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Netanyahu's coalition deal paves the way to annexation

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Jonathan Cook
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Standing on marked positions to maintain two metres' distance, they protested Netanyahu's increasing accumulation of powers. Carmi Gillon, a former head of Israel's domestic spy agency, the Shin Bet, told the crowd the courts were now all that was left to "defend Israeli democracy before it is finally crushed".

Critics note that the Shin Bet have already been given an unprecedented right previously available for use only against Palestinians to track Israeli citizens. Combined with anti-coronavirus restrictions, opponents fear Netanyahu is establishing a security regime at home that can be used to oppress dissenters.

They point to his imminent trial, noting that most of the charges relate to his alleged efforts to intimidate or bribe major Israeli media outlets into becoming little more than his personal cheerleaders.

Meanwhile, other checks on the executive branch he heads are being sacrificed on the altar of the emergency government.

Despite being a criminal defendant, Netanyahu will have a veto on the appointment of the two most senior law-enforcement officials the state prosecutor and attorney general who are supposed to oversee the case against him at trial.

Netanyahu has already installed an acting prosecutor considered loyal to him who, according to the coalition agreement, cannot be removed for many months. Israeli commentators have expressed little faith that he will prosecute Netanyahu with full vigour.

Netanyahu will also continue to wield control over the appointment of judges to the supreme court, which has been drifting ever further rightwards after more than a decade of Netanyahu's influence.

In these circumstances, the courts may baulk at the prospect of inflaming a constitutional crisis and possibly civil war by trying to remove a sitting prime minister.

With the judicial and legal branches increasingly enfeebled, the coalition agreement also strips the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, of any meaningful oversight. The government will be able to strangle legislative proposals at birth, before they can be debated. Unusually the main parliamentary committees will be under the governing parties' control, too. And a Netanyahu loyalist will be the Knesset Speaker.

But the coalition agreement does allow for one emergency legislative move unrelated to tackling the virus: annexation of swaths of the West Bank in violation of international law but under licence from the "vision for peace" published earlier in the year by US President Donald Trump.

The government can set forth an annexation plan from July well before Trump faces a re-election contest in the US in November. Mike Pompeo, his Secretary of State, offered what appeared to be Washington's blessing for fast-track annexation last week.

While Gantz headed the opposition bloc, he refused to rule out annexation, expressing concern only that it would prove unpalatable to some western allies.

But aside from formulaic denunciations from a few European states, Israel fears little in the way of repercussions. And Gantz now appears on board.

As defence minister, he will be responsible for crushing any Palestinian resistance to Israel's annexation moves, while Gabi Ashkenazi, his political ally and another former general, will be responsible as foreign minister for putting a respectable face on the annexation drive in overseas capitals.

Netanyahu appears to have the wind behind him, and three more years in which to meddle in ways that could see him maintaining his grip on the Israeli Prime Minister's Office well beyond that.

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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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