“Attacks have increased and become more violent”: the fear generated among Palestinians by the new far-right government of Israel

I came to talk to Yasser Abu Markhiya about the attacks on his home in Hebron, but he ended up writhing on the ground in his garden after being kicked in the groin.

Our cameras had just started rolling at his house when it all started.

SIGHT: Netanyahu manages to form a new Israeli government in alliance with the extreme right

“Stone settlers attacking! Stone settlers!” my producer yells.

We run out with the Palestinian family as two young Israelis burst into their garden, followed by soldiers.

One of the settlers is heading straight for us yelling at the family, “Get out of here, get out of here!”

Abu Markhiya approaches him, trying to deal with the threat, filming on his phone as a soldier blocks him, but the Israeli man lunges forward and kicks the Palestinian owner of the house.

This assault is an illustration of what we came to interview the family for: Palestinians in Hebron say they feel increasingly vulnerable to attack after recent elections in Israel.

The vote saw a massive surge in support for the extreme right – empowering an ultra-nationalist core of the settler movement in Hebron and elsewhere – and reigniting a culture war within Israeli society over the role of the military in the occupied territories.

After Abu Markhiya was kicked, there was a confrontation while we were still filming.

Badee Dwaik, a Palestinian activist helping the family, shouted: “Soldiers do nothing to protect Palestinians. If a Palestinian did that, they would be thrown in jail or shot.”.

He is airing a frequent complaint of systematic discrimination: that Israeli settlers who commit violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are rarely held accountable.

As if to demonstrate this, the man who kicked Abu Markhiya walks over to his car, gets a handshake from one of the soldiers, and drives off.

Abu Markhiya, meanwhile, lies wounded while a neighbor tends to him.

When asked about the incident, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that soldiers are obliged to stop acts of violence against Palestinians and, if necessary, detain suspects until the police arrive.

Police say they systematically investigate settler violence, but human rights groups say this is often a front.

From marginal movement to being part of the government

In the November elections, the far-right Religious Zionism alliance won 14 seats out of 120 in Israel’s parliament, making it the second most powerful force in Prime Minister-elect Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of the ultranationalist Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party that is part of that coalition, He is pro-settler and a supporter of racist and anti-Arab policies, has been appointed Minister of National Security, in charge of the police in Israel and in the occupied West Bank.

He rose to prominence among a young national-religious base as an armed street agitator calling for the deportation of “disloyal” Arabs and for stone-throwing Palestinians to be shot.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, who will head Israel’s police force, was once convicted of anti-Arab racism. (Photo: Reuters)

Ben-Gvir has previously been convicted of racist incitement and supporting a Jewish terrorist group, and is well known to Palestinians in Hebron, having come from one of the city’s Jewish settlements.

Many fear his rise from the radical fringes to the political mainstream ushers in a dangerous new phase, in a region already ravaged by deadly IDF raids on the West Bank and the deadliest wave of Palestinian attacks in recent years.

In Hebron this year, two Palestinians, including a 16-year-old boy, have been shot dead by Israeli forces during protests in the city, and two others during alleged knife attacks on Israeli forces. An Israeli man was killed in a shooting attack by a Palestinian who was later killed.

The day we filmed, Israeli peace activists were on a guided tour that sought to show the daily reality of life in the city.

“In the heart of the occupation”

Hebron is a city of checkpoints and a flashpoint of conflict and occupation. At its center are several hundred Israeli settlers who enjoy the protection of an army and full political rights, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have neither.

Many believe that this city is the epitome of the occupation in its most concentrated form.

The streets of its historic center are a dystopian mix of civilian houses and shops with the doors welded between militarized fences, walls and watchtowers; an area emptied of its once bustling Palestinian life, as only residents can enter. The Israeli army refers to them as “barren” zones necessary for security.

Hebron is a political center for the Israeli far right: the colonists voted overwhelmingly in favor of the alliance led jointly by Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrichanother ultranationalist figure who will be finance minister and responsible for Israel’s day-to-day management of the West Bank, governing the lives of Palestinians there.

Israeli peace activists have come to show solidarity with the Palestinians after a fortnight of escalating violence and intimidation. In the weeks after the election, during an annual Jewish pilgrimage, hundreds of Israeli youths attacked houses.

The following weekend, an IDF soldier beat up a left-wing Israeli activist who came to support Palestinian residents, while another soldier was filmed praising Ben-Gvir and saying the political firebrand would “fix this place.”

The UN envoy to the region, Tor Wennesland, condemned the violence, as did outgoing Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz, who warned during the election that Ben-Gvir was threatening to set the country on fire.

Among those whose houses were attacked during the wave of violence were Abu Markhiya and his neighbor, Imad Abu Shamsiyyeh.

They have collaborated for years with the Palestinian group Human Rights Defenders, which has documented violence against Palestinians, something activists believe could put them in further danger.

“They stood exactly in this place and they started throwing stones like crazy, insulting us with obscene words and shouting racist slogans: ‘Death to the Arabs’ and ‘Out of these houses that belong to Israel, we will get them back,'” Abu Shamsiyyeh tells me.

“I was very afraid for myself, my wife and my children, as there were a large number of settlers. Especially now with Ben-Gvir in the government, who has come to my house more than once,” he says.

Abu Markhiya continues: “Since the Israeli elections, the attacks have increased and become more violent.”

Then the soldier who was recorded supporting Ben-Gvir was jailed for several days. He was fueling a heated dispute in Israel, with nationalists arguing that the military leadership was caving in to liberal pressure to punish the country’s defenders.

Among those who defended this position was Ben-Gvir himself, who suggested that the activists provoked or beat the soldiers, a claim for which there is no evidence.

“Now they have more energy”

In occupied Hebron, an old rift in Israeli society has worsened: the one that separates hardline nationalists from what remains of the pacifist camp. I watched as tensions rose in the city as settlers clashed with anti-occupation activists.

Yishai Fleisher, a well-known voice on the settler right who describes himself as the international spokesperson for the Hebron Jewish Community, speaks with me as his allies yell “traitors” at the arriving activists.

I ask him why they are yelling, aren’t the visitors trying to expose the discriminatory realities of the city?

“His opinion has become totally minority in Israel,” he says. “The jihadism that exists in this city and [el grupo militante palestino] Hamas running this city, that’s the real kind of segregationist, apartheid-leaning government that can come to this place if Israel doesn’t control it.”

“On this piece of land, which is a minuscule piece of land, our tribal land, we should definitely be in control. It’s our land,” he adds.

I point out that this sounds like racism, a claim he rejects.

“We want our minorities to succeed and move up. We have no problem with our minorities as long as they respect the law and are not jihadists.”He says.

In the occupied West Bank there are some three million Palestinians. Some 500,000 Israelis live in settlements, all of which are considered illegal under international law, something Israel denies.

We leave the right-wing rally and the soldiers tell us we can’t go back if we go to the peace camp activists.

We headed there. Among the crowd is Tal Sagi, from the group Breaking the Silencemade up of former soldiers who oppose the occupation and try to expose the daily humiliations of the Palestinians.

She was recruited as a soldier in Hebron, where she describes an interdependent relationship between the IDF and the settlers. The latter’s message, she says, is that the Palestinians are “all enemies.”

“I know what it’s like to be here as a soldier. You’re in close relationship with the settlers all the time and they give you food and they talk to you and… you hear these messages all the time,” he explains.

“I grew up as a settler too, so something I heard from a very young age [fue]…that everyone wanted to kill me and that every Palestinian is a threat.”

“Now, after the victory of Ben-Gvir, [los colonos] they have even more energy and they are here with a lot of confidence and they know they have a lot of power with them in the government. So they feel very safe to say all those things and act like that,” he adds.

As we speak, the army is preventing the crowd from moving: they have declared a closed military zone, activists say. Finally, one of the Palestinians they were going to visit approaches them.

Issa Amro is a well-known activist and founder of the Youth Against Settlements organization, which organizes guided tours of Hebron. He is a strong critic of both the Israeli forces and the Palestinian Authority, and has been detained by both.

He has been declared a human rights defender by the EU and the UN, who have already condemned his repeated arrests.

After his speech to the Israeli peace activists, Amro tries to show me how he cannot go to his own home due to the latest conditions of his detention.

But while we film, they take him away from us. Four plainclothes Israeli policemen, including the officer we had seen earlier, put him against the wall and search him. They tell him that he is under arrest for “obstructing justice.”

Like the Israeli activists and Palestinian family attacked while filming, he believes the authorities are simply following the orders of the city’s settler movement, which is now feeling more emboldened than ever after the elections. But he can’t explain anymore as he is taken away, silenced for a few more hours again.

Source: Elcomercio