Benjamin Netanyahu causes Trump's 'deal of the century' to fall apart

Benjamin Netanyahu has started a conflict with the Palestinians to stay in power. It is fraught with a civil war, Israeli analyst Luis Fishman believes.

Israeli authorities act like a red rag to a bull

Clashes between Israeli police and Palestinians in Jerusalem began last week and escalated into an exchange of missile attacks between Hamas* and Israel.

Riots initially erupted as the Israeli authorities evicted several Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarr area of ​​East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians regard as their capital.

Afterwards, the city authorities barred Muslims from entering the Temple Mount at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Jerusalem Day which was celebrated on Monday.

The actions of the police sparked protests. People started throwing rocks at cordons, and the police were forced to used flash bangs, tear gas and rubber bullets. More than 300 people were injured as a result of the clashes.

Soon after, the Gaza Strip was shelled from the Palestinian territory — the Palestinians supported their compatriots in Israel. Hamas' military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigade, claimed responsibility for the missile attacks on Israel. The Israeli side responded to the shelling, having killed dozens of people.

Netanyahu is taking Israel to civil war

In East Jerusalem, the Palestinians are facing a growing number of attacks committed by Jewish supremacists and settlers that have been waging a decade-long legal pressure campaign to evict them, Louis Fishman, Brooklyn College associate professor, a specialist for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, wrote for Haaretz.

The state supports them in this, as those who leave Jerusalem abroad often lose their right of residence, Fishman pointed out.

According to the analyst, the Palestinian anger has been growing for the past few months, but not in the West Bank or "in the open-air prison in Gaza", but among the Palestinian citizens of the State of Israel. Fishman believes that a certain amount of the Jewish population supports them too, which means that the country is walking the path towards a civil war.

The author explains the current crisis by Netanyahu's desire to remain in power.

"He can ensure that his rivals Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett won't be able to form a government, and with Abbas realizing that an Israel-Hamas escalation leaves his joining any government untenable," Fishman wrote.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin handed a mandate to form a government to Yair Lapid, the leader of the Israeli parliamentary opposition, the head of the centrist party Yesh Atid ("There is a future") on Wednesday. This happened the day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was the first to have received a mandate after winning parliamentary elections, failed to create a ruling coalition within the prescribed 28 days.

Nevertheless, Mansour Abbas conducted productive negotiations with Bennett about a coalition with Lapid.

Israel can not break the Palestinians

Yuri Zinin, a candidate of historical sciences, an expert at the Center for Middle East Studies, told Pravda. Ru that the Palestinians, being isolated, "manage to maintain their potential by making DIY missiles that can fly and explode."

"This suggests that the resistance of the Palestinians, no matter how hard one may try to strangle them, is growing. They go back to their rights, to their aspirations that have never been implemented despite international resolutions on the creation of the Palestinian State," the expert said.

"Hamas is a deeply conspiratorial organization. Whoever may appear on the surface there may not necessarily be the first person," said the orientalist.

Despite the recent restoration of relations between Israel and Palestine, which Donald Trump described as the "deal of the century", the fundamental problems of the Palestinians have never been resolved.

"As long as fundamental problems remain, the potential for conflict remains too, and this potential may explode at any moment," Yuri Zinin said.

It is worthy of note that the "deal of the century" stipulated for the movement/liquidation of Al-Aqsa from the Temple Mount and the formation of a "patchwork state" from Palestine.

Hamas is a Palestinian, ruling movement in the Gaza Strip. Hamas is recognized as a terrorist organization by Israel, Canada, the United States, Japan, the European Union, and is also banned in Jordan and Egypt. Russia does not classify Hamas as a terrorist organization, nor does it support its radical methods of policy-making.

The head of the Politburo of the Palestinian movement Hamas, Ismail Haniya, said in an interview with Russia Today TV channel said that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov agreed to conditions that would bring reconciliation in Palestine closer.

Haniya suggested the following:

• holding elections in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip;
• convening the pan-Palestinian summit with the participation of representatives of all Palestinian groups;
• holding a meeting of the leaders of Palestinian groups;
• forming the Government of National Unity.