As forces in the Middle East shift rapidly, both Israel’s ruling coalition and the forces governing Palestinian society are showing signs of strain.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government narrowly passed a wartime austerity budget by a 59–57 Knesset vote. A dissenting cabinet member and his fellow party members voted against it.
Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir of the ultranationalist Otzma Yehudit party had demanded that the budget include the firing of Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara on the grounds that she opposes the reform of the Supreme Court of Israel.
The government’s plan to rein in a court it sees as too liberal and unaccountable in a country without a constitution had triggered nearly a year of street protests.
Soldiers and even generals threatened not to report for reserve duty over it.
Opponents of judicial reform see the court as a bulwark against the power of extreme religious groups and a protector of gay and women’s rights.
And on the West Bank, Hamas—shattered by more than a year of war with Israel, its top leaders mostly killed—has called for an uprising, not only against Israel but against the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs the West Bank.
The PA’s security forces this month have been conducting a sweep after Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) stole authority vehicles in Jenin, a hotbed of West Bank radical activity.
Clashes have been reported between the terrorists and PA security forces, including the detonation of a car bomb near a Jenin police station.
A PIJ commander, Yazid Ja'isa, was killed on Dec. 14 when the two sides exchanged fire. The United States has reportedly asked Israel to approve a supply of weapons to the authority’s security forces.
The PA governs the West Bank, while in Gaza, Hamas—after winning a 2006 election following Israel’s 2005 withdrawal—drove out or killed members of Fatah, which controls the PA.
The current split between the PA and Hamas comes amid reports that a cease-fire deal in Gaza, including the release of Israeli hostages held there, is drawing closer.
Israeli leaders have said repeatedly that they will never allow Hamas a future role in governing Gaza.
According to reports in Israeli media, Hamas fears that once President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated, he will allow Israel to resume fighting after the first phase of the three-stage cease-fire that is now on the table.
Hamas reportedly is seeking assurances that Israel will not restart the war.
The terrorist group seeks a permanent end to the fighting and the withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from Gaza.
Israel wants a temporary pause, including the release of some of the hostages, followed by a resumption of combat to destroy Hamas’s remaining military and governing capabilities.
Trump has said there will be “hell to pay” if the hostages, including four Americans, are still being held when he returns to the White House.
The balance of power in the Middle East has continued to shift dramatically in Israel’s direction as it has destroyed most of Hamas, forced a cease-fire with Hezbollah, and struck punishing airstrike blows against Iran in retaliation for its ballistic missile attacks against Israel.
Most recently, the Assad government in Syria fell, in part because Hezbollah, an ally, could no longer defend it.
Abu Mohammed Al-Golani, head of the leading rebel group HTS, is a one-time jihadi with past ties to both ISIS and al-Qaeda.
Israelis don’t know whether to trust his shift to moderation—adopting Western dress and vowing to protect minorities—or whether it’s just a pose to legitimize the group in the eyes of the West.
Al-Golani, though, said on Dec. 16 that Syria will not be used as a launchpad for attacks against Israel.
He told The Times of London that he is committed to the 1974 agreement establishing a demilitarized zone as a buffer between Israel and Syria and that he supports the return of U.N. peacekeeping troops.
Syrian villagers who live near the border of the Golan Heights have been transferring the regime’s weapons to the IDF to be taken to Israel.
Israeli television footage showed them loading trucks with hundreds of boxes of ammunition, mortars, bombs, and grenades. IDF soldiers said they found several boxes with cheap grenades filled with chemical materials.
Ben Gvir’s defection poses problems for Netanyahu’s governing coalition. It has formally controlled 64 of the Knesset’s 120 seats. But Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party cast its six votes against the budget.
Ben Gvir’s cooperation was essential for Netanyahu to form the government after the November 2022 elections. Netanyahu created a powerful new position for Ben Gvir: national security minister.
The ruling coalition is expected to impose sanctions on Ben Gvir’s party.
Members of the parties of Ben Gvir and of his frequent ally Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich, head of the Religious Zionist Party, went at each other in a war of words.
Smotrich and his party members voted for the budget.
The Religious Zionists said Ben Gvir’s party is choosing “to play childish politics and oppose the national budget and threaten to topple a right-wing government just before Trump.”
Otzma Yehudit derided Smotrich as “the attorney general’s lifesaver” and said that “the coalition leaders are succumbing to him.”
Ben Gvir labeled Smotrich “a man who talks right outside the room, but in reality, saves the attorney general from being fired, stops the judicial reform, and saves the Palestinian Authority from economic collapse.”
Smotrich accused Ben Gvir and his party of “[having] completely lost their way.” They jeopardized “a historic opportunity for the future of settlement in Judea and Samaria and the State of Israel with a Trump government looming,” he said.
A senior member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, symbolically banging the feuding leaders’ heads together, told Israeli television that they’re jeopardizing the government.
“The prime minister needs to put the two of them in their place. It’s a shameful display on their part,” he said.
Smotrich’s base consists of Jews who live in Judea and Samaria, as many Israelis refer to the West Bank to emphasize the Jewish historical claim to it and the right to settle there.
He has pushed the coalition to invest heavily in new roads and construction in recent years, earmarking more land for future Israeli development.
The $169 billion budget contains about $11 billion in tax hikes and spending cuts to try to rein in a budget deficit running at 8.5 percent of GDP.
The budget grants about $30 billion for defense, $26 billion for education, and $17 billion for health.
