr Bennett has the difficult task of increasing Israeli security and allaying the concerns of his right-wing base while avoiding measures that could further escalate violence or threaten the Arab lawmakers on whom his coalition depends. , could alienate.
In an effort to strike that balance, the Israeli military has sent reinforcements to the West Bank and to the Israel-Gaza border, and the Israeli police have turned their attention almost exclusively to counter-terrorism.
Mr Bennett has also called on Israeli citizens to carry licensed firearms, a move that has disturbed many Arab citizens of Israel, said Bashaer Fahoum-Jayoussi, co-chair of the board of the Abraham Initiatives, a non-governmental group promoting equality among Arabs. and Jews.
“This is crazy,” she said. “This calls for the militarization of the civilians,” and there is a risk that the “hate speech that has sprung up against the Arab community in Israel over the past week and a half” could worsen with vigilance.
In an effort to calm tensions, Mr Bennett praised his Arab coalition partner, Raam party leader Mansour Abbas, and described him as a brave and important member of the government. The government continues to allow tens of thousands of Palestinians to enter Israel from the West Bank and Gaza Strip every day. And there has been no change in a plan to let West Bank retirees into Jerusalem during the holy month of Ramadan, which begins this weekend.
Mr Bennett’s office declined to comment on this article.
But one of his closest allies, Micah Goodman, the philosopher who popularized the idea of ”diminishing the conflict,” said it was too early to judge the success of the government’s approach in the West Bank or in Israel itself. judge.
The two main pillars of his idea – “gradual liberation of Palestinians in the West Bank and gradual integration of Palestinians into Israel” – will take years, not months, to achieve, he said.
“Israelis’ dominant emotional experience in the conflict is one of fear, and for Palestinians it is humiliation,” Mr. Goodman said. Reducing the conflict is about creating “a reality where there is less fear of Israelis because there is less terrorism, and less humiliation for Palestinians because there is less occupation.”
That gradual, difficult process “cannot be judged at just nine months into this administration,” he added.
In fact, if the current wave of violence subsides quickly, it could be seen as evidence of the effectiveness of the Bennett administration’s approach, said Zalzberg, the Jerusalem-based analyst.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas issued a rare condemnation of the attack in Bnei Brak, a move Israeli officials interpreted as reflecting their increased involvement with him recently.
If the current violence were to decrease, “it will give the feeling that the PA is a partner and that working with it is valuable in the fight against Israel’s enemies,” Zalzberg said.
That could “create more political space for steps that further strengthen the PA,” he added, while “it clearly does not conform to a full-fledged Palestinian state.”
But for Ms Fahoum-Jayoussi, these patchy measures don’t loosen up the occupation, but instead provide political cover for its entrenchment through existing settlement growth and settler violence, which increased in 2021.
“The occupation is ongoing,” she said. “It’s actually getting worse.”
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting from Haifa, Israel, and Gabby Sobelman from Bnei Brak, Israel.
