Israel’s new racist totalitarianism will have implications beyond the Middle East

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Way back in 2010 I was caught briefly, if a little uncomfortably, on a street in the Arab town of Umm al-Fahm in northern Israel between armed riot police firing tear gas and a crowd of angry stone-throwing, tire-burning Palestinian Israeli citizens. This was not a random clash. For the police were there to protect a 30-strong far-right Jewish Israeli group who had chosen to march provocatively into the normally peaceful town and were led by two militant settlers from Hebron, Baruch Marzel and his comrade Itamar Ben Gvir.

The local residents reaction was exactly what they had intended. But the incidents significance seemed low because Marzel and Ben Gvir were little-known fringe figures at the outside edge of Israeli society, apparently without a hope of gaining traction for their overtly racist views.

It was impossible, then, to envisage Ben Gvir as a driving force in a party which would gain the third-most seats 14 in an election 12 years later, as it has now done, forming a vital part of the coalition which has given Benjamin Netanyahu a majority bloc in the Knesset, Israels parliament, and made him premier for the third time, heading easily the most right-wing government in the countrys history.

There are several factors behind Ben Gvirs rise. One is the huge growth since then to 450,000 in the occupied West Bank of Israelis who live in settlements, illegal in international law (and some even in Israeli law) and who lost faith in their previous champion Naftali Bennett when he formed a government last year with the center and (now virtually collapsed) left. Another is the exposure Ben Gvir got as the media story of the campaign. After all, a man who sometimes pulls his handgun out at confrontations which he has fomented between his far-right supporters and Palestinians makes for better TV than one who doesnt.

But the greatest factor was the ruthless political talent of Netanyahu, which makes Boris Johnsons efforts to stage a similar comeback last month look like those of a bumbling amateur. What has spectacularly born fruit in this election was the maneuver he executed before losing the previous one, when he persuaded Ben Gvir and another extremist with numerous anti-Arab (and homophobic) declarations to his name, Bezalel Smotrich, to merge their two Religious Zionist , Jewish supremacist, factions. This ensured their combined forces easily passed the threshold for Knesset membership under Israels proportionalelectionsystem.

But perhaps the closest comparison of Netanyahus motivation for crossing yet another red line is with that of Donald Trump, who gave his strongest hint on Thursday that he too intends a comeback in 2024. Both men are no doubt driven by a lust for power, but with both men theres something else. Just as Trumps main hope of escaping various criminal investigations is to return as president, so Netanyahu almost certainly regards his new government as affording the best chance of halting his current trial on corruption charges, which he denies.

Certainly his new allies are committed to eliminating what is left of the power of the supreme court, one of the few checks and balances in Israels constitution, to overturn decisions taken by the now unchallengeable right-wing Knesset majority. Before polling day, Aluf Benn, the editor of Haaretz, one of the worlds great liberal newspapers, wrote that all signs indicate that this trio [Netanyahu, Ben Gvir and Smotrich] is plotting to turn Israel into an authoritarian state in which criticizing the government or replacing it will only be a pipe dream.

Nobody can yet safely predict the new governments composition, let alone its actions. But Ben Gvir and Smotrich will be under strong pressure to have enacted, with dangerously inflammatory consequences in the already volatile West Bank (where none of the Palestinian residents had a vote in this election), outstanding court orders to evict Palestinians from their homes in a large section of the South Hebron Hills and the inner East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

Both are on the occupied Palestinian side of the green line the border between Israel and what Western governments want as the territory for a future Palestinian state a vision which Ben Gvir and Smotrich emphatically dismiss. But the starting article by Benn, who is no hothead, also reflects the deep anxiety among many secular and liberal Israelis about the kind of Israel the election has ushered in.

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Will this be a wake-up call for Western governments for whom the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has largely dropped off the agenda? The Biden administration will probably refuse to deal with Ben Gvir as a minister; the Europeans should follow follows. Rishi Sunak has now sensibly dropped Liz Trusss incendiary plan to transfer the UK embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. But this is hardly enough. Of course, the Europeans and Americans cannot ignore the rise of the their own far-right forces and focus only on Israels and there is a lot going on elsewhere in the world. And no one can subvert the results of this election, in which the Israeli majority has freely spoken.

But as Western governments rightly seek to restore international law over Ukraine, they should not forget their historic duty and long-held policy of seeking to end a 55-year-old occupation of and Jewish settlement in Palestinian territory which also violates international law, and which key figures in Netanyahus future government are now dedicated to entrenching.

Perhaps the last word on this should go to a wise Israeli, Daniel Seidemann, who advised Bill Clintons team on the core issue of Jerusalem in the 2000 Camp David negotiations. He told me yesterday that there were no forces inside the country capable of stopping Israels inexorable descent into totalitarianism and racism, and that only serious, consequential international engagement on a level exercised by Eisenhower when he queened Israel back during the 1956 Suez crisis could do so .

Left unattended, Seidemann said, it is only a matter of time before the US and Europe will no longer be able to look the other way. Support of Israel will not decline it will collapse. It will be very ugly and very dangerous. Admitting that the chances of such intervention before the world has no choice were, remote, he nevertheless added: The longer one waits, the higher the price for all.

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