opinion
Michael J. Koplow
N ow that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has
passed his budget through the Knesset, giving
him some much-desired political breathing space, his
priorities — or, at least, the priorities of his coalition
partners — are being put into action. Unsurprisingly
to anyone who is even vaguely familiar with the broad
contours of Israeli politics, those priorities are dispro-
portionately focused on hardening Israel’s presence
inside the West Bank.
Those priorities were in full view recently, when
without IDF intervention and with the tacit approval of
the Israeli government, the illegal Homesh yeshiva was
relocated from its longstanding temporary encamp-
ment to a new permanent home a few hundred
yards away. Homesh was one of the four West Bank
settlements evacuated by Israel as part of the 2005
disengagement, which stipulated that it was illegal
for Israeli civilians to be in the withdrawn territory that
sits between Jenin and Nablus. The Homesh yeshiva
has nonetheless existed on the site in tents set up on
privately owned Palestinian land for over 15 years.
The Knesset’s repeal in March of the part of the
disengagement law applying to the West Bank set
the process in motion for Israelis to legally return to
Homesh, but for the yeshiva to be legalized, it still
needed to go through the standard building approval
and permitting process.
Instead, settler leaders and activists put up prefabri-
cated structures on the part of Homesh that is located on
state land on Sunday night and early Monday morning,
affixed a mezuzah to the door, and despite the new
building’s illegal status proclaimed the start of a new
Israeli policy that starts in Homesh but would continue
through the other three evacuated settlements.
Turning a blind eye to illegal Israeli construction is
not new, either for this Israeli government or previous
Israeli governments, and this move was practically
inevitable once the disengagement law was repealed.
Yet Netanyahu’s and Defense Minister Yoav Galant’s
silent acquiescence to the Homesh yeshiva’s new
permanent digs despite overwhelming American and
European opposition is a blazingly loud statement,
driven in part by the optics tied to reversing the disen-
gagement, in part by the U.S. contention that this
violates explicit understandings dating back to the
George W. Bush administration, and in part by the fact
that most of Homesh is on private Palestinian land and
many attacks on Palestinians originate from the site.
It reflects the government’s lack of desire to do
anything beyond cosmetic distractions to reduce
14 JUNE 8, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
The water tower of the evacuated
Homesh settlement
tensions with Palestinians in the West Bank, and its
intentions to place more and more Israelis in spots
that will do the opposite while adding to Israel’s
security burden and its diplomatic headaches.
While Homesh is the tip of the iceberg, the full
iceberg can be seen by anyone willing to dive
below the surface of the government’s newly passed
budget. The coalition agreements that Likud signed
with Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism committed
to pumping more money into settlements and the
infrastructure supporting them, and the budget fulfills
those pledges.
The most obvious sign is not in the realm of settle-
ments themselves, but in the government’s transpor-
tation budget, 25% of which is dedicated to the West
Bank despite containing only 5% of Israel’s citizens.
While it is absolutely true that upgrading roads in the
West Bank benefits both Israelis and Palestinians,
particularly so for Route 60 as the main north-
south corridor in the territory that connects the large
Palestinian population centers, many of the funds are
designed to enable Israelis to bypass Palestinians.
This includes the continued construction of the
Huwara bypass road, designed to benefit residents of
four settlements containing about 8,000 people for
$220 million, along with new bypass roads between
Migron and Qalandia, a new road going to Kedumim
(Smotrich’s hometown), a new road going to Alfei
Menashe and an expanded road between Ariel and the
Tapuach junction, a frequent site of terrorist attacks.
What is notable about these projects is that they
are not in large Israeli settlements or in settle-
ments along the Green Line, but in more sparsely
populated spots deep inside the West Bank that
cause the most friction with Palestinian residents and
that are purposely placed where they are to disrupt
Palestinian contiguity and make a future negotiated
agreement maximally difficult to implement.
The budget’s vision for the West Bank is not
limited to roads. There is $107 million for the World
Zionist Organization’s Settlements Division, which is
in charge of funding rural development across Israel
and the West Bank but in the past has allocated
75% of its funding to the latter. There is $121 million
in development funds for local municipalities that
can — and almost certainly will — be used for illegal
outposts. There is $4 billion in discretionary coalition
funds, Religious Zionism’s portion of which will end
up being spent entirely in the West Bank. And this
is before getting to the regular parts of the budget
devoted to West Bank regional councils and munic-
ipalities, and the non-public security portion of the
budget that disproportionately goes to the West Bank
in light of IDF resource and troop deployments.
None of this spending points to a government that
is looking to extricate itself from much of the West
Bank, or even to preserve the (mythical and illusory)
status quo to keep open the possibility of a two-state
outcome. It points to a government that is spending
as much as it can to race toward a very different end
game, one in which Israel controls the territory forever
without any real autonomy for Palestinians, let alone
statehood or citizenship.
It is not the one-state reality that some are calling to
recognize and turn into a formal policy that moves away
from two states to give Palestinians equal rights, but
a one-state reality in line with Smotrich’s 2017 vision
outlining space for only Jewish self-determination west
of the Jordan River. It is a vision that makes a secure,
democratic, Jewish state impossible to sustain.
The self-defeating nature of pumping more money
into the West Bank to double the settler population
in the next few years, as Smotrich has outlined, is
even starker in light of Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s
remarks at a recent cabinet meeting, where he called
for appointing new Supreme Court justices who
understand why Jews “are not prepared to live with
Arabs.” If there is a better illustration of the reckless conduct
of this government’s policies, where one hand demands
to limit interaction between Jews and Arabs in mixed
cities inside of Israel while the other hand races to force
as much high-tension interaction as possible between
Jews and Arabs inside the West Bank, one will be hard
pressed to find it. Yet it is clear from the new budget that
ramping up friction, tension and ultimately violence to
hang on to every last inch of the West Bank is not only
worth the cost in this government’s eyes but a priority
of national importance. ■
Michael Koplow is Israel Policy Forum’s chief policy
officer, based in Washington, D.C. Reprinted with
permission. Photo by Pinilev / Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
The Netanyahu Government
Proclaims its Priorities
nation / world
The Sackler name was on many institutions, including this wing at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City that houses the famed
Egyptian Temple of Dendur.
Sacklers, Jewish Family Behind OxyContin, Will Pay $6B in Deal
Shielding Them from Lawsuits
The Sackler family, the Jewish billionaires whose marketing of the painkiller drug
OxyContin fueled the United States’ ongoing opioid epidemic, will receive full immu-
nity from all civil legal claims in exchange for spending up to $6 billion on addiction
treatment and prevention programs, JTA.org reported.
The decision to grant immunity by a federal appeals court panel on May 30
effectively ends the thousands of civil lawsuits that have been filed against Purdue
Pharma, the Sacklers’ company, over opioid deaths.
But it clears the way for the company to declare bankruptcy, a move considered
essential to a plan to pay out billions of dollars to help states and communities
address the opioid crisis.
The Sackler name was a regular presence in philanthropic circles until the opioid
lawsuits began building up in 2019, at which point many cultural institutions began refus-
ing the family’s donations and removing their name from buildings. The Jewish artist and
activist Nan Goldin spearheaded a grassroots movement opposing the family for years.
One notable beneficiary of the Sacklers, Tel Aviv University, has resisted pressure
to drop the Sackler name from its medical school — though the American-facing
wing of its medical school quietly removed the Sackler name from its marketing
materials last year.
arrived in the country ahead of the Celebrate Israel Parade in New York City on
June 4, where he marched as part of a delegation of Israeli government officials.
An activist movement led by Israeli expatriates who oppose the Israeli govern-
ment’s proposed weakening of the judiciary, called UnXeptable, vowed to
protest the parade delegation. A local chapter of that movement showed up at
the event in L.A. and, like the anti-government street protesters in Israel, chanted
“Shame” in Hebrew.
“I have to apologize on behalf of the minister,” Hillel Newman, the Israeli consul
general in LA, said at the event. “In the end, he decided he’s not coming. He said
that he felt that his presence here might cause more provocations of the people
outside and the protesters, and he said he didn’t want to bring a bad feeling or
bad vibes to anything associated with him and the state of Israel.”
Protester with Israeli Flag Storms Stage at Roger Waters Concert
in Frankfurt
A man rushed the stage and unfurled an Israeli flag at a Roger Waters concert
in Frankfurt on May 28 in protest of the former Pink Floyd frontman’s continued
criticism of Israel, JTA.org reported.
Video circulating on social media showed a group of fans chanting “Am Yisrael
Chai” (“The people of Israel live”) while the protester makes it to the main stage,
where he lasts a few seconds before security guards chase him away.
Since at least last week, Berlin police have been investigating Waters over a
costume he has been wearing at concerts for years that includes a long black
trench coat with a red armband. Some say the outfit is reminiscent of a Nazi officer
uniform and a glorification of the Third Reich, which is outlawed in Germany. ■
— Compiled by Andy Gotlieb
Spencer Platt/Getty Images via JTA.org
Israeli Health Ministry Calls Out Elon Musk for Sharing ‘Fake
News’ on COVID-19
Israel’s health ministry tweeted that Elon Musk was engaging with “fake news”
regarding COVID-19 data, the third Israeli government ministry to comment on the
Twitter owner’s views in recent weeks, JTA.org reported.
Musk had replied to a tweet from Zero Hedge, a far-right blog site that features
conspiracy theories and has been accused of spreading Russian propaganda. The
tweet claimed Israeli data showed “zero young healthy individuals died of COVID-
19.” The billionaire businessman wrote “Zero …”
In response, the health ministry wrote: “Elon, unfortunately this is not what the
whole data shows. fake news is dangerous. Israel Ministry of Health was asked on
chronic disease data and explained that we don’t have access to clinical records.”
Twitter added a note to the Zero Hedge tweet that noted that Israel’s health
ministry “has called this article ‘misinformation.’”
Israeli Minister Cancels LA Speech Due to Protests and ‘Bad Vibes’
An Israeli government minister canceled a speech in Los Angeles in the face of
a protest, in part over what the local Israeli consul described as “bad vibes,” JTA.
org reported.
Ofir Akunis, Israel’s science and technology minister and a member of Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, was due to speak on May 30 at an
event at BioscienceLA, a Los Angeles-area center for life science innovation. He
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