The alienation of Palestinians by the Israeli government has the aim of monopolising future polity in the Holy Land.
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| Expansion of settlements remains a priority, but the focus since the 1990s has been on strengthening settlements already built [EPA] |
In light of the Netanyahu-Lieberman coalition's newly proposed (or passed) laws that target the Jewish state's Arab minority, increasing attention is being paid to the discrimination and hate speech faced by Israel's Palestinian citizens. Issues like the struggle of 'unrecognised' villages, and phenomena like the 'don't rent to Arabs' rabbis' letter, for example, are being covered by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, international media, and even the UK Foreign Office.
The bigger picture, however, is being missed. Many of the proposed or recently passed bills were initiated before the current coalition sat down in the Knesset; simply blaming figures like Avigdor Lieberman for these developments is not correct. This post-2000 trend has been further accelerated, and represents a manifestation of the kind of ethno-religious discrimination that has shaped the Israeli state's relationship with its Palestinian minority since 1948.
Furthermore, few are making the connection between what happens on both sides of the Green Line: there is more than just pointing to the parallels between policies like home demolitions and 'Judaisation' that take place inside both pre-1967 Israel and the occupied West Bank.
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