The 972 magazine website said that Israel continued to fight last year without a political strategy, to reinforce the racist project that it built over decades between the river and the sea, noting that the disaster of October 7 – which many claimed was the largest massacre of Israeli civilians in the history of… The country was a sign of the collapse of the status quo of permanent occupation.
The website explained – in an article written by professor and researcher Oren Yiftachil – that Israel, under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was advancing a long-term “conflict management” policy to strengthen its occupation and settlement of Palestinian lands while containing the fragmented Palestinian resistance, including funding the Islamic Resistance Movement ( Hamas) “the deterrent”.
It is true that some aspects of this strategy – as this researcher and human rights activist sees it – collapsed in the wake of October 7, especially the illusion that the Palestinian national project can be crushed, and that Hamas and Hezbollah can be kept under control in the absence of any political agreements. He also shattered the long-standing Zionist myth that Jewish settlement could guarantee security along Israel’s borders.
Promoting the racist project
Some experts claim that Israel’s war in Gaza and now in Lebanon is not based on a political strategy “for the next day”, but rather on keeping Netanyahu political, although the prevailing opinion is that Israel continues to promote an unambiguous strategic goal, which is to preserve the system of Jewish superiority over the Palestinians. And its deepening between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and in this sense the past 12 months of fighting may be understood as “the first apartheid war” fought by Israel.
Unlike its previous wars, Israel’s current war – as the researcher sees it – seeks to strengthen the racist political project that it has built throughout the land, which was fundamentally challenged by the October 7 attack. It also means Israel’s firm refusal to explore any path to reconciliation or even Ceasefire with the Palestinians.
Oren Yiftachel explained that Israel’s apartheid regime, once called “creeping” and more recently “deepening apartheid,” has long historical roots, which have been hidden in recent decades by the so-called peace process, promises of “temporary occupation,” and claims that Israel “It has no partner” to negotiate, but the reality of the apartheid project has become increasingly clear in recent years, especially under Netanyahu’s leadership.
Unlike its previous wars, Israel’s current war seeks to reinforce the racist political project it has built across the land, which the October 7 attack fundamentally challenged, and it also means Israel’s steadfast refusal to explore any path to reconciliation or even a ceasefire with the Palestinians.
Today, Israel no longer makes any effort to hide its racist goals. The Jewish Nation-State Law was announced in 2018, which states that “the right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people,” and that “the state looks to developing settlements.” Judaism as a national value.
Going a step further, a statement by the current Israeli government known as the “Guiding Principles” proudly declared in 2022 that “the Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all areas of the Land of Israel,” which in the Hebrew lexicon includes Gaza and the West Bank, and promised to “strengthen Settlements and their development throughout the Land of Israel.
Establishing Jewish superiority
Israel has dominated, expelled, and violently occupied Palestinians for more than 45 years, but this prolonged repression is dwarfed by the devastation inflicted on Gaza over the past year, which many experts have called genocide, and is in fact a direct attack on the possibility of ending settlement and Palestinian sovereignty. Given that Gaza, after 17 years of stifling siege, has become in the eyes of the Israelis a symbol of a distorted version of Palestinian sovereignty.
In the same context, the pace of the seizure of the West Bank accelerated, Israel introduced new measures for administrative annexation, the intensity of settler violence increased with the support of the army, and dozens of settlement outposts were established. At the same time, Israel has deepened the repression of Palestinians within the Green Line and their status as second-class citizens, and has intensified severe restrictions on their political activity through increased surveillance, arrests, dismissals, suspensions, and harassment.
The writer believes that the escalating attack in Lebanon – which began in the name of repelling Hezbollah’s aggression against northern Israel and has now turned into a massive attack on all of Lebanon – and the exchange of strikes with Iran seem to herald a new regional phase of the war. It is clear that this stage is linked to the geopolitical agenda of the American empire, but it also serves to distract attention from the increasing oppression of the Palestinians.
The Netanyahu government opens another front in the apartheid war on Jewish Israelis struggling for peace and democracy, and works to weaken the already limited independence of the judiciary, and to enable more human rights violations by strengthening the executive authority, which currently consists of the most right-wing coalition in the history of Israel.
A decline towards tyranny
We are already witnessing the effects of Israel’s descent into authoritarian rule, as the writer says, through the distribution of weapons to supporters of Jewish supremacy in the West Bank settlements and border areas, and the financing of settlement projects. The government has effectively silenced any criticism of Israel’s criminal war, unleashing extreme police violence on anti-government and anti-war demonstrators, inciting academic institutions, intellectuals and artists, and amplifying toxic and condemning rhetoric against left-wing “traitors”.
However, the particularly disgusting dimension of the apartheid war – according to the researcher – is the government’s abandonment of the Israeli detainees held by Hamas, because the government, by exploiting the pain and trauma experienced by their families, ensures that they face an ongoing state of emergency that prevents the opening of an official investigation into the negligence that led to their deaths. The massacres of October 7th.
Apartheid is not only a moral abyss and a crime against humanity, but it is also a shaky system, characterized by endless violence, and has far-reaching harm to the economy and the environment.
If we look to the future, as the writer says, it is worth remembering that apartheid is not only a moral abyss and a crime against humanity, but it is also an unstable system, characterized by endless violence and long-term damage to the economy and the environment. Therefore, despite the great support that the Israeli regime enjoys from Jews at home and abroad, and the scandalous guarantee of impunity granted to it by Western governments, it is far from winning the first apartheid war.
The writer concluded that Israel lost the moral battle, with the growth of forces opposing it, not only between the Palestinians and neighboring Arab countries, but also between Jews in the diaspora and the broader masses in the global North and South. But the loss of its international alliances, trade ties, economic prospects, and cultural and academic ties may force the government to halt its war for Jewish supremacy.