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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 12/10/17

How will US Jerusalem move affect Israel's far right?

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Jonathan Cook
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Most obviously, Israel's seemingly "miraculous" victory in the 1967 war, defeating the armies of neighboring Arab states in six days, unleashed a wave of Messianic Judaism that spawned the settler movement.

A new religious nationalism swept parts of the Israeli public, driving them into the occupied Palestinian territories to claim a supposed Biblical birthright.

Other major events have had a decisive effect too. Unexpectedly, the Oslo peace process, launched in the mid-1990s, persuaded many non-religious Israeli Jews to move into settlements in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, doubling the numbers there in a few years.

Into the arms of the far right

Alan Baker, a legal adviser to the Israeli foreign ministry in that period, explained Israelis' peculiar reading of the Oslo Accords. In their view, Oslo meant Israel was "present in the territories with their [the Palestinians'] consent and subject to the outcome of negotiations."

In other words, many Israelis believed that the Oslo process had conferred an international legitimacy on the settlements.

Later, in 2000, after the Camp David summit collapsed without the sides agreeing to a two-state solution, Ehud Barak, Israel's then-prime minister, blamed Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians. He said they were "no partner" for peace.

As a result, Israelis deserted the peace camp and drifted into the arms of the right and far-right. Netanyahu has reaped the benefits, leading a series of ultra-nationalist governments since 2009.

Now Trump's decision on Jerusalem effectively gives Washington's blessing to Israel's illegal annexation of East Jerusalem and five decades of creating facts on the ground there, said Jabareen.

"Trump has legitimized the far-right's argument that Israel can control all of Jerusalem by sheer force, by denying Palestinians their rights and by creating facts on the ground," he said.

With their policy of aggressive unilateralism now paying dividends in the US, the settlers and the ultra-nationalists were unlikely to be satisfied with that success alone, he added. "The danger is that the religious right's narrative will now seem persuasive at other sites in the occupied territories they demand, such as Hebron and Nablus."

Since Trump's election a year ago, Naftali Bennett, the Israeli education minister and the leader of the main settler party, has begun calling for Israel to seize the opportunity to annex West Bank settlements.

Pressure is likely now to mount rapidly on Netanyahu to shift even further to the right.

On the 972 website, Noam Sheizaf, an Israeli analyst, observed that Trump's declaration had boosted the settlers' position that "in the long run 'facts on the ground' are more important than diplomacy and politics, and that Israel will eventually win legitimacy for its actions."

Effects in Jerusalem

The most immediate effects, according to Ir Amim, an Israeli human rights organization, will be felt in Jerusalem itself. Government ministers have already drafted legislation to bring large West Bank settlements under Jerusalem's municipal authority, as a way covertly to annex them.

There are also plans to strip large numbers of Palestinians of their Israeli-issued Jerusalem residency papers because they live outside the separation wall Israel built through the city more than a decade ago. That would cement a new, unassailable right-wing Jewish majority in Jerusalem.

Last week, Ir Amim warned in a statement that Trump's move would be certain to "embolden" such actions by the Israeli right and provide a "tailwind" to those determined to pre-empt a two-state solution.

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Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He is the 2011 winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: (more...)
 

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