Amir Makhoul is Ameer Makhoul is a leading Palestinian activist and writer in the 48 Palestinians community. He is the former director of Ittijah, a Palestinian NGO in
Large audiences participated in the central demonstrations in Tel Aviv and a large number of Israeli cities ignored by the Israeli media on Saturday evening 23/12/2023 in response to demands for an immediate prisoner exchange deal that guaranteed the priority of the issue of detainees and hostages in Gaza and provide conditions for their release as part of an exchange deal.
The demonstrations, including speeches, slogans and chants, were characterised by the level of growing concern about the fate of the Israeli hostages held, and the expansion of the popular conviction that the Israeli military bombardment is what poses the greatest danger to them and puts them in the field of death investigated. The demonstrations rejected Israel’s official speech, led by Security Minister Yoav Galant, that an escalation of military action would “create an existential interest among Hamas leaders by making a deal.”
Previous days have seen the publication of live testimonies from hostages who were freed in previous deals in which one of them asserted that “I was actually afraid for my life from Israeli bombing,” and what was also published by the New York Times, Financial Times and Haretz of testimonies about the account of October 7 and the mass destruction that took place in Israeli towns in the border area with the Gaza Strip.
The renewal came in the striking slogan of the demonstrations mentioned in demanding immediate elections for the Knesset. It is a demand that goes beyond the issue of hostages held in Gaza, becoming a political demand for the first time since the beginning of the war. While the partisan political arena is witnessing a great noise and calls from opposition leaders (Lapid and Lieberman) to hold elections during the war and without waiting for its end, which has become unclear in terms of extent and form, in which the Israeli opposition and the political and security community accuses that the considerations of Netanyahu and his expanded government to prolong the war include his efforts to maintain his coalition and remain in power.
An additional value for the movement of the families of hostages and detainees into a popular political movement lies in breaking the policy of mute and the policy of totalitarian intimidation, which was imposed once a state of war and a state of public and civil emergency were declared. Which was followed by an unprecedented campaign of political prosecutions that targeted all anti-wars and exclusively targeted every Palestinian Arab voice that could be interpreted by any Israeli policeman or official in a civil institution as anti-war or “supporter of terrorism” and without any legal evidence. This break of silence creates a margin for the political action of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, the most politically and even existentially targeted within the said policy. Which could support movements to stop the war. On the Palestinian people and exclusively on Gaza.
The call of the official opposition for general elections with the possibility of the exit of the official Camp Party led by Gantz and Eizenkot from the war government, in addition to efforts to co-on a number of Knesset members from Likud as well as the eastern religious Shas Party, which, would, if successful, lead to the overthrow of the government and entering into an electoral battle that will form the war, the success of October 7 and the “day after”, all of which are central issues in the internal political conflict, which is expected to be the most violent in the history of Israel, due to the refusal of the parties of “religious Zionism” and “Jewish force” and the Likud community to give up the government and the project of ignite the West Bank front and the Palestinian interior, and because they started in an unprecedented campaign against the leadership of the army And seeking to delegitimise its orientations regarding the “ethics of war” and the army’s policy towards settlers and the practises of soldiers and exclusively from the religious Zionist current.
There are indications that the war government is coming to an end, as Gantz faces wide pressures to resign and withdraw from it because the war and its pace are serving the political interests of the prime minister and not national interests, and then there is pressure on Netanyahu by Ben Gvir and Smotrich to dismantle the war government that contradicts the policies of the extended government. To note here, the formation of the war government came to set specific, achievable and popularly reliable goals, as well as to prevent the expansion of the war and to prevent the Lebanese front from involving other than the intentions of the Minister of Security Galent, despite Netanyahu’s reticence from going into a simultaneous all-out war on more than one side, as well as the Biden administration and the leader of the Shas party, Arye Deri.
– Whether the Netanyahu government fell soon or remained, the certainty is that the internal political crisis is deepening and accelerating and that the process of marketing and promoting the national unity broadcast by Israeli television screens has vanished with the beginning of the war, and there are even reports issued by the Centre for National Security Studies confirming the parallel decline in national immunity compared to the beginning of the war, which may be reflected in the borrowing of the political arena.
– The convergence in the discourse between the protest movement on detainees and hostages and the official opposition, is an expression of an important internal Israeli shift and the beginning of the politicisation of the protest movement towards the demand for a change of government in time of war, that is, a general election, which requires the opposition to present a political alternative to Netanyahu’s current government.
– Currently, there is no Israeli political force ruling or aiming to govern in favour of the establishment of a Palestinian state or a two-state solution, but the main difference is in favouring the rule of the Palestinian Authority in different and undefined forms over Gaza and the Israeli refraining in any way from the sustainability of the occupation of the Strip, including the establishment of an Israeli military rule in it, which may be drawn towards settlement in its north, and the other difference is in the necessity of a political solution with the Palestinians and here also without defining its features, in exchange for the rejection of Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben Gvir of any political solution, and they even seek to undermine the Palestinian Authority so that it does not constitute a possible mechanism on which the international community agrees as the basis for a single Palestinian entity in The West Bank and the Gaza Strip lead to a Palestinian state, and from this point of view, he created a speech against the Oslo Accords and that he refuses to replace “the Hamasan authority with the authority of Fatistan” and being “the only one who is able to prevent a Palestinian state.”
Conclusion:
• The Israeli political arena is raging rapidly in exchange for the government’s involvement in the management of the war with non-specific goals or the time limit, and against the lack of confidence in the government and exclusively in the issue of hostages and detainees in Gaza, in addition to the high price of the war on the human levels, the number of dead and wounded among the soldiers, the inability to provide conditions for the return of the residents of the border areas to their towns, and the gap between the political level’s endeavours to restore immunity and morale and the field level and the state of concern among the reserve forces about the damage caused to them as a result of the continuation of the war.
• It has become clear that a protest movement is formed that does not stop at the family humanitarian dimension in the return of the hostages, but turns into a political protest movement based on changing the Israeli leadership, which is a lever of the demand to stop the war, faltering goals and capabilities.
• The impact of the Israeli protest movement and shifts in public opinion may be the decisive factor in escalating the struggle to stop the war and bring down the government. The Palestinian factor is not secondary in influencing the Israeli political situation.