“Deceptive and also convenient for spineless diplomacy, the status quo is poised to explode in the occupied West Bank.” Thus began an editorial in Le Monde last Tuesday, summarizing the two-month-long Israeli raids that have so far claimed the lives of 75 Palestinians, along with the resumption of hostilities in the Palestinian territories that have killed 14 Israelis. In an effort to nip in the bud the danger of a third, all-out intifada (uprising), the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is tasking the military with widespread crackdowns and arrests of suspects, such as the February 22 raid in Nablus that killed 14 people and that last Tuesday, seven people died in Jenin, including a 14 year old child.

As the war in Ukraine gained international attention and Islamophobia has long eclipsed (always present) anti-Semitism in Western societies, the awakening of the active volcano called the Middle East faded until February 26th. On that day, a beheaded mob of Israeli settlers rioted in the Palestinian town of Huwara near Jenin, burning buildings and cars. The event caused an international outcry also because one of the leading ministers of the Israeli government, Bezalel Smotrich, was caught by a journalistic microphone, saying that Huara should be “destroyed.”

The far-right government’s finance minister, sworn in on December 29, Smotrich, by Netanyahu’s decision, took on another important portfolio just three days before the pogrom: he was appointed head of a so-called “ministry within the Ministry of Defense.” “, with the duties of Governor-General of the West Bank. A native of settlers who usurp Palestinian lands, he dreams of a state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan, where religious law will prevail (and then mocks Iran or Saudi Arabia for Sharia). In 2016, he called maternity hospitals to place Jewish-majority and Arab-minority expectant mothers in separate wards, and recently confessed privately: “I’m a fascist and a homophobe, but I don’t talk”, according to the public channel Kan 11. With seven deputies, his party is able to overthrow Netanyahu at any time while holding him as a political hostage.

And he’s not the only one. Next to Smotris is the leader of the second far-right pro-Netanyahu party, Itamar Ben Gvir, who holds the key post of national security minister. A settler himself, he has endured dozens of prosecutions for inciting hatred against Arabs, and his living room has long held a photograph of Israeli-American terrorist Baruch Goldstein, who in February 1994 killed 29 Palestinians and wounded 125 others at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. A supporter of the expulsion of “illegal” Israeli Arabs, who make up 21% of the population, was the man who provoked a new round of tension with his defiant visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem on January 3. . . .

Thursday was declared by the organizations to be “Day of Resistance to the Dictatorship” (Netanyahu), when thousands of citizens blocked the arteries and Ben Gurion Airport.

With America already moving its embassy to Jerusalem under Donald Trump, Europe non-existent in the Middle East, and Russia bogged down in a Ukrainian minefield, the prospect of a peaceful two-state solution to Palestine has long been beyond the horizon of ostracism. The scapegoat was the formation of the Netanyahu government, the most reactionary and aggressive government the State of Israel has ever seen. Feeling they have nothing to lose, in recent months a younger generation of Palestinian militants has come to the fore, flying over the heads of an aging, infamous or weak political leadership.

The most typical example, which has recently attracted the attention of the international press, is the Lions’ Den. It was created in February 2022 in the north of the West Bank, and already the giant figures of its “martyrs” rise above the walls of Nablus and Jenin, songs about the young organization are heard in Palestinian cafes, and the funeral of its dead is turning into the largest rallies that they know of the profession on for decades. Its ranks include fighters recruited from Yasser Arafat’s West Bank-dominant Fatah, as well as young men from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, notable because Fatah and Hamas were embroiled in the deadly 2007 civil war in Gaza. The appearance of this atypical phenomenon testifies to the desperation of the Palestinians, especially their youth, in an effort to perpetuate the occupation, as well as their disillusionment with the alienated Palestinian Authority led by 88-year-old Mahmoud Abbas, who has been holding elections since January 2005. At the same time, Israel is living in an atmosphere of existential crisis as a bottomless civil divide threatens the worst. Last Thursday, civil society organizations declared “Day of Resistance to the Dictatorship (Netanyahu)” when thousands of citizens with Israeli flags blocked roads and Ben Gurion Airport. Their main goal was to thwart Netanyahu’s attempt to downgrade the Supreme Court and overthrow the judiciary, the main mechanism of balance and control in a country without a written constitution. For two months now, secular, democratic Israel has been on its feet, believing that the danger of turning the country into an authoritarian theocracy is not far off.

“The values ​​of this country will change, and I am not ready to serve a state that is not democratic.” This was reported to the Associated Press by 53-year-old Shraga Tihover, a former Marine who until yesterday was still serving as a conscript. He is not the only one. For two weeks now, an unprecedented movement of civil disobedience in the ranks of the military (almost all Israelis are required to spend several days a year in the army until the age of fifty in order to continue fighting) has caused a national outcry. The “rebels” include 600 Army Air Force pilots, 35 F-15 squadron pilots, Unit 800 intelligence conscripts, and many others. Army veterans posted a banner on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway that read: “1973 Yom Kippur – 1982 Lebanon – 2023 War to Save Democracy.” Decades later, Israel seems to have discovered what should be self-evident: it can be democratic, it can be Jewish, and it can own the Palestinian territories, but it can’t do it all at the same time. At some point you have to sacrifice something.