Israeli MPs passed a motion on December 3 paving the way for early elections, Morning Star Online said that day. Further votes were expected in coming days to officially dissolve Israel's parliament, ushering in new polls on March 17 next year.
The coalition government has been riven by divisions and on December 2, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired rebellious finance minister Yair Lapid and justice minister Tzipi Livni, declaring that elections would be held “as soon as possible”.
The ruling coalition had included Lapid's centrist Yesh Atid party and Livni's peace-oriented Hatnuah. It is now left with Jewish Home, a hard-line party linked to the West Bank settler movement, Yisrael Beitenu, a nationalist party that seeks to redraw Israel's borders to rid the country of its Arab citizens and Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party.
The differences came to a head in recent days when Netanyahu pushed laws defining Israel as “the Jewish state”. Although its 1948 Declaration of Independence already does this, Netanyahu insisted the country must enshrine this at the constitutional level.
However, his critics said the wording would undermine the rights of Arab citizens. Both Lapid and Livni condemned the legislation.
Palestinian foreign minister Riyad Al-Maliki said opinion polls indicated the next Israeli government may be even "more right-wing and extreme". Maliki said would likely bolster international support for the Palestinian cause.
Below, Abbey Zimet writes about the new laws passed by the Knesset ― which have been condemned even by Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, a member of Netanyahu's Likud party. The article is reprinted from Common Dreams.
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Like a rat caught in a trap, Israel improbably, harrowingly continues to plummet ever further into a frenzied de facto holy war against its own Arab population, evidently unaware that more of the same ― racism, injustice, suffering ― will not bring peace.
In the last few weeks, it has instead brought this:
* A bill declaring Israel a Jewish nation-state belonging to Jews around the world, but not its own citizens, who awkwardly happen to include over 1.5 million Palestinians. Thus it officially makes Israel's much-touted “democracy” into what is in fact an ethnocracy;
* A proposal to pay Israeli Arabs to leave Israel to help resolve the “duality and divided loyalties from which they are suffering”;
* A Netanyahu-inspired, eight-part crackdown on “terrorism” ― to deport, disenfranchise, demolish homes, revoke citizenships, ban the Palestinian flag as an “enemy flag” ― aimed at fostering “real deterrence”;
* A resurgence of home demolitions as punishment for violence, despite numerous studies finding they act not to deter but to provoke;
* A broad campaign to silence Palestinian political dissent that has often targeted Knesset member Haneen Zoabi. She has been suspended, threatened, branded a terrorist and charged with “incitement” ― for daring to criticise the assault on Gaza, or as she puts it, for “cross(ing) the lines of consensus ― a warlike, aggressive, racist, populist, chauvinist, arrogant consensus”.
The “leaders” lead, the people follow. Even as officials codify the country's oppression, right-wing hooliganism rages out of control:
* A suspected arson attack on Jerusalem's thriving Arab-Jewish school burned books, destroyed most of the school, and left walls defaced with graffiti reading “End Assimilation” and “There Is No Coexistence With a Cancer”;
* Racist thugs regularly protest progressive or Arab-Jewish events by targeting human-rights advocates they liken to anti-Semites and Nazis, even threatening, “We will make soap out of you”;
* Officials are investigating a recent Facebook post that depicted top politicians as Nazis ― there is a recurring theme here ― for questioning the highly questionable Israel-Is-Only-For-Jews bill;
* Israeli president Reuven Rivlin, Likud member, longtime conservative, critic of racist rhetoric and “Israel’s most unlikely moralist”, has been excoriated for declaring that Israel is “sick”, having forgotten not just how to be Jews, but how to be human.
Meanwhile, the US just announced it will be sending Israel 3000 more smart bombs like those used in the Gaza assault, at a cost of US$82 million. Because this ― offering succor and guns to those standing on the wrong side of history ― is what the US does. None of it will end well.
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