Israel-Palestine: ‘No War, No Peace’ Apartheid is Bennett’s Best Case Scenario
- Israel-Palestine: ‘No War, No Peace’ Apartheid is Bennett’s Best Case Scenario
by Meron Rapoport, https://www.middleeasteye.net/
The Israeli prime minister is first since Golda Meir to propose the racist status quo as a political platform.
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“There is no diplomatic process with the Palestinians, nor will there be one,” said a source close to Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett last week after his defence minister, Benny Gantz, met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
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Thus is Bennett’s spiritual world revealed: a world in which Israel, and only Israel, exists, and where the Palestinians will never, under any circumstances, even if they change their positions, be able to attain equality with Israelis and negotiate with them as equals. There is a word for that: racism.
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Nearly a decade ago, Bennett entered national politics after serving as director-general of the Yesha Council, the leading settler institution, although he himself was never a settler and doesn’t live beyond the Green Line. In a now-famous interview, he said: “The Palestinian problem is like shrapnel in the butt.”
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Today, his approach has not changed, although as prime minister, he may express himself less bluntly, as he admitted just before taking office in early June. Bennett expressed this approach in an interview he gave the New York Times ahead of his recent trip to Washington. “This government will not annex, nor establish a Palestinian state, everyone understands that,” he said. “Israel will continue the standard policy of natural growth [of West Bank settlements].”
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In saying this, Bennett became the first Israeli prime minister, with the possible exception of Golda Meir in the years prior to the 1973 war, to propose what amounts to apartheid as a political platform.
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Permanent status quo
It is true that the policy of “managing the occupation” is almost as old as the Israeli occupation itself. In February 1973, for example, then-Defence Minister Moshe Dayan said, “We must plan ahead for our actions in the territories [conquered by Israel in June 1967] … so that a situation of ‘no war and no peace’ will not be unbearable for us… Authority for deciding on what happens from Suez to the [Mt] Hermon is in the hands of the Israeli government. We will not idly delineate boundaries for our settlements nor be threatened by smouldering embers.”
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9 … I know the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a [a]synagogue of Satan.
9 … I know the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a [a]synagogue of Satan.