How did it happen that Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s left-wing government approved construction plans for Arabs, yet opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu remained silent and MK Bezalel Smotrich didn’t seize the opportunity to remind us that United Arab List chairman Mansour Abbas controls the governing coalition? Why did Kahanist MK Itamar Ben-Gvir not move his migrating kiosk of hate to the offices of Israel’s supreme planning council for the West Bank, to protest “giving a prize to terrorism”?
No, they didn’t fall asleep while on guard duty over the Land of Israel. Right-wing activists, including Bennett, know that construction plans for Palestinians not only don’t interfere with the annexation of the West Bank, but are an inseparable part of it. Just like home demolitions are.
These minuscule construction plans for the Palestinians aren’t meant only to make it easier for the Americans to swallow a new plan to expand the settlements, or to silence the left’s representatives in the government. The policy of allowing the building of Palestinian homes in the West Bank and the policy of demolishing them both serve the same goal – putting a spoke in the possibility of Palestinian sovereignty west of the Jordan River.
You don’t believe me? Here is the explanation that then-minister Smotrich vouchsafed for his ostensibly surprising support of a July 2019 cabinet decision that approved construction of 700 homes for West Bank Palestinians (as well as 6,000 in Jewish settlements): “For the first time, Israel will use its sovereignty and responsibility for the
— source Jews For Justice For Palestinians | Akiva Eldar writes in Haaretz | 16 May 2022