Israel is hurtling into the political abyss

By Aida Touma-Sliman & Loren Balhorn

Published 30 November, 2024

Since 7 October 2023, the lives not only of Israelis and Palestinians, but indeed of everyone living in the region have been radically transformed for the worst. The brutal war in Gaza, now expanding into Lebanon, threatens to mutate into a forever war, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right government stake their political survival on defeating Israel’s mortal enemies and annexing as much Palestinian territory as they can.

Meanwhile, back in Israel proper, the revanchist mood shows no signs of abating. Israel’s Palestinian population is subjected to blanket suspicion and surveillance, while the marginalized political Left, Jewish and Arab alike, is the target of government repression and right-ring harassment. Hope for a better future is in increasingly short supply.

Nevertheless, the struggle for a peaceful, democratic future for all people living between the river and the sea continues, and one of its leading figures is Aida Touma-Sliman, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and Member of the Knesset (MK) for the socialist coalition, Hadash, founded by the Communist Party of Israel. Last week, while visiting the European Parliament on the invitation of the Portuguese Communist Party, she sat down with Loren Balhorn to discuss the escalating repression against Palestinians in Israel, Netanyahu’s plans for territorial conquest, and the shrinking space for left-wing forces in the country.

As a Palestinian citizen of Israel, you have been very vocal about the discrimination and inequality facing your community in the past, even referring to Israel’s 2018 Nation-State Law as an “apartheid law”. How have things changed since 7 October?

We always knew that we did not enjoy equal rights in Israel, but we had never experienced what we’ve faced in the last year. Harsh persecution of Palestinian citizens began right after 7 October. Many were arrested for things like posting verses from the Quran on Facebook or other social media. I often tell the story of a 70-year-old man from the Negev who wrote “Good morning” at 7:45 on 7 October, and was arrested a few days later. Not even Netanyahu knew what was going on that early in the day, but they arrested someone for waking up and posting “Good morning”!

Many students were expelled from universities, and many artists’ lives were turned into a living hell because they were suspected of supporting the 7 October attacks. The Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, published photos of the arrested blindfolded in front of an Israeli flag, and accused them of being Hamas supporters. Almost none of them were ultimately prosecuted, but it didn’t matter — their reputations were already ruined.

Of course, we were all in a state of shock after the attacks, and we understood that there would be a reaction from the Israeli side. When we began to understand that the reaction would be total war, even a genocidal war, we wanted to demonstrate — not in support of what happened on 7 October, but for peace and a political solution. But the Israeli government used local police forces to practically forbid all protests for two or three weeks. When the leadership of the Palestinian community tried to hold a vigil in Nazareth holding up a banner saying “Stop the war!”, many of them were arrested, including Muhammad Barakeh, the chairman of the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, and some former MKs.

On top all that, public incitement against Palestinians as a community has become normalized. It’s common for MKs to say we are all Hamas supporters, we are all terrorists. The threatening phone calls and harassment on the street has all gotten worse. When you take into consideration that Ben-Gvir, that fascist, distributed over 100,000 firearm licenses and thousands of guns to pro-government Jewish civilians, you can imagine what kind of danger we face.

Before we began the interview, you said that you no longer walk the streets alone?

No, I don’t, and it’s not like I’m hallucinating — there are serious threats to my life. But it’s not only me. In all public spaces, there are now male Jewish civilians carrying guns on them, and as a Palestinian you are always a suspect. This is the atmosphere.

The change is also reflected in legislation. A bill is now being brought before the Knesset that will allow the government to ban individuals and entire lists from competing in elections. I’m pretty sure they aren’t doing this to stop Ben-Gvir from running for re-election — the law is designed to target Palestinians and the Left. The fascist right wing in Israel — which, to me, includes Likud — knows that Arabs and left-wing Jews are the key to changing the balance of forces, and they want to wipe us off the political map.

Surely, none of the things you describe would have been possible without the attack on 7 October. As a Communist who, for decades, had fought for a different outcome to the Israel-Palestine conflict, did the ferocity of Hamas’s actions on that day surprise you? How can there be a “political solution” to that kind of violence?

I would like to tackle your question from a different angle. We are speaking on 13 November 2024, a little over one year and a month since 7 October, and yet we are still asked to go back to that date as if that was the beginning of this conflict. I’m not seeking to diminish what happened on 7 October — it was a horrible, horrible attack and loss of life. But what about the 43,000 Gazans, 70 percent of whom are women and children, killed since? As a Communist, as a human being, I cannot tolerate what happened on that day. I refuse to accept that killing is a solution to anything. But it has to be seen in a context of continuous occupation and oppression.

How can there be a political solution? Well, there was a political solution after World War II, which was much more horrible than what happened on 7 October. I’m not only speaking about the Holocaust — the whole world suffered under Nazism, and yet, the only way for the Russian people, the Jewish people, and the German people to continue on with their lives was to find a political solution. That’s why I continue to believe that war will not solve anything.

The war isn’t defending anything, except for Israel’s right to launch more wars. We are now over one year into the current war, and I’m sitting here in Brussels worrying about my daughters and granddaughters back in Acre, because there are rockets incoming every day. At least they have an alarm system and an air-raid shelter to go to — the children in Lebanon and Palestine have neither of those things.

Prior to the Hamas attack, Netanyahu’s government seemed to have given up on any permanent solution, instead preferring to “manage” the occupation and wear down the Palestinians bit by bit, making an independent Palestinian state impossible. Since the war started, he seems to have decided on his own political solution. namely, ethnic cleansing in Gaza and annexation of the West Bank.

You have to understand that this was the plan from the beginning — 7 October just gave Netanyahu and his far-right government the pretext to implement it. If you look at the coalition agreement establishing the current government, they were already talking about annexation of the West Bank back then. They cancelled the law that authorized the disengagement plan in 2005, which applied to Gaza as well as part of the northern West Bank. This enabled them to intensify efforts on the ground to resettle the evacuated area, which was supposed to be part of the land controlled by the Palestinian Authority, alongside a settlement push throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

If you look at Smotrich’s plan for a Greater Israel, he basically says Israel will expand to encompass the West Bank and Gaza or even further. That’s why he insisted on becoming a Minister in the Ministry of Defence, in charge of civilian life in the West Bank. According to Smotrich’s “Decisive Plan”, the Palestinians have three options: they can stay in the Jewish state and accept their status as second- or even third-class citizens, they can leave, or they can die at the hands of the Israeli army. He calls his ethnic cleansing plans a “voluntary transfer” of the Palestinian population.

It sounds a lot like how the Bush Administration used the 9/11 attacks as a pretext to invade Iraq.

Exactly. The plans already existed, but now they have an excuse, because everyone is saying “Israel has a right to defend itself”, everybody believes that Israel is in existential danger. Netanyahu took his failure to protect the people of Israel, he took all of the fear and agony that came after 7 October, and turned it into an opportunity to boost his own political career.

You were suspended from the Knesset last year for suggesting that Israel was committing war crimes in Gaza. Just a few days ago, your colleague Ofer Cassif, another Hadash MK, was suspended for a social media post in which he described Palestinians resisting settler violence in Jenin as “freedom fighters”. This comes on top of growing restrictions on freedom of the press, expression, etc. To what extent can Israel still be considered a liberal democracy?

Well, I never believed that Israel was a full democracy. Especially after the 2018 Nation-State Law, Israel resembled something more like an “ethno-democracy”: democratic for Jews, but not for Arabs. Now, however, it’s increasingly discriminating against Jews as well. It’s becoming a fascist regime.

That’s a pretty strong statement. What do you mean by that exactly?

Look at what is happening to Jewish leftists in Israel today, Jews who are against the occupation and the war. They are publically vilified and treated in an undemocratic way. Lots of legislation is now being passed very quickly that undermines human rights and restricts civil rights. Far-right politicians and their supporters are restructuring the state and the judiciary, Ben-Gvir is turning the Israeli police into his own political militia.

At the same time, many so-called liberals — people with whom we demonstrated together before 7 October — are, if not supportive, then at least accepting of it. I implore Israeli society to look closer at what this means for the future: they might use these laws against Palestinians and the Left first, but later on, they will come for you, too.

You mentioned the pro-democracy movement prior to 7 October, but we also saw big demonstrations against the war in recent months. Now, particularly after Netanyahu expanded the war into Lebanon, his poll numbers are recovering. What does this tell us about the popular mood in Israel?

First of all, the demonstrations we saw on Israel’s streets weren’t actually against the war. The Israeli public was generally very supportive of the war in Gaza, but many people believed that we needed a ceasefire to free the hostages, because they understood that Netanyahu was never going to sign an agreement with Hamas. A large part of those demonstrating were basically saying, “Agree to a ceasefire, get the hostages back, and then do whatever you want.” It wasn’t a principled anti-war movement in that sense.

The reflex for the majority of Israelis is to support their side in war. Throughout the many wars we have experienced, we [Hadash and the Arab parties] are usually the only ones to oppose it at first. Then, after a few weeks, [left-liberal party] Meretz joins us. But Meretz, of course, doesn’t exist anymore.

Because of what happened on 7 October, support for the war was overwhelming at first. Then people began to get tired, feeling that it hadn’t brought the desired results. Now that Netanyahu has started the war on Lebanon, people think maybe we can eliminate Hezbollah and allow the people from the North to return to their homes. It’s as if they learned nothing from the last twelve months: you cannot eliminate either Hezbollah or Hamas militarily, they will always be there.

But to tell you the truth, Israeli society also needed this war to regain a sense of pride. After 7 October, many Israelis lost their national pride, their feeling that we are a powerful nation, the only real power in the Middle East. The war gives them the feeling that yes, we are able to control the situation, and yes, we are capable of defeating Hamas and Hezbollah.

Do you think Israel is more afraid of Hezbollah than Hamas?

Of course, Hezbollah is much more powerful. Hamas was under siege in Gaza for years, Hezbollah is freer to act, import weaponry, etc. We can see that in the rockets they are using to attack Israel right now — it shows that Hezbollah is still very capable and still has a lot of power.

That said, I reject armed escalation from either side, because that will just push the other side to do the same. Then you get more rockets, more guns, more death. The only way out of this predicament is a political agreement. But any agreement would threaten Netanyahu’s position. He wants a chaotic situation, because that’s the kind of environment he can survive in. Really, it’s a war for Netanyahu’s political survival as much as it is for his vision of a Greater Israel.

What do you make of the collapsed peace talks and Qatar’s announcement that it asked Hamas to leave its territory?

I’m not the person to speak about what Hamas wants, because I hear about what Hamas wants the same way you do: from the news. Qatar has always played this mediating role, because the US wants them to, and because they need someone to do it, of course. That means there is more pressure on Hamas to reach an agreement. But I think Hamas’s people are basically with their backs to the wall. They can’t ask for anything except for an end to the war.

What do the levels of support for the war and the ongoing repression of the Left mean for socialist strategy going forward? As a Palestinian Communist in Israel, do you believe there is still space to build alliances between Jewish and Arab workers, and to unite people on a class basis?

First of all, you have to remember that I am a Member of the Knesset. Therefore, my role is to be in touch with the wider society. I cannot afford to be the most radical person in the movement. That said, the space for building broad-based alliances in Israel is shrinking all the time — there are fewer and fewer people who are willing to cooperate. Many of the people who are demonstrating for democracy in Israel right now refuse to work with us.

Nevertheless, there is still a minority among the Jewish Israeli population that has not changed its position in terms of the occupation and colonization of the Palestinian people, people who truly believe that Israel has to be a state with equal rights for all of its citizens. Those are the people with whom we, as Palestinians in Israel, are fighting side-by-side against the war and against the occupation.

There are many Palestinians with whom I agree on the need to stop the war and end the occupation, but who have lots of right-wing ideas that I do not share at all. If I can maintain relations with them, then I can surely maintain relations with my Jewish comrades who are willing to put themselves in danger to defend Palestinians’ human rights. Still: we are a small group, and we are much smaller than before. We need support from the international Left now more than ever.

What would that international support look like?

You know, in the past, we used to invite people from abroad to come visit us in Israel, to show them the inequality and the oppression. But now, we tell them to stay where they are and struggle there. The best solidarity action the international Left can take is to put more pressure on their own governments to stop supporting the Israeli government, to make them understand that Israel is acting against the best interests not only of its own people, but of everyone in the region.