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The Negotiations Affairs Department has published a report on the Israeli Bennett-Lapid Government: The First 100 Days/ New Faces of Israel’s Settler Colonial Occupation and Apartheid.

A new Israeli government was sworn on 14 June, ending 12 years of Benjamin Netanyahu’s rule.  One of the most recent statements from the new PM Naftali Bennet was “I Oppose a Palestinian State”

The new administration uses the rhetoric of “shrinking the conflict” in an effort to diminish the Palestinian struggle for statehood, but they have budgeted significant amounts of money for expanding and cementing their colonial-settlement enterprise.

The main points of the briefing cover the following:

• Shrinking the conflict – this is an alternative term for Israel’s colonial-settlement policy of strengthening its control over the land and the people of Palestine while supposedly providing Palestinians with “greater freedom.”
• Anti-Palestinian incitement and racism – nothing has changed.  On 15 June 2021, the new Israeli government approved a march organized by religious Zionist extremists in occupied Jerusalem, who chanted “death to the Arabs,” “may your village burn,” and a “second Nakba is coming.” Israel’s Public Security Minister, Omer Ber Lev, authorized the march stating that “the right to demonstrate is a right in all democracies”.  The same day, Israeli occupying forces assaulted Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem for waving the Palestinian flag.
• Israel’s racist ban on Palestinian family reunifications – there are at least 65 laws that only discriminate against the Palestinian people, inside Israel, the occupied State of Palestine, and in exile, which condition all aspects of the lives of the Palestinian people, including the right to be in Palestine and form a family.  Such laws aim to guarantee Jewish supremacy in the entire territory of historic Palestine.
• The reality under the Bennett-Lapid government – In addition to raiding Palestinians’ homes, villages, and cities, the new Israeli government has continued to kill, injure, and arrest Palestinians and protect and encourage Israeli settlers to actively violate the national and human rights of the Palestinian people.  Demolitions, crop destruction or theft, religious liberties subjugated, assaults, displacement, illegal settlement expansion, restrictions on freedom of movement for Palestinians, the Gaza blockade., destruction or seizure of equipment (including EU funded structures) continue apace.

Lapid addressed the EU Foreign Affairs Council on 12 July.  In his speech, he declared:  “It is no secret that I support a two-state solution.  Unfortunately, there is no current plan for this (…) What we need to do now is make sure that no steps are taken that will prevent the possibility of peace in the future, and we need to improve the life.”

The EU and Israel have an Action Plan (due to expire in 2022) and an Association Agreement that condition relations to respect human rights and international humanitarian law: both are systematically violated by Israel. The EU has never reviewed relations based on those principles, and accordingly, its engagement with the new Israeli government is not an exception. In effect, the EU is also disregarding the recognition of the State of Palestine, the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, the two-state solution, and the implementation of signed agreements with the PLO.

This briefing makes it clear that Israel will continue to manage and strengthen the current reality of colonial-settlement occupation and apartheid, putting more obstacles and barriers to fulfilling a just and lasting peace. Instead of taking concrete measures to hold Israel accountable, several international parties have praised this government despite the solid evidence of their illegal policies against the land and the people of Palestine and their stark violation of international norms and law.

The Palestinian position has been solidly based on the principles of rules-based world order, including international law, the importance of international organizations, and the respect for UN resolutions.  Palestine will continue to seek a peacefully negotiated two-state solution, along the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as our capital.

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