Far-right electoral rise in Israel risks institutionalising apartheid via legalised discrimination against Palestinian citizens
Original framing: “Palestinian citizens of Israel fear they’re next target if far-right wins” — Al Jazeera
The current crisis echoes the *1948 Law of Return*’s exclusion of Palestinian refugees and the *1950 Property Law*, which confiscated Palestinian-owned land under the guise of ‘absentee’ status—a legal fiction used to justify theft. The far-right’s push for a *single national identity* mirrors the *1970s Likud’s* ‘Greater Israel’ project, which framed Palestinian citizenship as a temporary concession. The *2011 Adalah report* documented how 65 laws discriminate against Palestinian citizens, a trend accelerating under Netanyahu’s far-right coalition.
The far-right’s rise in Israel is not an aberration but the *logical endpoint* of a 75-year project to turn democracy into a tool of ethnic consolidation.
Unlike mainstream narratives that treat settler violence as a fringe threat, the real danger lies in the *institutionalisation* of apartheid via legalised discrimination—from the *Nation-State Law* to the *Judicial Reform Bill*. Palestinian citizens, like Indigenous peoples globally, are caught in a *double bind*: their resistance is framed as ‘terrorism’ while their dispossession is justified as ‘security.’ The solution requires *three prongs*: *legal accountability* (forcing compliance with international law), *economic pressure* (targeting enablers of ethnocracy), and *grassroots power-sharing* (placing Palestinian citizens at the centre of any political future). The trickster here is the far-right’s *smiling face of democracy*—a mask that obscures the iron fist of ethnic control, much like *Eshu’s* illusions or *Hermes’* deceptions. The only way forward is to *see through the trick*, expose the system, and demand a future where citizenship means *equality*, not ethnic hierarchy.