Lecture Details Implications of Israeli Right Wing Government

Madar’s General Director Hunaida Ghanim reviewed the executive summary of the organization’s 2016 strategic report in an April 18 lecture organized by the Israeli Studies master’s program.Ghanem offered a comprehensive assessment of Israel’s most recent strategies, policies and demographic, structural and sociological changes after the right-wing took control of the Israeli government.Israel’s right-wing parties continue to control the composition of the government, accompanied by polarized religious camps, which poses a threat to Palestinians through its emphasis on settlements and Judaization.“Israel is taking unilateral steps to establish a Judaized state,” Ghanem warned.  “Diplomacy is not on its agenda now. The new government’s composition in terms of parties and individuals represents a determination to resume settlement and Judaization policies and a refusal to respond to the conditions necessary for a political settlement for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”Ghanem emphasized that Israel’s government is more right-wing than ever before. For example, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a coalition of right-wing, extremist and settlement-oriented parties. “Not only is the government composed of conservative parties, but also those parties have become more hard-line than ever before. All of Likud’s senior leadership, starting with Netanyahu, is on record against the idea of a sovereign Palestinian state.”She went on to say that “Since Benjamin Netanyahu’s return to power in 2009, Israel’s descent into unmasked, right-wing extremism has accelerated alarmingly. Meanwhile, a steady stream of discriminatory, anti-democratic laws targeting Palestinian citizens of Israel, and to a lesser extent Jewish-Israeli critics of Israel’s apartheid regime, have been passed.