After the number of Arab casualties passed 100 this year, Naftali Bennett declared that he takes the issue of violence in Arab society most seriously. At an October 17 government discussion on the issue, he went so far as to say that “we are losing the country. ” The Ministry of Justice is also preparing a package of laws that will permit house searches without a warrant, and economic laws are being designed to fight crime. Bennett announced that he himself would oversee a special cabinet to deal with the issue, and he appointed a project manager to head its staff, which includes the police, the Shin Bet (General Security Service) and the army. It appears that the cries of MKs and heads of the Arab councils have finally reached the ears of the country’s captains, in the sense of: “You asked for it? You got it, and got it big.” What accelerated this concern at the top were the events of May during the last Gaza war, when thousands of young Arabs went out to main intersections, and the mixed cities became battlefields between Jews and Arabs. Along with casualties, this fire consumed businesses, cars, buses and everything in its path. Taken by surprise, the government returned the concept of “governance” to its agenda.

The prevailing opinion is that Israel has a strong army, an omnipotent Shin Beth and a weak police force. The army and Shin Beth have proven they can solve complex problems. As proof, Israel has lived beside the territories it occupies for 54 years. Referring to the Palestinians, Bennett even coined the term “shrapnel in the butt” – something unpleasant, but you can live with it. The army and Shin Beth may excel in exerting control over another people, but they have never solved problems of a social and national nature, nor are they intended to do so. The Palestinian problem remains unsettled, erupting in different ways every few months.

What can the army, police and Shin Beth do about the fact that 40% of Arab youth are not in any occupational or educational setting? What can the Shin Beth do about youth who are careful to point their weapons not at the state and its Jewish citizens, but inwards against Arabs? And it is also worth asking how Shin Beth intervention can be justified, when the motive for violence is not nationalist but socioeconomic?

Violence is a product of the existing socioeconomic system, which has marginalized the poor countries of the world, as well as the underprivileged in rich countries. When 40% of youth do not work or study, the result is crime, drugs and violence, regardless of religion or nationality. In fact, crime among US blacks is much greater than in Israel, and among black youth, those who do not study or work exceed 40%.

Israel should learn from America’s bitter experience. It made excessive use of draconian legislation that filled the prisons with a million inmates, mostly black. The arming of police resulted in the deaths of innocent black civilians and quite a few police. Black society sees the police as the problem, not the solution to the violence that rages within it, and rightly so. That is why the Biden administration decided to bring about change, with support of the black leadership. The Democratic Party wants to inject the huge sum of $ 5 trillion in direct assistance to citizens and renewal of physical infrastructure, bringing back many components of the welfare state. Biden and the Democrats reject the principle that the state is the problem, instead adopting the principle that the role of the state is to serve the citizen. Reagan’s conservative revolution, long maintained by the both major parties, ended with the rise of Donald Trump.

Poverty in Israel is not limited to Arab society. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish citizens are also left on the margins: these include people on minimum wage, temporary and contractor workers, and those who must live on meagre social security. It is clear that Arab society, like black society in the US, is the first victim of the existing economic system, because the tier of national discrimination is added.

The Biden administration, as well as leaders of the black community in the United States, understand that there is no separate solution for blacks and whites. Americans need to rebuild their economy from the bottom up, contrary to what has happened to date. In Israel, on the other hand, neoliberalism continues to dominate and the economy works for the rich. 300,000 high-tech workers act as the locomotive of the Israeli economy, attract foreign investment, get rich quick and enrich the state coffers. Behind them remain the crumbs with which other workers are forced to make do. These crumbs are tossed into Jewish society, and nothing remains for the Arabs. When you build from the top down, poverty grows and breeds violence.

The Bennett-Meretz-United Arab List (UAL) government is working to approve a budget dubbed “social”, thus ensuring its continuity. Yet this budget has no good social news. Finance officials continue to dictate the policy that sees the “bloated” state apparatus as the problem. The so-called reforms in question do nothing more than extinguish fires, and are far from meeting the need for a change in priorities. Give another NIS 500 to the elderly, as if this amount will save them from the shortage of food and medicine; impose a congestion charge to rescue Israel from traffic jams; provide a few hundred more jobs to solve the unbearable burden in hospitals, and impose a tax on disposable utensils to deal with environmental pollution.

This is not a comprehensive plan designed to rebuild growth and the economy to locate the foci of poverty and eradicate social gaps and discrimination. This is a program that maintains the budget framework at all costs, and upholds the same method that hundreds of thousands of young Israelis protested against in 2011. In fact, the Bennett government is continuing Netanyahu’s policy, approving a five-year, NIS 26 billion plan for the Arab sector through 2026. The problem is that only 60% of the amount allocated to the previous five-year plan (992) and approved by the Netanyahu government was ever used. Moreover, today we also know that some of these funds flowed in various forms to criminal organizations on the Arab street through unfair tenders. It is known that earmarked funds allocated to Arab society do not solve the problem, for two reasons. Due to its clan composition, Arab local government suffers from corruption and failed performance. In numerous cases, staff are hired not because of skills, but because they belong to the right family. Secondly, NIS 5 billion a year is not enough to make a real revolution. These funds are designed to keep the Arabs with their head above water, but not to grow and integrate.

The Arab leadership’s insistence on trying to address the problem in a sectoral manner, without a comprehensive look at Israeli society and the existing neoliberal economic system, leaves Arab society weak, isolated and devoid of any political influence. UAL’s participation in the government is intended to obtain budgets for the Arab sector in the same way used by the ultra-Orthodox parties. Yet these budgets nourish and perpetuate poverty, and do not solve fundamental problems in education, employment, transportation and welfare. Like its predecessor, the new Israeli government is unwilling to invest in these areas. It continues to starve the public sector, works to privatize government companies to hurt workers’ wages, harms employee pensions, encourages high-tech at the expense of creating jobs that pay a salary above minimum wage, and remains stubbornly unwilling to invest in vocational training.

The black leadership in the United States has become a leader in the struggle for democracy and social justice for all Americans – black and white alike. In contrast, the Arab leadership in Israel sticks to old slogans, differentiates itself from the Israeli public, and leaves the political arena in the hands of the right and its partners from the left. These pretend to fight for citizens, but in the meantime are abusing Palestinians, leaving workers in poverty, and Arab society rooted in poverty and violence.

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Less than a month has passed since Israel’s “government of change” was sworn in, and to bridge the gaps in the country’s most heterogeneous coalition ever, it has declared itself “anti-ideological.” Controversial issues between Right and Left are off the table, such as West Bank settlements, religion and state, and the composition of the Supreme Court. However, ideology is the bread and butter of Israel, and ideological issues cannot be kept from the morning news. The first of these was the fate of Eviatar, an illegal settler outpost erected on the lands of the Palestinian village of Beita; initially, when the new government took over, Eviatar was slated for evacuation and demolition.

At the same time, the Citizenship and Entry Law came up for its annual approval. This is a temporary order from 2003, the height of the second intifada. Eviatar and the Citizenship Law are both purely “ideological” issues. A right-wing party led by Naftali Bennett supports the establishment of new settlements and does not call them “illegal” even if built without permits. On the left side of the same coalition, Meretz denounces settlements, and it has been petitioning the courts against the Citizenship Law since 2006.

The commitment not to engage in ideology for unity’s sake has brought the coalition’s left side, Meretz for instance, to rotten compromises, dictated by the right-wing composition of the government and the Knesset. Although in the new coalition there exists a kind of balance between Right, Center, Left and the Islamic movement, the weight of the Right is decisive. Labor, Meretz and the Islamic Movement must make allowances for their right-wing partners, who have the right-wing Knesset opposition, led by Netanyahu, breathing down their ideological necks. This—even though that opposition refuses to recognize the government’s legitimacy, calls Bennett a traitor, and describes the coalition as a danger to Israel’s security.

Meretz, Labor and the Islamic Movement were forced to swallow the compromise reached by Bennett with the settlers in Eviatar, according to which the settlers will be voluntarily and temporarily evacuated from the outpost, their houses left intact, and the army will occupy the place until the status of the lands is clarified. What began in Netanyahu’s time as a demolition by agreement, became under Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked a new “legal-to-be” settlement for the first time in 20 years. This is an impressive achievement for the settlers and a scorching loss for the Left.

We did not manage to recover from the blow of Eviatar before the Citizenship and Entry Law fell on us. Under pretext of security, this law keeps citizenship from West Bank or Gazan Palestinians who marry Palestinian citizens of Israel. It discriminates against (Arab) Israeli citizens on ethnic grounds, with the justification that spouses from the territories might be terrorists. As noted, the law originated during the second intifada, when there were 45 cases in which residents of the Occupied Territories holding Israeli identity cards took part in hostilities. For 17 years, this discriminatory law was renewed without debate, although in recent years violence by Palestinians holding Israeli IDs has dwindled to zero. The number of families whose lives are hamstrung by the Citizenship Law today stands at 13,000.

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid has openly declared that the problem is not security but demography. Lapid, architect of the new government, has thus confirmed the claim of the law’s initiators, who declared that marriage serves the Palestinians as a means of “exercising the right of return.” Supreme Court Justice Mishael Cheshin, who wrote the majority opinion in the decision not to repeal the Citizenship Law, ruled that “Palestinian residents of the area are enemy nationals who constitute a risk group for the citizens of Israel, and therefore the state may enact a law prohibiting their entry into the country.” In so doing, Cheshin camouflaged this discriminatory law under the guise of a security need—instead of its real motive, demography.

Not only is Cheshin’s claim not backed by facts, but it doesn’t make sense. The Palestinian Authority (PA) maintains intimate relations with the State of Israel, primarily by the close security coordination between the parties, confounding the notion that it is an “enemy state.” Accordingly, its citizens cannot be considered enemy nationals. Moreover, the PA itself is an Israeli invention. Newborn Palestinians in PA territory are listed in the Israeli Population Registry and given an ID number, which appears in a green ID card issued by the PA. The card is identical to the blue Israeli identity card, but its color determines the civil status of those who carry it, or rather, their lack of status.

Furthermore, 150,000 “enemy nationals” enter Israel daily to work; the accepted currency in the PA is the Israeli shekel; Israel and the PA have a uniform customs arrangement; Israel controls all entries and exits into and out of the West Bank and Gaza; and Israel can shut off the electric power at will. In other words, Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza are Israelis for all intents and purposes, except that they lack civil rights. In the West Bank, they are subject to the Israeli Civil Administration, subordinate to the military commander, the supreme sovereign who determines everything; the Palestinian depends completely on his will.

In fact, Palestinians have no need to exercise the right of return through the back door. Those who are enabling that back-door return are precisely the half million Israeli settlers. By preventing a Palestinian state, they have, in effect, transformed the entire territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean into a single political unit. The Citizenship Law was meant to reinforce the illusion of a Green Line separating the West Bank and Gaza from Israel. If this imaginary line ever existed, however, it has long been erased, despite the porous Separation Barrier.

While the Knesset clashes over the Citizenship and Entry Law, which affects 13,000 Palestinian families who pose no security or demographic threat, the “government of change” avoids discussing the fate of 5 million Palestinians of the territories whom it controls in all matters, from freedom of movement to family reunification. The use of legislation to keep Palestinian citizens of Israel from marrying and starting a family only reveals the contradiction in a state that defines itself as Jewish and democratic. The Citizenship and Entry Law violates the most basic human rights. It is no coincidence that it has not become a standing law, because it harms Israel’s image as a democracy. More importantly, this discriminatory legislation cannot stop the processes taking place before our eyes, which are creating a single political, economic, demographic and geographical reality between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.

In recent weeks, Palestinians have been demonstrating against the PA for cancelling the parliamentary elections, and for the beating to death of social activist Nizar Banat by Palestinian security forces. These demonstrations should help the Israeli public, and the international public too, to understand the “enemy entity.” The PA is oppressing the people it is supposed to represent, a people that strives like all others for democracy, social justice and basic rights.

The participation of Meretz, the Labor Party and the Islamic Movement in the Bennett-Lapid government gives a boost to the Israeli Right, which is trying to halt political, demographic and geographical processes created by its own actions. The Right regards the Palestinian question as “shrapnel in Israel’s ass” (Bennett), a problem with no solution. It legislates racist laws to delay the end, while simultaneously settling on every hill and under every fig tree, abusing Palestinian farmers and shepherds, plundering their lands while the army stands idly by. As we get closer to the reality of one state, Israel will continue legislating racist laws, on the way to becoming a state that is indeed Jewish but certainly not democratic. This is now happening with the help of the Zionist Left, which by linking its fate to the right-wing parties is losing its right to exist.

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There is no greater contradiction than that between the names of the two parties that organized the new coalition in Israel. Yesh Atid (“There is a Future”) heralds change, while heading the government is a party calling itself Yamina (“Turn Right”), which intends to take us back to the days of President Ronald Reagan, who hamstrung the welfare state and opened the neoliberal era. Today, especially after the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is turning strongly to the Left to rebuild the welfare state with ideas from Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” based on a green economy.

Donald Trump sealed the neoliberal era with a jarring chord that threatened, and still threatens, to destroy American democracy. Benjamin Netanyahu worked to distort Israeli democracy to save his skin from criminal charges. Yet the current American cure for neoliberalism is to bring the state back as a key factor in economic development for the benefit of society as a whole. By contrast, Israel turns rightward to the economic conservatism represented by Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked. What future can Israel expect when the cure for populism is the same neoliberal doctrine from which that populism grew?

Bennett did indeed demand that his eight coalition partners put ideologies aside and concentrate on running the country, investing in areas on which there exists consensus, such as education, health, transportation and welfare. The question, however, is who will develop these areas – the private or public sector? Will the rich pay more taxes (as Biden demands in the US) to reduce the gap between them and the poor? How can one reconcile the need to raise the workers’ standard of living with the harm to organized labor entailed by Bennett’s theory? How can the expansive funding of work-shy ultra-Orthodox men be reconciled with the need to raise the educational level of the disadvantaged? How do you reconcile the contradiction between the new billionaires and the need to fight the link between wealth and government, which has already brought two prime ministers to court on criminal charges and is gnawing away at democracy? It turns out that every road, every desk, and every hospital bed amounts to an ideological choice.

Apparently, the only way to bridge ideological gaps is to cling to the past. We have overthrown Netanyahu but will continue in his footsteps, applying his teachings in our own style. We will change the melody but not the lyrics– melody by Bennett, lyrics by Netanyahu. It’s weird, it’s jarring, but it’s possible. Bennett, a supporter of settling Greater Israel, is sitting in the same coalition as Nitzan Horowitz of Meretz and Mansour Abbas from the Islamic Movement. Netanyahu’s mantras – “Iran, Iran, Iran”, “peace in exchange for peace”, “agreement with the Palestinians is not on the agenda”, “Hamas only understands force”, “we have become a natural gas power”, “we are a cyber power”, “we came out of the pandemic first “- continue to resonate.

Despite Bennett’s adoption of Bibi’s lyrics, US President Joe Biden was quick to call and congratulate him, since the departure of Trump’s close friend is a relief for the US Democrats. Biden is already inviting Bennett to the White House, and as the son of San Francisco -born parents he will probably have no trouble communicating with the President. Yet Bennett ought to update his English, because if he continues to mimic Netanyahu’s, he will get a cold shoulder and a raised eyebrow. He may not have difficulty mouthing phrases like “climate change” or “build back better,” but it will be otherwise with issues like “Black Lives Matter” or “human rights,” since he is committed to avoiding ideology. If Biden makes it hard for him and utters the forbidden P-word (“Palestinians”), the raised eyebrow will be Bennett’s, wondering how Biden arrived at so anti-Semitic a concept.

If Biden tries to ask less divisive questions, such as “democracy or autocracy,” Bennett will have no difficulty, since he is the representative of the only democracy in the Middle East and knows what language to choose. But if Biden demands that Bennett take sides— Putin or him, China or the US— that’s another matter. Bennett will immediately recall the dowry left him by Netanyahu: the special ties with Putin that let Israel attack Syria unimpeded. He will also squirm in his seat if Biden mentions the sale of Israeli companies to the Chinese, such as Tnuva, Ahava and the new port in Haifa.

So yes, Israel stands by its best friend, and democratic values do indeed underlie the strategic relationship between the two countries, but they disagree on the meanings of the words democracy and autocracy. Bennett’s school is closer to that of Trump, which advocates democracy for whites only, while Bennett’s is for Jews only. Human rights à la Bennett may be important for Americans and Israelis, but less so for Russians, Chinese and our Arab neighbors, and it is not in our interest to interfere in their affairs.

Upon his return to Israel, Bennett will announce how he bravely withstood American pressure, just as Netanyahu did before him. Israel will continue to stew in its own juice, Jews against Arabs, Mizrahis against Ashkenazis, Haredim against seculars, and will continue to control five million Palestinians lacking in human and civil rights. At the same time, America is turning to existential tasks, such as fighting against climate change, opposing institutionalized racism, promoting social justice, and grounding democracy. After four decades of destroying the welfare state, pushing itself and the world to the abyss, the US is adapting itself to the 21st century. And Israel? Under the national-religious Bennett, it awaits the Messiah.

For those who do not believe in Bennett’s messianic ideology, and who look through the prism of a worldwide Green New Deal, the manifest reality is bleak and dangerous. The agreement of 115 out of 120 MKs in the Knesset to keep Palestinians out of the public discourse, and to refuse to seriously discuss a permanent solution to end the conflict, is foolishness and injustice. Eight years ago, the Left cried out against Bennett’s statement that the Palestinians are “a shrapnel in Israel’s ass,” meaning that it hurts but can be lived with. Today this attitude is commonplace, from Bennett to Horowitz, from Lapid to Michaeli.

The truth is that the shrapnel has blighted the whole of Israeli society. It has corrupted the youth, deepened racism, and undermined the legitimacy of the justice system. It has profoundly changed the attitude of US Jewry toward Israel, causing American youth to hate it for 54 years of crushing Palestinians by means of Occupation.

The headline of the “Economist” on May 29 did not read “Bibi or not Bibi.” It read, “Israel and Palestine: Two States or One.” The answer is clear and unequivocal. After 28 years of the Oslo Accords, the two-state slogan is irrelevant. Bennett said so eight years ago, and this is what the newly changed government heralds.

If Israel wants to be a democracy, it must adopt the path of the American administration, which advocates equal human rights and a “Green New Deal” to protect democracy from autocracy. Advocates of democracy in Israel and Palestine face the historic task of adopting an “Israeli-Palestinian Green New Deal,” jointly eliminating the apartheid regime by founding one democratic state. The international community is ripe for this. It is the only answer to the religious-nationalist and messianic trends that currently dominate the Israeli and Palestinian societies, reigniting the conflict time and again with no prospect of a solution.

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