Media coverage
Al-Resalah Net · 2018-01-10
PalThink for Strategic Studies, in cooperation with the Palestinian Forum for Israeli Studies (MADAR) and the Palestine Strategic Thinking Group, held a session to discuss a position paper by Dr. Muhannad Mustafa on the structure of Israel’s political and electoral system and its effects on decisions regarding the Palestinian cause. The paper focused on the dominant bloc system, arguing that the Israeli right has moved from control to hegemony over the political system, with implications for the Palestinian issue, while commentators and attendees stressed the importance of studying Israeli society’s shift to the right and how to confront it.
PalThink for Strategic Studies, in cooperation with the Palestinian Forum for Israeli Studies (MADAR) and the Palestine Strategic Thinking Group, held a session to discuss a position paper by Dr. Muhannad Mustafa on the structure of Israel’s political and electoral system and its effects on decisio…
PalThink for Strategic Studies organized a session to present and discuss a position paper by researcher Dr. Muhannad Mustafa titled “The Structure of the Political and Electoral System in Israel and Its Effects on Decisions Toward the Palestinian Cause,” in which he focused primarily on the system of the dominant bloc within the (Israeli) system.
This meeting, organized by PalThink in cooperation with the Palestinian Center for Israeli Studies “Madar,” the Palestine Strategy Group, and the “Oxford” Group, comes within the project “Building the Strategic Capacities of Official and Civil Institutions in Palestine.”
The author of the paper, Dr. Muhannad Mustafa, professor of political science and researcher at the Madar Center for Israeli Studies in Ramallah, was hosted via Skype to present and discuss the main issues addressed in the paper.
Writer and political analyst Hani Habib and Mr Tawfiq Abu Shoumer commented on the research paper, in the presence of an elite group of writers, analysts, and specialists in Israeli affairs in the Gaza Strip.
The session was opened by Omar Shaban, Director of PalThink for Strategic Studies, welcoming those in attendance and the participants.
Shaban praised the research paper, saying, “The paper addresses a new topic of great importance,” stressing the need to focus on the repercussions for the Palestinian people of the formation of the dominant bloc in Israel.
Omar Shaban said that the meeting comes in the context of coordination with the Palestinian Center for Israeli Studies “Madar” to prepare more research papers by researchers at the local and regional levels on the Palestinian cause from its Israeli and international perspective.
He confirmed that these papers would be presented in 2020 within the framework of the strategic document for the State of Palestine.
For his part, researcher Muhannad Mustafa reviewed the themes of his paper related to the Israeli electoral system and the impact of that on the functioning of the Israeli government in general, and with regard to the Palestinian issue in particular, pointing to the stage of the dominant bloc, which is a new phase that has crystallized in the last decade.
He added that the system of the dominant party bloc is characterized by the fact that the right-wing bloc is the only one capable of forming a government through right-wing parties, and this means that the so-called opposition cannot form a government without relying on parties counted as part of the right.
Regarding the impact of the dominant party bloc system on the Palestinian question, researcher Mustafa said, “The crystallization of this system contributed to the transition of the right from the stage of control to the stage of hegemony over the Israeli political system.”
He added that the Israeli right, both secular and religious, has been able to renew its political and intellectual system over the past two decades, such that its project has become the dominant project in the Israeli scene, especially with regard to the Palestinian question.
He continued, the hegemony of the right has plunged the so-called Zionist left into a political and intellectual crisis, and led it to adopt many of the right’s propositions regarding the Palestinian issue, while negating the reality created by the left, namely the Oslo Accords, and resolving the Palestinian issue on the basis of its ideological conceptions.
He said: “What is happening in the Israeli political system is paving the way for the emergence of a dominant party, and Israel is heading toward the formation of a political system based on hegemony.”
For his part, researcher Tawfiq Abu Shoumer, a specialist in Israeli affairs, commented on the paper, saying: “It is necessary to answer whether this shift from the dominant party to the dominant bloc is a random matter or an organized Israeli policy.”
He added, at the beginning Israel was founded on a religious basis and not an ideological one; after that came the politicization of religion, and then the religification of politics, and this falls within the extremist Israeli strategic plan.
Regarding the future outlook, he said, “The dominant bloc will be intensified and racist laws will be enacted, or it may lead to a national unity government in another form different from the dominant bloc, and it may achieve goals in the international arena aimed at liquidating the Palestinian cause more than the dominant bloc.”
In turn, writer and political analyst Hani Habib said in his comment on the research paper: “As a close follower of Israeli affairs, I see that the political system is moving toward the dominant bloc, and this has actually been achieved now.”
He pointed out that the research paper was supposed to discuss the nature of the transformations of the elites in Israeli society, especially in light of the development of populist culture, which shifted from reliance on the Labor Ashkenazi elite to religious, Eastern, settler elites, and led to the arrival of the dominant bloc of the Israeli right.
Habib noted that the right seeks to possess the keys to the institutions of the state, especially the media and the judiciary, and that there are fierce battles among this bloc to seize these institutions.
The floor was opened for discussion and interventions by those attending the session, who unanimously agreed that Israeli society has been developing toward the right since its establishment.
In their interventions, those present expressed the importance of the research paper, which deepens the study of the Israeli political system and its orientation toward the right and hegemony.
They stressed the need to study the factors that led to the extremism of Israeli society, and the need to study the shift of this Israeli society toward the right.
In conclusion, Dr. Muhannad Mustafa said that it is necessary to understand where the Zionist project is headed, and it is clear that Israel, with all the political transformations taking place within it, aims at the expansion of the Zionist project, with the state serving as a tool for that.
He stressed the need to study what the Palestinian has contributed to this transformation, and what we must do to confront what is taking place inside Israel.
It is worth noting that this session comes within the project “Building the Strategic Capacities of Official and Civil Institutions in Palestine,” organized by PalThink for Strategic Studies in cooperation with the Palestinian Center for Israeli Studies “Madar” and the Palestine Strategy Group.
Text © Al-Resalah Net — archived here with attribution to the source. — Machine translation for archival reference. — Original source