From spring 2019 until summer 2021, Israel was politically paralyzed as no stable government could be formed. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s unwieldy coalition government came to power on June 13, 2021, following a protracted political crisis that saw Israelis go to the polls four times in about two years. Despite their ideological differences, the eight parties banded together to oust former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who now serves as opposition leader. To date, after nearly one year, this coalition government has yet to stabilize and its political rapprochement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not in sight. This government has been going on to pursue clearly discriminatory policies and practices violating Palestinians' human rights with continued land-grabbing, settlement expansion, home demolitions and evictions.

Bennett pledged that his government will continue to build illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. "We are continuing and will continue to build in Judea and Samaria (the occupied West Bank)," Bennett said last month. "There will not be a freeze here. Things will happen in the right order." Israeli Housing Minister Zeev Elkin previously declared plans to invest the equivalent of almost 62 million euros ($66 million) in 21 new settlements in the Jordan Valley in order to double the Israeli population there by 2026.

Settlement planning in and around East Jerusalem is also gaining momentum: The planning committee, under Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked, had announced new settlements for the Pisgat Zeev neighborhood, as well as the development of new areas for the former Atarot airfield and the E1 area connecting East Jerusalem to the Palestinian heartland. The latter, however, was postponed, as it had been under former President Benjamin Netanyahu, due to international pressure, but it is still under discussion within the government.

Last week Israel’s civil administration advanced nearly 4,000 housing units in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the Israeli Supreme Court approved the eviction of around 1,000 Palestinians from eight villages in the southern West Bank, after a two-decade legal dispute over land where Palestinians have lived for generations that the Israeli army has repurposed as a firing zone. Similar to its predecessor, this government is moving further and further away from a diplomatic solution, becoming more and more entrenched in the Palestinian territories and making it increasingly difficult to imagine a viable Palestinian state on that land.

Besides, a significant increase in settler violence contributes to the West Bank's further disintegration as settlers repeatedly attack Palestinian villages, injure people, and destroy cars and other property, thus highlighting how hopeless the prospect of peace has become. Bennett has no plans to leave the West Bank and is colonizing as much land as possible, maintaining the current situation – a military occupation under which a privileged Jewish population is living alongside a Palestinian majority with no civil rights. Within this framework, and especially right now, Bennett is maintaining the status quo, while trying to minimize its costs and maximize benefits. "It would be a terrible mistake to create a Palestinian state," Bennett has said in a series of media interviews.

Business outlook

"My outlook is a very business-like one," Bennett said. "If we create more business, strengthen the economy and improve living conditions for everyone in Judea and Samaria, that would be better." Israel’s government has suggested "shrinking the conflict," considering steps that slightly ease the dire economic situation of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza rather than pursuing a political solution. Nonetheless, even in this direction, no serious action was taken and much of it was for publicity.

The Israeli government coalition came under threat as a result of internal squabbles earlier last month when a member of Bennett’s party split from the coalition, leaving the government without a majority in parliament and raising the possibility of yet another national election after years of political chaos.

The eight-party alliance made up of nationalists, dovish parties and a small Islamic faction is now deadlocked with the opposition with 60 seats each in the 120-member Knesset. That has greatly complicated the government’s ability to pass legislation and raised the risk of plunging the country into snap elections.

International actors

For his part, United States President Joe Biden recently raised the notion of a top-level meeting between Israelis and Palestinians in the White House, but the initiative has seemingly stalled with Bennett’s coalition in crisis.

The U.S. initiative aimed only to bring together national security advisors, rather than heads of state, and to focus on security and economic cooperation rather than any negotiations toward a Palestinian state. The U.S. had hoped that such a meeting, backed by Egypt and Jordan, would serve as a confidence-building measure and would indicate to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that the U.S. is still interested in advancing the Palestinian issue while allowing Bennett the maneuverability of saying it didn’t constitute political negotiations. But even that seems unlikely with Bennett’s government now facing the threat of collapse.

On the other hand, the U.S. now has little interest in confronting Israel, especially while it is involved in sensitive negotiations with Iran to revive the nuclear deal – a goal the Israeli government opposes. As for the European states, they are divided internally, under little domestic pressure to act and now, gripped by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The result is that instead of taking steps to reduce the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and push for serious peace talks, international actors are enabling Israel’s repression and through their silence, leaving Israel to freely erode Palestinian rights and encourage renewed violence.

The Israeli coalition government seems to have received carte blanche to step up its control and is undertaking steps previous governments hesitated to pass by accelerating evictions, legalizing and stimulating settlement growth in highly sensitive parts of the West Bank. The window of opportunity for a negotiated resolution to the conflict is closing and Israel retaining permanent control of the Palestinians is on the horizon. International actors should start rethinking the entire edifice of what has become a defunct peace process and Israel must be held accountable for its illegal policies and actions.

In the immediate term, foreign powers should rethink engagement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as Israel's systematic discrimination, occupation and colonization of the Palestinian people continues to raise tensions, feed hopelessness and further diminish the prospect of a return to meaningful negotiations, thus killing any chance for any peace process.

The U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Tor Wennesland, told the U.N. Security Council that "without a realistic prospect of an end to the occupation and the realization of a two-State solution ... it is only a matter of time before we face an irreversible, dangerous collapse and widespread instability."