Afrasianet - Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said he would do everything in his power to allow a former Israeli prisoner to participate in the execution of Palestinian prisoners himself, adding that seeing the hangings and executions of a Palestinian "one after another" is one of his "biggest dreams." crushing them in Beirut."
Between the rhetoric of hanging, the celebration of the suffering of Palestinian prisoners, and the desire to crush the Lebanese, Ben-Gvir effectively expresses the political structure of the Israeli regime.
The structures of Israeli institutions are integrated to "interpret the dreams" of Ben-Gvir and his partners in practice, starting with the government's proposals for draft laws for the Jewish state, the expansion of settlements, and executions, through the enactment of these laws through the Knesset, and their implementation through the military judiciary, the army, the security services, and prisons, following up on planning policies and settlement and demolition decisions to produce a life of varying value in which Palestinians become Through this winding path since its establishment against the backdrop of World War II.
Israel has reached what can be called "genocidal democracy" in a system that combines electoral mechanisms, parliament, courts and the press, but which is employed, through these "democratic" institutions themselves, to legitimize the exclusion of an entire human community, existing on its land, before the emergence of this "democracy", thus stripping human beings of the rights that democracy is supposed to be Democracy, according to the literature of political science, does not count at the ballot box, which dictatorial regimes have made a great mockery.
Democracy is measured by the law that is supposed to apply equally to all those under its authority, so that the minority is protected from the tyranny of the majority.
It is also measured by the ability of the judiciary to constrain the powers of politicians and the military. In the face of the settlers attacking them, the Palestinians try to preserve their land, homes and property that are supposed to be protected by law, but what happens is that the settler enjoys civil rights and is tried before Israeli courts, while the Palestinian is subject to military courts.
In East Jerusalem, permitting, planning, and demolition systems are becoming tools for demographically and politically re-engineering the place.
In Gaza, the violence takes on a purely genocidal form: widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure, repeated displacement, starvation, and the collapse of health, education, and living conditions itself. Israel wields overwhelming military force in Gaza, while in the West Bank it does so through the expansion of settlements, the confiscation of land, and the entrenchment of legal and geographical segregation.
In East Jerusalem, Palestinians are forced to demolish their home with their own hands, or face demolition costs and fines if the municipality does the job.
In prisons, suffering and deprivation are redefined as legitimate Israeli policies, in addition to being a source of boasting about these achievements, and at the legislative level, the language of revenge is translated into laws, so the question is no longer who transgresses the law, but the law itself becomes a means of determining who deserves protection and who can be subjected to what Jewish Israelis should not be subjected to.
The truth is that these Israeli "achievements" are not due to Ben-Gvir, Benjamin Netanyahu, Bezalel Smotrich and their partners in the government of generalized terror, but rather to a "natural development" of a non-existent entity Natural.
For decades, Israel has promoted the claim that it is "the only democracy in the Middle East," a statement that ignores a fundamental question: Democracy for whom?
The authority that considers the indigenous people of the land to be a class of human beings who can be subjected to administrative detention, restricted movement, confiscated their land, demolished their homes, and subjected to martial law, cannot fail to "evolve" spontaneously so that genocide becomes the central political culture of the "democratic" state of Israel.
The Religious Zionist Movement Plays the Al-Aqsa Mosque Card in the Elections
Prof. Abdullah Maarouf , a Palestinian writer and director of the Center for Jerusalem Studies at Istanbul University, writes:
It is not strange that the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque is on the list of topics on the agenda of the Israeli elections, especially in the agendas of the extreme right. This is because the religious Zionist leaders consider this file to be an internal winning file, and at the same time not very costly at the Palestinian level, according to their estimates.
This is a point that has unfortunately been clearly demonstrated recently in many statements by the leaders and rabbis of the religious Zionist movement, who boast of their ability to change the status quo in Al-Aqsa without "the resurrection taking place," as they mock in their media statements.
Once again, the Al-Aqsa Mosque is back in the forefront and will become one of the files of the Israeli elections in late October for the right-wing movements, especially the religious Zionist movement.
It should be recalled here that the Religious Zionist movement is not generally represented by a single party, although the largest party represented by this current is the "Religious Zionism" party headed by Bezalel Smotrich, which is a cross-party movement, with a large number of followers in the ruling Likud party today.
This is due to the fact that the followers of this current began to enter Israeli political life through their infiltration into the Likud Party, before they set out to establish their own parties, such as the Religious Zionism Party led by Smotrich, the Jewish Greatness Party led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Identity Party led by Moshe Feiglin, and other parties.
Despite the clear difference in the question of the limits of dealing with the issue of storming the Al-Aqsa Mosque, where Ben-Gvir and Feiglin storm it, while Smotrich has reservations about storming it in compliance with the fatwa of the official rabbinate of Israel, which prohibits it, what all members of this movement agree on is the need to change the status quo in Al-Aqsa and withdraw it completely from the Islamic administration, abolish the Islamic Endowments Department once and for all, and impose full Israeli sovereignty and administration on the mosque.
Hence, it was natural to involve Al-Aqsa in the heat of the upcoming Israeli elections through electoral propaganda from the heart of the mosque, as did the extreme right-wing activist Smadar Hila Shmueli, a candidate for the Likud Party's primary elections for women, who stormed the mosque on August 10 and published her picture in the eastern part of the mosque, which the settlers now treat as a real Jewish synagogue inside the mosque.
Thus, Shmueli launched her election campaign from the heart of the mosque, knowing that she had applied to run on the Likud party list, and not on one of the lists of religious Zionist parties.
"The Al-Aqsa Mosque is now at the heart of the Israeli political process. Treating it as an electoral file has become practical, not just electoral political theses"
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In addition, the storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque by prominent figures, headed by Rabbi Yehuda Glick, on August 13, on the occasion of the beginning of the Hebrew month, comes within the same context, and we should not forget here that although Glick has not yet put himself on a specific list in the elections and there are no indications that he is running for the Knesset yet, he has already presented himself in 2020 as a candidate for the presidency of the state.
Therefore, his leadership of a broad incursion that day came in the context of preparations for the upcoming Knesset elections, if not for his own sake, in order to strengthen what Glick will present to the Israeli public from the competing Israeli currents and parties, specifically the religious Zionist movement.
On the sidelines here, it is clear that the Religious Zionist movement still insists on remaining within a multi-party coalition, as well as within the Likud Party, and is even trying to strengthen its influence within the party.
This is understandable given that Israeli polls still give Likud the largest size among Israel's right-wing parties. Some polls even suggested that some religious Zionist parties may not be able to cross the Knesset threshold in the first place, led by the Identity Party and the Religious Zionist Party itself.
Perhaps this is what makes Ben-Gvir consider himself the legitimate and only representative of the religious Zionist movement in the future, if he manages to win the majority of the votes that will go to the religious Zionist parties instead of the Likud.
When Itamar Ben-Gvir's name is mentioned and the elections are mentioned, the Al-Aqsa Mosque is certainly at the forefront, because Ben-Gvir used to making important statements during his storming of it, which we expect in the coming period, especially with the approach of the long date of the incursions next month and the following October, where they witness the so-called "Hebrew New Year," the "Yom Kippur" and the "Umbrella-Sukkot Festival," which ends with the Hebrew anniversary of the events of October 7, all before the start of the Israeli elections.
Therefore, it is natural to witness the incursions of Ben Gvir and the poles of the religious Zionist movement into Al-Aqsa in the near future.
"Official institutions should know that we are no longer in a position to "warn" against compromising the status quo at Al-Aqsa Mosque, nor to work to "preserve" the status quo there. This is simply because the status quo no longer exists on the ground"
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The Al-Aqsa Mosque is now at the heart of the Israeli political process. Treating it as an electoral file is practical, not just electoral political theses. Extremist Temple groups and settlers who follow the religious Zionist movement are no longer convinced by promises regarding the mosque, and are waiting for someone to offer them practical solutions to control and manage the mosque.
This is the file in which Ben-Gvir excels, and we must admit that he has been able to achieve for the settlers what others have not been able to achieve so far.
It was Ben-Gvir who officially allowed the settlers to pray in public inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and he ordered his police to completely cut off from dealing with the Islamic Endowments Department in Jerusalem unless it submitted to the new situation he wants to impose, which puts the supreme authority in the mosque in the hands of the occupation police and not the Awqaf Department.
It was Ben-Gvir who ordered the erection of the temporary canopy in the eastern area of the mosque during the so-called "Temple Destruction Memorial" raids last July.
It is Ben-Gvir who is thus offering the settlers "hope" for the construction of a synagogue inside the mosque and the official abolition of the role of the Islamic Endowments Department within the next year, as happened at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.
In this regard, it should be noted that Arab and Islamic reactions to these actions continue to point to a real loss of compass, and a lack of proper appreciation of the magnitude of what is happening at Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Although the meeting of foreign ministers in Jordan resulted in some practical measures that went beyond our usual statements of condemnation, condemnation and denunciation: such as the establishment of a media platform to document Israeli violations of the holy sites and worshippers, and the launch of an international diplomatic campaign to oblige Israel, as the occupying Power, to respect the historical and legal status quo in Jerusalem and its holy sites, the magnitude of what is happening in the mosque actually goes far beyond this.
The problem in the mosque is not its absence from the media – while emphasizing the importance of the role of the media in this battle – and the limitation of diplomatic efforts does not go beyond the corridors of international organizations, which Israel has no qualms about declaring that it does not recognize in the first place – as happened with UNRWA and the International Criminal Court.
Official institutions should know that we are no longer in a position to "warn" against compromising the status quo at Al-Aqsa Mosque, nor to work to "preserve" the status quo there. This is simply because the status quo no longer exists on the ground.
So we have moved beyond prevention to cure. We must now work to "restore" the status quo that Israel has completely changed. This title – the restoration of the status quo – has political, diplomatic, and popular tools that are very different from the title of "preserving" the status quo.
"When Itamar Ben-Gvir's name is mentioned and the elections are mentioned, Al-Aqsa Mosque is definitely at the forefront, because Ben-Gvir used to make his important statements during his storming of it, which we expect in the coming period"
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As part of the election campaign, a few days ago, a video clip of Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, the rabbi of the city of Safed and one of the ideologues of the religious Zionist movement, went viral, in which he mocked the idea of fear of Islamic reactions to any action at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, saying: "Last week I had the Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, and he said to me: 'All these threats are just empty and worthless talk, here they [the settlers] are going up to the place, prostrating and praying, what happened?
There is no First World War, no Second World War, nothing," and Ben-Gvir even told me, "We will now add buildings and umbrellas there," and all this preparation for a synagogue, and the synagogue is a prelude to the construction of the Temple, and these are the plans of the Israeli government.
Therefore, the matter is clear, and this statement, despite its ridicule, indicates three issues: First, the strong presence of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the electoral discourse of the religious Zionist movement, especially among its clerics, and therefore it is inconceivable that the members of this movement will abandon this trump card to mobilize their extreme right-wing audience.
Second, the Israeli government itself has a clear and explicit project to establish a synagogue in the mosque that is a prelude to taking full control of it and building its alleged temple, and has no intention of going back to the Al-Aqsa Mosque unless it is forced to do so. Third, the key to the solution lies in the words of Rabbi Eliyahu and Minister Ben-Gvir himself, as what encourages them to advance in the mosque and use it as an election card is the absence of fear of paying a heavy price.
If the Israeli government fears that the price of what it is doing at Al-Aqsa Mosque is too high to bear, it will not hesitate for a moment to stop and retreat, as confirmed by the facts of the last ten years.
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