The new war between Hamas and Israel, which has been unleashing its tragedies on both sides of the front line for almost two weeks, is not only the umpteenth consequence of the impossible cohabitation for more than 70 years between Israelis and Palestinians on this territory. of the Middle East.
It could also become another illustration of the drama and destruction that populism – in this case that of Benjamin Netanyahu here – is now capable of producing across the world. The war launched by Vladimir Putin on Ukraine, the insurrection of the Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump and the sacking of the Amazon by Jair Bolsonaro can be part of this.
This is because by attacking the democratic institutions of his country, by weakening the professionalism of his government and by dividing the military and police authorities for the defense of his own interests, the Israeli Prime Minister, placed by the justice of his country at the heart of a corruption trial since May 2020, will ultimately have, against him, “created the conditions for an unprecedented security breach”, estimates political scientist Michael Keren, professor at Tel Aviv University, in an interview. .
A predictable fault which now puts Israel and its region on the verge of a new conflagration and which should also serve as a warning elsewhere in the world where populism is taking hold, progressing or seducing, sometimes carried by charismatic leaders also seeking to reach the top of a state to settle personal scores or escape legal prosecution.
“Even though Israel’s security situation is unique compared to other Western democracies, there is a profound lesson to be learned that extends beyond national borders,” summarizes Israeli politics researcher Noam Gidron, attached this week at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he teaches. “The threats posed by populism become evident in crisis and emergency situations. This is where weakened states appear to be able to react effectively. And that is exactly the tragedy unfolding in Israel right now. »
With its 1,400 deaths on the Israeli side, its surprise massacres orchestrated by Hamas – which the Israeli secret services failed to thwart – and its approximately 200 people kidnapped and exfiltrated into the Gaza Strip, the terrorist attack of October 7 last was described as “the bloodiest day in the history of Israel”, but also a new “pogrom”.
Israel’s response in Gaza, where a military intervention on the ground remains imminent, continues to be denounced because of the humanitarian crisis it is causing, in the name of revenge. At least 4,137 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli bombings since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement’s Ministry of Health announced on Friday, 14e day of the conflict. A double tragedy which marks almost a decade of the establishment in Israel of a populist regime led by Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud. Since last January, the elected official has been at the head of one of the most extremist government coalitions in the country’s young history.
“A failed state”
“Israeli politics over the past 10 years has been characterized by a toxic mix of populism and personality cult,” says Noam Gidron. Netanyahu’s party, Likud, is populist to the core. Its top ministers dedicated themselves to weakening state institutions that they believed served a malevolent elite. The fundamental notion of a professional and efficient bureaucracy has been cast aside, in favor of appointments to the highest levels of ministries based on loyalty to Netanyahu.” A framework which would have favored the inability to see the attack coming, the emergence of this new war, and which now plunges the country into a major crisis with a “paralyzed State and a public service filled with incompetent lackeys”, continues- he.
And yet, these weaknesses were far from being in a blind spot.
In the antechamber of this conflict, the Israeli Prime Minister found himself at the heart of an unprecedented social storm in recent months, after he initiated a reform of the country’s judicial system aimed at improving, according to him, the functioning of democracy. In essence, the project mainly sought to reduce the influence of institutions on its heels since 2016 in the context of several serious cases of fraud, corruption and abuse of power. Indicted after investigations into three separate cases, the Prime Minister is at the heart of a resounding trial which continues after its opening in May 2020. Three of his possible accomplices and confidants at the time, including a former high-ranking officer of the Ministry of Communications and a former chief of staff, also agreed to testify against him.
In the process, Benjamin Netanyahu also orchestrated reforms in the country’s security apparatus, to divide, among other things, the authority exercised over the army or to politicize the police, by bringing the control of a “national guard” closer to the hands. of his government. He also attacked, to reduce its scope, the professional components of public administration, legal advisors, and the central bank, in addition to targeting “non-state institutions constituting the soul and spirit of the State, such as universities and the cultural world and, of course, the media, especially those which embody the ethos of truth and criticism allowing the State to improve itself by highlighting its faults », recently wrote Gideon Rahat, director of the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in an opinion piece with now prescient overtones.
“A successful populist regime is likely to produce a failed state,” he writes, recalling that “populists are even ready to destroy the state” in the name of the uniformity they seek to achieve to eliminate the cohabitation of different worldviews, opinions and interests that prevail in liberal democracies.
A known recipe and the result of which has been revealed in all its violence for 14 days in Israel, always with the risk that it will spread elsewhere.