This is how the Israel election affects conflicts in the region

Middle East

This is how the Israel election affects conflicts in the region

A new parliament will be elected in Israel at the end of October. The election campaign in the country is influencing the situation in other crisis regions. In the West Bank, for example, right-wing forces are heating up tensions.

In Israel The hot phase of the election campaign begins before the parliamentary elections on October 27th. According to surveys, it could be for both the camp of the incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as for the opposition to secure a majority. There are already sharp disputes in the country. But the election campaign also has an impact on conflicts in the region. An overview:

Right-wing extremist government members such as police ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have long sought annexation of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Before the election, observers see the danger that some actors want an escalation of the situation in the Palestinian territory in order to get closer to this goal. “If a new government is elected, it is unlikely that radical settlers will continue to receive the same level of support as they currently do,” says the politics lecturer at the University of Bar Ilan Tel AvivIlana Shpaizman.

According to Shpaizman, Israeli violent criminals feel occupied West Bank currently virtually immune. Critics accuse the Israeli military of not taking decisive action against settler violence. The former head of the Palestinian affairs department of Israel’s military intelligence service, Michael Milshtein, believes that Israel’s security forces were told not to take any action in these cases. He fears that armed clashes and “settler terror” will increase as the election approaches.

Israel conquered, among other things, the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the Six-Day War in 1967. Today, more than 700,000 Israeli settlers live there among three million Palestinians.

Despite international criticism, Netanyahu’s right-wing religious government is currently pushing ahead with settlement projects such as the controversial development of the so-called E1 area between East Jerusalem and the Maale Adumim settlement. This would effectively split the West Bank into a northern and a southern part. This would potentially make the creation of a contiguous Palestinian territory and thus the realization of a future two-state solution impossible.

The Israeli organization Peace Now recently criticized the government for trying to sign contracts with construction companies before the election in order to make it difficult for a future government to stop the settlement project.

Gadi Eisenkot, Netanyahu’s strongest rival in the upcoming election according to opinion polls, recently spoke out against the project and settler violence, but also against a two-state solution. Expert Schpaizman still assumes that a new government would at least end the anarchy in the West Bank.

In the Gaza Strip Despite the ceasefire, people continue to live under precarious humanitarian conditions. Recently, Israel has increased its air strikes in the area and, according to the army, targeted commanders of the terrorist organization Hamas. A Gaza plan recently announced by the Gaza Peace Council is not progressing.

Among other things, it stipulates that Hamas will give up its weapons and both sides will stop their fighting. Hamas has agreed to this, Netanyahu rejects the plan. The Israeli newspaper “Maariv” writes that the Israeli head of government’s no vote is a campaign tactic and that the US government has also recognized this.