Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir vowed on 26 August to build a synagogue inside the Noble Sanctuary of Al-Aqsa, the Muslim holy site known as Al-Haram Al-Sharif. As a representation of Israel’s powerful religious Zionist class in the government and society at large, Ben-Gvir has been candid regarding his designs in occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine. He has advocated a religious war, calling for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, the starvation or execution of Palestinian prisoners and the annexation of the West Bank.
In his capacity as a minister in the equally extremist government of Benjamin Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir has worked hard to translate his language into action. He has raided Al-Aqsa Mosque repeatedly, and implemented his starvation policies against Palestinian detainees, going as far as defending rape inside Israeli military detention camps and calling the soldiers accused of such a heinous crime “our best heroes”.
Moreover, his supporters have carried out hundreds of assaults and dozens of pogroms targeting Palestinian communities in the West Bank. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, at least 670 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank since the start of the Gaza war last October. A large number among those killed and injured were victims of illegal Jewish settlers.
However, not all Israelis in the political or security establishments agree with Ben-Gvir’s behavior or tactics. For example, on 22 August, Israel’s Shin Bet chief, Ronen Bar, warned against the damage to Israel caused by Ben-Gvir’s actions in East Jerusalem.
“The damage to the State of Israel, especially now… is indescribable: global delegitimization, even among our greatest allies,” wrote Bar in a letter to several Israeli ministers.
His letter may seem odd. The Shin Bet has been instrumental in the killing of numerous Palestinians in the name of Israeli security. Bar himself is a strong supporter of the illegal settlements, and as hawkish as is required for the person who leads such a notorious organization.
Bar’s conflict with Ben-Gvir, however, is not one of substance, but style.
This conflict is only an expression of a much greater ideological and political war among Israel’s top institutions. This “Zionism vs Zionism” war, however, began before the 7 October attack and the ongoing Israeli war and genocide in Gaza.
Seven months before the start of the current war in Gaza, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said in a televised speech that, “Those who think that a real civil war… is a border we won’t cross, have no idea.”
The context of his comments was the “real, deep hate” among Israelis resulting from the attempts by Netanyahu and his extremist government coalition partners to undermine the power of the judiciary. The fight over the Supreme Court, however, was merely the tip of the iceberg. The fact that it took Israel five elections in four years to settle on a stable government in December 2022 was itself indicative of Israel’s unprecedented political conflict.
The new government may have been “stable” in terms of the parliamentary balances, but it destabilized the country on all fronts, leading to mass protests, involving the powerful, but increasingly marginalized military class.
The 7 October attack took place at a time of social and political vulnerability, arguably unprecedented since the founding of Israel atop the ruins of historic Palestine in May 1948.
The war, and especially the failure to achieve any of its objectives, deepened that existing conflict. This led to warnings from politicians and military men that the country was collapsing.
The clearest of these warnings came from Yitzhak Brik, a former top Israeli military commander. He wrote in Haaretz on 22 August that the “country… is galloping towards the edge of an abyss,” and that it “will collapse within no more than a year.”
Although Brik was, among other things, blaming Netanyahu’s losing war in Gaza, the anti-Netanyahu political class believes that the crisis lies mainly in the government itself. The solution, according to recent comments made by Herzog, is that
Kahanism needs to be removed from the government.
Kahanism refers to the Kach Party of Rabbi Meir Kahane. Although now banned, Kach has resurfaced in numerous forms, including in Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party. As a disciple of Kahane, Ben-Gvir is set to achieve the vision of the extremist rabbi: the complete ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
Ben-Gvir and his ilk are fully aware of the historic opportunity that is now available to them as they hope to ignite the much-coveted religious war. They also know that if the war in Gaza ends without advancing their main plan of colonizing the rest of the occupied territories, the opportunity may never present itself again.
The far-right Ben-Gvir’s rush to fulfil the religious Zionist agenda contradicts the traditional form of Israeli colonialism, predicated on the “incremental genocide” of Palestinians and the slow ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities from East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
The Israeli military believes that illegal settlements are essential, but they perceive these colonies in strategic language as a “security” buffer for Israel.
The winners and losers of Israel’s ideological and political war are most likely to emerge following the end of the Gaza war, the outcomes of which will determine other factors, including the very future of the state of Israel, as per the estimation of General Yitzhak Brik himself.
-Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of the Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is ‘These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons’. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC).
