Israeli government in a rush to legislate against Palestinians

Let’s put it bluntly: the Israeli government is on a mission to destroy any chance of a peace agreement with the Palestinians based on a two-state solution. It is not concealing this or apologetic about it.

One of the instruments it uses for this purpose is the enactment of legislation hostile to the Palestinian Authority and Palestinians in general. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition has embarked on this mission with both a great appetite and a sense of urgency, suggesting that its members believe this is their great, and perhaps only, opportunity to fulfill their dream of a “Greater Israel,” which requires the annexation of the West Bank, while they are also recklessly advancing the cause of annexing at least part of the Gaza Strip, if not all of it.

With its solid majority in the Knesset, the government appears to be in a hurry to pass legislation that dramatically alters the legal relations between Israel and the Occupied Territories. Much of it is directed at weakening the Palestinian Authority, in addition to harassing and intimidating Palestinians and making them feel insecure and subject to total Israeli control. One of the leading culprits in this hostile legislation is Simcha Rothman, who is little-known abroad but in Israel is infamous for being one of the major driving forces behind the attacks on the country’s judiciary that began with the formation of the current administration two years ago.

Rothman, a member of the extreme-right Religious Zionism party, also chairs the Knesset’s influential Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, where he orchestrates his antidemocratic and anti-Palestinian legislation. For instance, he has tabled a bill setting out to deny the PA the right to petition to Israel’s Supreme Court, a bill that the Knesset plenum recently passed with a big majority in a preliminary reading.

The coalition’s members believe this is their great, and perhaps only, opportunity to fulfill their dream of a ‘Greater Israel’

Yossi Mekelberg

This legislation followed an unprecedented move by the PA of filing a petition to Israel's High Court of Justice, requesting it to overturn two laws that allow victims of Palestinian terrorism and their families to seek financial damages from the PA. First, the Knesset legislated to allow the families of the victims to sue the PA, subjecting the governing body of the Palestinians to Israeli law, but then deprived it of the basic right that anyone else has to appeal.

Mind you, Palestinian victims of Jewish terrorism, for instance in the West Bank, do not have similar legal standing to sue the Israeli government and, in any case, one might ask: can the PA or any Palestinian expect justice from an Israeli court? It is actually the cooperation between the security forces of Israel and the PA that has saved many Israeli lives since the 1990s.

Rothman and others in the government are continuing to abuse their power, as previously demonstrated by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s decision to withhold the tax revenues that Israel collects for the PA, which are its financial oxygen and anchored in treaties with Israel, in a move that is no more than a ploy to bring about the collapse of the PA.

And if you ask yourself why, it is because, in their zeal and myopia, they want to provoke a power vacuum in the belief that the resulting chaos would work to their advantage. For the settler movement, the destruction of the PA would mean the end of one of the last remaining vestiges of the Oslo Accords, which in turn would open the path for Israel to annex the West Bank. The most extreme among them are already fantasizing about ethnic cleansing there, similar to what is allegedly already taking place in Gaza.

But this is not the full story. Earlier this month, the Knesset passed another law, one that allows the government to deport family members of those convicted of terrorism offenses. This includes Israeli citizens, although no one could imagine it being applied to anyone but the Palestinian citizens of Israel.

In their zeal and myopia, they want to provoke a power vacuum in the belief that the resulting chaos would work to their advantage

Yossi Mekelberg

The law allows for the deportation of family members of those who had advance knowledge of a terrorist act and either failed to report the matter to the police or “expressed support or identification” with such an act. It is hard to imagine how on earth the legislature of a country claiming to be a democracy could enact such an Orwellian piece of legislation whereby first-degree relatives — in other words the parents, siblings or children — of those committing an unlawful act could be expelled by the interior minister for up to 20 years, without any due process of culpability, which many legal experts claim is plainly unconstitutional. This truly draconian legislation imposes severe punishments on people, without trial and without the authorities having the burden of proof.

Another piece of legislation suggested by a Likud member would enable the Israel Prison Service to deny visiting rights to high-security prisoners affiliated to “terrorist organizations that hold Israeli captives.” Without belittling the seriousness of the acts that some of these prisoners committed that earned them a prison sentence in the first place, the extreme ideology of organizations they are affiliated to or the inhuman treatment of their hostages, prisoners have the right of visitation enshrined in international law. And this right is also a measure that keeps prisons relatively calm.

However, for Israel’s right-wing legislators, it is not about international law, human rights, morality or even expediency, but a contest among themselves to prove to their electoral base who is the most punitive toward the Palestinians.

This barrage of anti-Palestinian legislation suggests one of two things. First, that the government is confident, maybe overconfident, that neither opposition at home nor pressure from abroad can halt its rush to make the PA irrelevant and a peace process impossible. Or, second, that it is a coalition that cannot believe its luck at being in power in the first place, yet it knows that its prime minister is extremely weak and so, although he will cave in to any of their demands in his desperation to stay in power, he might nevertheless not survive for much longer. Hence their rush to enact as many laws, budgets, settlement expansions and further policies that discriminate against Palestinians and harm the PA to make their policies as irreversible as possible before they are consigned to the dustbin of history, where they belong.

These far-right elements are well aware that a government led by someone who is scheduled to very soon give evidence in his corruption trial and is responsible for the failure to foil Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, 2023, let alone enjoying little public support, could disappear from politics at any moment. In the meantime, the challenge is to ensure that this Israeli government does not leave scorched earth behind it.

• Yossi Mekelberg is a professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. X: @YMekelberg