The old occupation was the occupation of Palestine. It started with the military occupation of the West Bank and continued with the settlement occupation of the West Bank, and has reached the point where some 360,000 Israelis live today in the West Bank. At the same time that the smaller occupation of the Gaza Strip failed, the large occupation of the West Bank has done quite well.
In the past it prevented a peace agreement with Jordan, interfered with the interim agreement with the Palestinians and prevented a unilateral withdrawal. The old occupation succeeded in causing a Palestinian state not to be founded, the Land of Israel not to be divided and a single governmental entity to sprawl from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Even though the old occupation was anachronistic and disadvantageous from the very beginning, it showed impressive vitality and achieved most of its goals. This surprising success allowed it to continue on and mount an attack on the democratic Jewish state next to the West Bank.
The new occupation is the occupation of Israel. This time it is not a military and settlement process, but a political process. This time the intention is not to deny the Palestinians their right to self-determination, but to deny Israelis the ability to end the first occupation. After the settlers succeeded in preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state by occupying Judea and Samaria, they are now asking to empty the Israeli state of all its substance by taking control of its political system.
The operational target of the new occupation: over-representation for the settlers, the settlers' agents and those beholden to the settlers in the upcoming 19th Knesset. The modus operandi of the new occupation: A settler outpost in the governing party on the one hand, and the establishment of a strong settlers' party on the other. The expected result of the new occupation: A legislature and government to their liking, which will subordinate the good of the State of Israel to the good of the occupying settlements.
The first steps of the old occupation in Hebron, Sebastia and Ofra decades ago were brilliant moves. They derailed Israel from one historic path and moved it onto a different one. So it is with the first steps the new occupation is taking in the current election campaign. First the settlers succeeded in settling inside the Likud and turning it into a captive party. After that they succeeded in turning the prime minister into a hostage. Finally, the settlers ran a party with an image of high-tech, but whose essence is extremism and refusal of army orders.
That is how the new occupation, in front of our very eyes, is conquering the central power structure of Israel in a well-planned pincer movement. It guarantees that the interests of the settlements will be placed at the top of the next government's objectives, and not the values of the nation. Instead of our future being determined by the Israeli majority, we will be lead by a small minority that has gone off to the peaks of the Shomron, and from there they will rule.
There are big differences between French colonial rule in Algeria and Israeli rule in Judea and Samaria. But what is now happening is impossible to view as anything but the takeover by a colonial province of its mother country. The weakness of the Israeli republic has enabled the Jewish settlers who crossed the Green Line to accomplish in Jerusalem in 2013 what the French colonialists in Algeria did not succeed in achieving in Paris in 1960. They are marching on the capital and conquering it, and turning the mother country into a nation under the control of the colony it gave birth to.
Is everything lost? No. The political forces now occupying Israel are extremist. Sooner or later they will lead the occupied country to collide with the wall of reality. After the collision there will finally arise a liberation movement worthy of the name, and the uprising it leads will end the second occupation. The great fear is that until then a lot of blood will be shed, and the first occupation, that of the West Bank, could become irreversible.
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