Episode Notes:

Joining us today to discuss escalating violence in the West Bank is Gabi Mitchell, Gabi is the director of undergraduate studies at the University of Notre Dame at Tantur and a policy fellow at the Mitvim Institute.

[:36] Escalation

[3:25] Israeli Response

[5:56] Palestinian Response

[8:45] What's next?

[11:11] U.S. role

[13:14] Domestic Israeli protests

Episode Transcript

Nicholas Danforth: My name is Nicholas Danforth, and I'm an editor at War on the Rocks. You are listening to “The WarCast,” the members-only podcast for what you need to know now. Joining us today to discuss escalating violence in the West Bank is Gabi Mitchell. Gabi is the director of undergraduate studies at the University of Notre Dame at Tantur and a policy fellow at the Mitvim Institute. Welcome back to “The WarCast.”

Gabi Mitchell: Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. 

Nicholas Danforth: Talk us through what's been happening in the West Bank over the past week. 

Gabi Mitchell: So, what we've seen in the last week is essentially an escalation of trends that have been taking place for the better part of a year now, escalated violence between Palestinians and Israeli security personnel, and an escalation of violence between Israeli settlers and Palestinians. And this has kind of fomented at its greatest peak over the last week, in large part due to two factors: One, the violence has become more intense and has triggered more retaliation by both parties. And in addition to that, you also have a kind of power vacuum taking place within the existing Israeli government, where several key positions are being held by leaders and representatives of the settler community who have essentially either endorsed or turned a blind eye to retaliatory behavior. And so there was an attack that took place outside of an Israeli settlement where two individuals were killed. The response, which is something that we haven't seen really in a very long time, was a group of Israeli settlers entering a Palestinian city, Hawara; lighting multiple locations within that city space on fire; damaging property; targeting and threatening people. This kind of triggered a serious backlash, both within the Israeli media, the Israeli general public, and within the Israeli government itself, that found itself in a position where just hours earlier it was reaching agreements with the Palestinian Authority to resume security cooperation that had had essentially fallen apart in the last couple of months, to then say, “Well, we actually aren't in charge and responsible over our citizens. And our response to Palestinian acts of violence is being executed by our military in one way, but our military is not responding the same way to our own citizens and our own civilians who are taking matters into their own hands.” So it's a very difficult situation for the Israeli government to be in. They've come under a tremendous amount of both domestic and international criticism for what's kind of taken place, which was effectively, you know, it's been called “the pogrom,” “a riot,” or even an “act of terror,” by different Israeli politicians across the political spectrum. 

Nicholas Danforth: So then how is the Israeli government likely to try to respond, both in its relations with the PA and its relations with members of its own coalition in the settler movement? 

Gabi Mitchell: So one of the first things that we've kind of seen in is in the last 48 hours, there have been several, call it deputy ministers, secondary ministers who have stepped down from their positions, whether it was in response to the government's kind of formal rebuke of these actions or not is secondary. The important thing is that the government in and of itself, which is a relatively narrow government — a right-wing government, a very right-wing government — but still only has a very slim narrow majority, is internally not super cohesive. So there's internal issues within that government coalition. So the first thing that I imagine that we'll see is the senior ministers within the coalition, trying to get their ducks in a row, trying to present a united front, both towards the PA, also towards the settler community, which is a very heterogeneous community. The overwhelming majority of these people are non-violent or not engaged in this kind of behavior. But you know, how to address and approach acts by Israeli civilians targeting Palestinians — just the same way that they're gonna have to kind of reapproach their security strategy over which, you know, there've been multiple deaths in recent weeks, uh, at the hands of Palestinians, whether those be Palestinians in the West Bank or Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, et cetera, right? And so the government needs to get its act in order. And I assume that the first thing the government is gonna try to do is to do that. But that is a very difficult task because in addition to the challenges that it's facing vis-à-vis Israeli-Palestinian relations, you've had now for the last eight and a half — closing in on nine — weeks mass protests by Jewish Israeli citizens against the government and against government policies that have nothing to do with the West Bank or Israeli-Palestinian relations. And so it's caught in between this kind of domestic security issue and domestic political issues. 

Nicholas Danforth: I want to get to political protests later, but first, how has the PA responded to this and how does this affect the PA's own efforts to maintain control in the West Bank? 

Gabi Mitchell: Well, as I had mentioned earlier, the PA and Israel had essentially suspended security cooperation for several months. There was an effort, an international effort, to bring the parties back together, and they met in Aqaba earlier this week in order to resume that security cooperation. You know, Palestinian Authority security forces are an essential and core part to reducing hostilities on both sides and ensuring that some degree of a status quo — and I know that that's a very loaded term — but some kind of a security status quo is established. So I think that from a Palestinian Authority perspective, one of the key things will be demonstrating their commitment to the terms in Aqaba, especially after there was an incident in which Israelis were a little bit more ambivalent about that. One of the interesting things that happened the evening of the attack in Hawara was that there were Palestinians who themselves wanted to return and react towards this Israeli act of violence. And the first place that they targeted was Joseph's Tomb, which is located in the city of Nablus, which is in the West Bank. And the Palestinian Authority security forces prevented the crowds from targeting that site, which has been targeted in the past and is generally targeted because it is a holy space for Jews, in addition to being a holy space for Muslims. But they oftentimes target that site because they know it's sensitive, in particular, for religious Jews and Israelis. So the Palestinian Authority security forces did their part, right? And so I think that the Palestinian Authority is going to try to demonstrate a degree of goodwill while also turning towards the international community and saying, “You have to hold Israel accountable.” Right? Which is a very nuanced line to walk. And of course, Israeli officials will be very critical of the Palestinian Authority —  justifiably so, because, you know, for all that the Palestinian Authority is able to do in order to curtail violence, we're talking about a lot of violence that is very disorganized. It's a single individual taking matters into their own hands. Uh, it isn't the kind of organized type of violence that we've experienced both during the First and Second Intifadas. 

Nicholas Danforth: That seems to be the nightmare scenario that people are worried about, where simultaneously the Israeli government either doesn't have the capacity or the will to prevent vigilante justice by settlers. At the same time, the Palestinian Authority loses its ability to prevent the kind of retaliatory actions you're talking about on the part of individual Palestinian actors. How realistic is that? How does that play out? 

Gabi Mitchell: This is something that's been predicted by experts in this space for the better part of a decade. And so for most people who've been observing what's been taking place and the kind of metastasization of this status-quo policy between Israelis and Palestinians, this is not a surprise. This is kind of a very worrying trend towards something much worse, right? Because there's neither an Israeli party nor a Palestinian party that has the capacity — or, it seems, the interest — to engage in any kind of movement towards, whether it be a two-state solution or any kind of solution, right? And so the on-the-ground realities, just by nature of natural growth, are dictating a different set of engagements, both between Israelis and Palestinians, in particular in the West Bank and in Jerusalem, but also a different set of security considerations that the Israeli military in particular needs to take into consideration in order to govern those spaces. So no matter what, we're heading towards some very deep, existential questions about what the future of this kind of relationship and dynamic is going to look like. And if the last couple of weeks are any indication, we're going to see more violence before it's over, and that seeping sense of just a lack of control and a lack of even-handedness in the face of violent actions, regardless of who it's committed by. But this is something that isn't surprising for people who have been observing what's been happening on the ground. 

Nicholas Danforth: Very briefly, how has the Biden administration been handling all of this? 

Gabi Mitchell: So, the Biden administration, once again, has been trying to thread a needle between supporting Israel, supporting Israel's right to protect itself, self-defense, while also being very open in its criticism of just this government's lack of coherent policies — this government's lack of a clear pathway towards engagement either with the Palestinians on security matters or engagement with the Israeli public voting citizens on matters when it comes to civil rights and the balance of powers. So the Biden administration is trying to walk that line very carefully knowing that it has — historically, President Biden has been a very strong advocate for Israel, but also identifying some clear issues that it has with this government in particular. How does one engage with a government when there are particular government ministers — just for the sake of example, the minister who's in charge of national security or homeland security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who  identifies with a very far right set of policies — how do you engage with the government when there are ministries that you don't really want to have a clear, open relationship and dialogue with, while at the same time knowing that with the Palestinian Authority, there isn't all that many people to engage with either, right? So the Biden administration's effort to kind of get everybody together in Aqaba was clearly the best of a limited set of options. But I anticipate that the administration is going to have to engage and involve itself in a much more direct way over the coming weeks, knowing that we're approaching both the month of Ramadan and the month of the springtime holidays here in Israel, both Passover and Easter, where there's a tendency for there to be an increase of tensions in hostilities anyway.

Nicholas Danforth: Now, finally, tell us about the protests amongst Jewish Israelis against the government. 

Gabi Mitchell: So the government that was brought in, as I briefly mentioned beforehand, is a right-wing government, arguably the most right-wing government that has existed. One of the policies that this government has put forward, really within days of swearing in the government, was a set of policies that would enable the government to essentially determine the appointees for Israel’s Supreme Court, rather than that process taking place independent of the legislative and executive branch. This has triggered a lot of public pushback. Essentially that criticism is that this will neuter the Supreme Court and all of the lesser courts within the Israeli political system and render them essentially puppets of, you know, majoritarian rule, whoever happens to be in charge of the government, and eliminating the balance of powers. I'm not a legal expert. There are definitely people who can articulate a little bit more clearly all of the legal implications that it would have from top to bottom. But the important thing is that there's been a protest movement since that decision was announced. So for over two months now, there have been weekly protests. Sometimes they happen on the weekends, sometimes they happen in the middle of the week. Today, they're happening all over the country, and sometimes they're happening in different cities. But there's been tremendous public disruption both by the opposition parties, but also by private citizens — you know, individual citizens, or companies who are withdrawing their money and moving it to banks in other countries in an act of both warning and protest of what they see as the de deterioration of Israel's democratic values and principles, and the government's decision to swerve the ship towards a major constitutional crisis. 

Nicholas Danforth: Thank you so much for joining us on “The WarCast.”

Gabi Mitchell: Thank you. Really appreciate it.