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Since the beginning of this year, Israel has been acting with an exaggerated pride as if about to achieve some sort of a “final victory”. This arrogance would not have been possible without the Donald Trump administration’s active backing. As per the Israeli Peace Now movement, there has been a marked rise in the colonialist movement in the occupied Palestinian territories since Trump took office. In recent months there have been meetings in Tel Aviv, under government auspices, to establish a new Israeli organisation called the “Coalition for the Golan Heights”, aimed at advancing international recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.
Right now, it is more appropriate to work with President Trump’s administration, Israel’s friend, to cancel the possibility of a demand to us to withdraw from the Golan Heights,” said the initiator of the meeting, Tzvi Hauser, the Israeli government secretary between 2009 and 2013. He added “with the civil war in Syria close to resolution, the superpowers will seek compromises, and there is fear that Israel will be asked to contribute to this goal by withdrawing from the Golan Heights”.
On the other hand, and together with the increased efforts to delegitimise Israel mainly through the calls of the international movement (BDS) to boycott Israel, some Israeli officials warned that 2018 would see the start of an investigation by the International Criminal Court at Hague into complaints filed years ago about the war on Gaza and the continued construction of Jewish colonies.
Moreover, the Israeli National Security Council meeting with the members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, have warned that the right-wing Zionist practices are no longer hidden. Israel persists with its crimes, confident of its absurd and astounding impunity.
The leftist writer Kobi Niv recently wrote: “Seventy years of the Israeli state in the relationship between the Ashkenazi and the Sephardim, while we, Jews, are all brothers, in blood and arms, what hope can we have one day for a prospective future to reach a real dialogue, not only to talk about peace and equality, with our brothers and the sons of our country, the Palestinians? Without accepting them, we will live here forever on the edge of the sword until we become victims
What is more striking is the fact that the Zionist state (which today enjoys a broad margin of movement not available to any other country in the world and consequently commits crimes without consideration) has roused fears of former heads of Mossad about the future of the Zionist state, as well as extreme fear of the direction towards which Israel is heading at the beginning of the eighth decade of its existence. On the eve of the 70th “Independence Day (Nakba)”, the daily Yedioth Ahronoth published excerpts of a joint interview with six former Mossad chiefs: Zvi Zamir, Danny Yatom, Nahom Admoni, Shabtai Shavit, Aviram Halevi and Tamir Pardo. They spoke about the political stagnation, fear of social divisions and disputes, their concern for the future of the state and concern about the Israeli leadership. Zamir was most critical saying: “I’m not sure that for the Prime Minister (Benjamin Netanyahu) and the senior officials surrounding him that public interests prevail over their personal interests of more money and more power.” Admoni said his main concern with Israel today was the “growing rift between Israelis”. He asserted that “the divide between religious and secular populations is worse than it has ever been”. “It just keeps growing” he said. “As intelligence people,” Shavit concluded, “our most important skill is being able to anticipate the future. So I ask myself what kind of country will my grandchildren inherit, and I cannot give an answer to that!”
■ Professor As’ad Abdul Rahman is the chairman of Palestinian Encyclopaedia.