In recent days, an established secular group called the "Secular Forum" has been preparing for the first conference aimed at establishing secular autonomy. The reason: a host of threats they foresee from the government, ultra-Orthodox and religious to their way of life, and the trigger is, of course, the incumbent government and the judicial reform program that blesses it.
But while they were discussing, planning and producing position papers, this week anyone who watched the news could see autonomous broadcasts live in northern Israel, Samaria and the Negev. Places where there is no law, there is no judge, and neither the police nor IDF forces serve as a deterrent.
Druze throw Molotov cocktails and stones during protest in the Golan | Police Spokesperson's Office
After two days of rioting in the Golan Heights, on Thursday morning Energix woke up for another day of work, certainly as far as they were concerned. The workers arrived with the tools in accordance with the backing they had received the night before from the prime minister and the minister of national security, but after a few minutes of work, police officials arrived at the scene and asked to be detained until the situation was reassessed.
Shortly after that assessment, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir himself calls the company and announces: Go back to work, but at a "low intensity." The workers in the field are not really familiar with the possibility of low-intensity work, and what is the message to criminals who riot in the field in the face of a national project, if not a loss of governance?
Planning and freedom of action
The company decided that if the prime minister and the honorable minister could not create governance without prior request, they would work on a letter in which they would clearly ask to fulfill their contract with the state and the Druze landowners in the area and to work. Not as if, not at low intensity, but with clear guidance from above that will allow them planning certainty and freedom of action. Needless to say, the riots on the ground have taken a nationalist turn with the support of neighbors on the other side of the fence in Syria, and therefore the government must create strength and deterrence, not compromise.
The project to build wind turbines in the north, photo: Michael Giladi-Ginny
Local residents and stakeholders gave the project the green light long ago. A decade ago, Druze landowners begged to be part of the project, the council owners are expected to earn millions from it, and even all the residents in the area profited from the company's 170-dunam mine clearance along the way.
The government project to develop the Golan Heights will be a precursor to another project Netanyahu has sought to take ownership of – the one promoted by Minister Orit Strzok and designed to Judaize the Galilee. If they fail against the Druze in the Golan, they will get a war in the Galilee. In the Guardian of the Walls riots that took place at the end of Netanyahu's previous term, Lapid, Gantz or Ra'am could not be blamed, even those who will come this time will point the finger at someone who has been at the helm for more than a decade.
The responsible adult(s) is found
In Samaria, after a series of murderous attacks and military surgical operations to harm terrorists, some residents of the area took the law into their own hands. They cut off electricity to the villages, riot in cars in a village that is constantly suspected of exporting terror, and act as if there is no army and no state. According to those who lead these acts of revenge, they succeed in deterrence where the government fails time and time again.
Druze protests in the north, photo: Eyal Margolin/Gini
Even if the claim is true, it is a slippery slope in the Golan Heights or Samaria where civilians will feel that they are responsible for their fate and there is no one to save them until they act themselves in a criminal rampage. And of course, how is it possible without putting here the picture of national embarrassment in the form of Bedouin soldiers lashing out at the State of Israel and receiving a light reprimand instead of a long prison term?
A senior government minister said this week that "the government creates an image of weakness and unevenness that leads to various phenomena." There is no doubt that this veteran minister was employed, to say the least, because the embarrassment is great in the Negev, Judea and Samaria, the Galilee and the Golan.
A government elected to deal with exactly these phenomena must devote days and nights to restoring governance by a functioning police force and a strong IDF, but it does not start from the bottom, it starts from the spirit of the commander and his ministers. A quarrel with Ben-Gvir in an attempt to "calm him down" does not create a united front, nor does the feeling that acute issues such as security fall between the cracks due to battles of authority. This week, the crew of the lost submarine felt their oxygen running out, which is how the citizens of Israel feel on the borders, north and south.
"Without settlement, terror flourishes." The scene of the attack in Samaria in which Meir Tamari was murdered, photo: TPS
Although Gantz is the one who wins mandates for responsible and prudent conduct, in recent weeks he seems to be narrowing his distance in Lapid's direction when he decided to freeze the talks for no proper political reason. And now, after both Karin Elharrar on the committee and Amit Bachar at the head of the bureau, there are those in the state camp party who ask to act with the courtesy of winners and demand the return of talks at the president's residence.
Those pushing for this behind the scenes are two: Gadi Eizenkot and Matan Kahane, not the flesh of the party but a late addition before elections. They seem to understand that the citizens of Israel are looking forward to July and August, asking for a little quiet and stability rather than wars, and would like to provide this precisely if they were not coveted from within by political constraints designed to please a small and small layer of professional protesters whose livelihood it is.
Populism, not leadership
Over the weekend, the coalition chairman's round was completed at the expense of members of the Knesset Members' Salary Setting Committee – a somewhat gray and highly apolitical group of officials who periodically discuss requests addressed to them regarding the conditions and wages of Knesset dwellers.
Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir at the weekly cabinet meeting,
The latter convened to discuss requests by former Knesset members from the state camp to reap a kind of retirement grant that would enable them to transition from the Knesset to civilian life without having to deal with regrets that degrade the status of Knesset members. They agreed, and the proposal submitted to Coalition Chairman and Knesset Committee Chairman Ofir Katz was quickly found at the top of the headlines as a kind of proof of corruption in times of economic distress that Katz himself stopped.
In the meantime, however, the issue was dropped from the agenda and in a week it was supposed to be put to a vote after the coalition made sure that a majority would be found to support the contemptuous resolution. The committee members are somewhat gray but not suckers, refused to have the round completed at their own expense and withdrew the proposal from the agenda.
The truth did not win, not even Knesset members, who sometimes come for short terms of office and struggle the day after. Those who represent Israel's social and geographic periphery would be expected to do justice here, but sometimes a B-12 title is worth more.
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