Internal Terror Beats External Territory: Israel’s Real Election Issue

It’s almost a cliché to say that Israel’s elections are won or lost on the territorial issue of the West Bank / Judea & Samaria. Not this time!

The question of Israel’s ultimate borders is still salient, but when people go to the polls their major concern is personal safety (akin to Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs”). The present Right-wing government, ostensibly a more security-minded camp than its Left-wing opponents, has failed miserably on several fronts – some of which don’t get much coverage beyond Israel (I’ll get to those in a moment).

First and foremost, of course, was the October 7 debacle. Not much need be added, other than to note that not only was this the world’s worst Jewish event since the Holocaust, but the lack of taking responsibility – even to set up a Commission of Inquiry to understand what happened and who was at fault – is a major blemish on the present government.

Second, adding insult to injury, is the government’s unwillingness to carry out the law that demands army service for all Israelis, including the ultra-Orthodox haredim. This too has internal security ramifications, given the army’s desperate need for additional manpower to protect its borders.

However, “terrorism” is not only an external problem. A third issue affecting Israel’s northern and southern areas is “protection” (aka “extortion”). Thousands of businesses – from farms to government companies! – are being extorted on a regular basis, making life highly precarious and economically impossible for many Israelis living in two-thirds of Israel’s territory. The extorters are Arabs and Jews, most working in sophisticated gangs. If someone doesn’t pay the “protection” money, one of two things happens: either their store or home will get firebombed or strafed with bullets as a “warning”, or at the least will live in constant fear that such a shoe will eventually drop.

Fourth: the Arab community is suffering from extreme violence at its own hands. The murder rate has doubled (!) under the present government, in large part because the Minister of Internal Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, an extreme right-wing firebrand, couldn’t care less what happens to Israeli Arabs, so that the police have not instituted any effective policy to deal with such mayhem among Israel’s Arabs – this despite Israel’s Arab leadership pleading for action. And as several security commentators have argued (many of them former high-level members of Israel’s internal security Shabak or the Israeli police force), it won’t be long before such violence “leaks” into Jewish towns and cities.

A fifth area of security became apparent this week: unexploded armaments lying all over Israel’s north (and presumably the south as well). Normally, the IDF makes a major effort to find and clear such munitions after a war’s end – but Israel’s Government hasn’t declared the war over, so that such a project awaits future implementation with the occasional tragic consequence. If Israelis can’t even do what they love most – trekking through their landscape – then life really becomes a matter of personal insecurity.

Sixth and finally, there’s the problem involving the “Hilltop Youth” in Judea & Samaria running amok among Palestinian farms and other outlying areas: beating up Palestinians, throwing stones at them on the roads, and even (occasionally) using live fire against Palestinians who they claim are “threatening” them.

Here the security problem is both moral and potential. “Moral” in the sense that these are law-breaking youth whom the authorities have done little to stop. A country such as Israel with one of the world’s best counterterrorism, internal security apparatuses (SHABAK), doesn’t seem able to infiltrate and stop such Jewish terrorism – or perhaps it is theoretically capable, but its hands are being tied in this matter by the government.

“Potential” because IDF and SHABAK officers, past and present, have publicly warned that such ongoing terrorism (there’s no other way of defining this) will eventually lead to another Palestinian intifada uprising. This would be a major “internal security” problem for Israelis (bus bombings, knife attacks etc.), already worn out by several years of enervating fighting on the northern and southern fronts (Lebanon and Gaza), not to mention missile barrages from Iran.

In short, for most Israelis today every other election campaign issue is peanuts compared to the overriding issue of personal security – a deep-seated worry emanating from several directions. Israel’s economy can be doing fine (the shekel is quite strong); it can have decent relations with America (although the “Hilltop Youth” rampages are fraying that relationship); the country’s military and high-tech industries can be a source of great pride and revenue. But all that means very little when the average citizen has to constantly look over their shoulder at security threats from within, from all sorts of different directions.

President Clinton won the American presidential elections in 1992 with the anti-Bush motto “It’s the Economy, Stupid!” That’s all well and good if and when voters don’t have to worry about a deeper fear – not being alive in the ensuing election. This time around Israel’s main election campaign dictum is: “It’s Personal Security, Idiot”!