The Israeli right lives in la-la land

The Israeli right lives in la-la land, and I don’t mean Los Angeles. I mean that they are detached from reality.

Yair Netanyahu, son of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wrote after the election of October 27 that, “these elections proved that the greatest danger to the survival of the State of Israel, aside from the Iranian nuclear program, is what is called ‘Israeli Arabs.'”

This is consistent with the Likud party’s extreme reaction to the election of 19 MKs from the two Arab parties. They claimed that, “The elections in Israel were stolen by Arab parties that support terror and the elimination of the Jewish state through serious criminal offenses of bribery, threats, violence, forgeries and the use of illegal software to mobilize voters”.

The Israeli right seems to have difficulty accepting the democratic rights of Israeli Arabs, which is unfortunate, but I also understand their concern.

The closer Arab parties come to power, the more Israel’s Jewish character is likely to be watered down. They may demand concessions to the Palestinians or even to Iran. They may demand that the Jewish right of return be eliminated. They may demand that Palestinians be allowed to migrate to Israel.

These are understandable concerns, even if we ignore the existence of anti-Arab racism, at least on the extreme right.

But then, how does one explain that the right also wants to annex the West Bank and perhaps even Gaza?

Do they not understand that the percentage of Arabs in Israel would increase from 21% to 30%, 40%, 50%, or more? By what miracle do they think that Israel would remain Jewish?

The Israeli right has suspended reality with regards to this issue. Logic is no longer relevant.

They get very defensive when challenged, and they go into a long dissertation about Jewish history in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), Gaza, and beyond.

When asked how that helps alleviate the risk of Israeli Arabs, they get flustered and throw a whole bunch of ideas in the hope that something will stick:

• “Arabs will be taught to respect the Jewish nature of Israel”. No explanation as to why that has not happened yet with Israeli Arabs who have already lived under Israel’s education system for 78 years.
• “Palestinians will be encouraged to leave”. No recognition of the fact that the Palestinians who wanted to leave have already left and that some would likely want to come back.
• “Palestinians will have self-determination in their own small cantons and will therefore not need Israeli citizenship”. No recognition of the fact that this would be totally unworkable leading to endless war since the Palestinians would never accept it as a permanent solution.
• “Anything could happen, and Israel shouldn’t tie itself down to a two-state solution”. No explanation as to which solution is less unrealistic than two states.

I understand the reluctance to jump into two states at the present time. Even the most left-wing party in Israel, the Democrats, do not propose a two-state solution immediately but in the long term.

The Democrats seem to be the most realistic of all Israeli parties on this issue because the reality is that there is no long-term alternative to two states other than endless war.

The Israeli right, however, at least under the outgoing Netanyahu government that included the extreme right, has been aggressively settling the West Bank. The year 2025 was a record year for settlements expansion in the West Bank.

The Israeli right is running towards an abyss without any idea how to avoid it when they get to it. They seem to not understand that tweets denouncing Israeli Arabs will not suffice.

Once Israeli Arabs are able to get into the government in a meaningful way, Israel will start changing. It will probably change for the better in some ways, but it will almost certainly change for the worse in other ways. The right will not like it, but by then it will be too late to stop it. They will always be able to go the route of a civil war like Lebanon did. As someone who lived through that war, I do not recommend it, and it is guaranteed to solve nothing.

The time to prevent this nightmare scenario is now. The Democrats and their leader Yair Golan understand it. Why is everyone else sleepwalking?