A massive double crisis is emerging between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Both Israel and the Palestinian Authority are confronting internal challenges that have cast shadows over their futures, and fast-rising tensions between the two sides are approaching a breaking point.
In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu has returned to power by allying himself with extreme ultra-Orthodox and right-wing parties that are determined to change the very nature of Israel’s constitutional order. Among other things, the government is pursuing reforms that will politicise the judiciary and strip it of its most important powers, as well as threatening to eliminate any remaining possibility of achieving a sustainable two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian question.
Meanwhile, Israelis have taken to the streets en masse to protest the government’s proposals. In a recent speech unveiling his own ‘people’s directive’ to end the crisis, Israeli President Isaac Herzog warned that the risk of a civil war cannot be dismissed. Within minutes of the proposal being released, Netanyahu’s government had already rejected it. Barring some miracle, Israel will continue to descend into the deepest domestic political crisis since its founding. The nature of the Israeli state that will emerge from this crucible is now an open question.
Gone are the days of the Oslo Accords, which offered hope of a resolution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict by establishing structures and pathways for achieving a two-state solution. Fundamentalist forces on both sides have challenged this process from the very start, but never before have these forces been so powerful. The gradual downward slide that has been underway for many years is accelerating, erasing what was left of the legacy of Oslo. What remains today is little more than the rapidly crumbling ruins of what the accords once set up. Most Israelis no longer seem to care much about what’s happening in the occupied Palestinian territories, as long as their own security is assured.
Read the article by Carl Bildt, former PM and foreign minister of Sweden in The Strategist.