When the New Israel Fund is happy about something, Israelis should sit up and pay attention.
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A senior New Israel Fund official recently said there will be no turning back from the revolutionary shift in Arab Israelis' political status achieved under Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Prime Minister-designate and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid's government.
According to the New Israel Fund official, this is no longer a "symbolic partnership" reached out of necessity; in the era of Ra'am coalitionary partnership, Arab Israelis have become power brokers.
This, for the time being, is Bennett's definitive achievement. The Jewish people have no choice, due to the hubris of the national religious elite, but to wait another two years and four months at least to learn whether Bennett is on par with Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and third Prime Minister Levi Eshkol.
In the meantime, under this new government, the State of Israel has lost its character and has ceased to exist as the Jewish state. It is not a state of all its citizens. It is currently the non-Jewish state, and this non-Jewish state has enemies that came into being upon its establishment: the Likud, Mizrahi Jews, the periphery region, and Opposition Leader Benjamin Netanyahu.
Given this list of enemies, how will the government be able to tackle the challenge of crime in the Arab sector? A more precise description would be that of an unprecedented wave of supposedly criminal violence that is in fact representative of the anarchy that has prevailed since the swearing-in of the weak government that excels at partisan and sectorial opportunism but lacks the ability to lead on policy.
We don't know what Bennett's vision is or what he wants to achieve.
The release of body camera footage of the attack on police officers who entered the Arab town of Kfar Qasim around a month ago to carry out an arrest is a reminder of the challenge the government faces. The criminals in the Arab sector are growing stronger not only due to the increase in both crime and criminals. In fact, this is the new normal. Anyone on a local council or whose business is located adjacent to certain Arab neighborhoods, is at risk, of having their home or business targeted by gunfire. And that is just the start.
An appeal to the council that is not backed up by gunfire does not count.
I recently heard from a resident of a village near Nazareth in Israel's north whose family member's home had been targeted by gunfire. The man has nothing to do with the criminal world. He's a person of high caliber. Nevertheless, his residence in the village was exposed to violence.
Can the government really make a concentrated effort when the issue at hand has nothing to do with the coalition's survival? Is there a way back from the post-Zionist revolution led by Bennett and Lapid? It may be that to find out, we will once again need to enlist the man who is currently investing more time in his writing and fitness.
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