By Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute
In a brazen authoritarian move unprecedented in Israel’s history, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is attempting to fire Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara. He says it’s because she is exceeding her authority by blocking radical government policies. The firing is on hold for now, given an injunction by Israel’s Supreme Court. But Netanyahu seems determined to get rid of her.
Many Israeli observers seem to think it’s mainly about Netanyahu’s own legal woes, including Baharav-Miara’s office prosecuting him for corruption. But the deepest reason for this dismissal attempt — as well as the judicial overhaul he has been pursuing in recent years to strip the courts and legal system of judicial review over government actions — is even more dangerous: Netanyahu and his extremist allies are trying to clear the way to annexing all or much of the West Bank during the rest of Donald Trump’s second term. And Israel’s judicial system continues to stand in their way.
Senior members of Netanyahu’s Cabinet have been crystal clear about their territorial ambitions in the West Bank. But a land grab like this would be a clear-cut violation of the very foundation of international rule of law. The U.N. Charter explicitly forbids the acquisition of territory through warfare — and doesn’t distinguish between offensive and defensive wars, since almost all belligerent parties consider themselves to be acting in self-defense, even when they start entirely avoidable (and even unavoidable) conflicts.
Just as crucially, it’s a dagger aimed directly at the heart of the only hope for Israeli-Palestinian peace.
The two-state solution has become a laughingstock in recent years (or frankly, decades) because the dream that seemed within reach when the Oslo agreements were signed in 1993 — two states for two peoples, Israel and Palestine, living side by side as normal countries — has become a stale mantra going nowhere. The conventional wisdom now holds that this vision is impossible, a con job by people who just want to drag out negotiations for their own personal or political benefit.
But is this two-state dream really dead? Britain, France and Canada don’t seem to think so, as they are moving to recognize a state of Palestine, presumptively in most of the Palestinian territories Israel occupied in 1967. And the primary reason the two-state idea looks so implausible is that Israel has, for over a decade, charged ahead in the opposite direction.
There have been no serious negotiations with the Palestinians since, at the latest, Barack Obama’s first term. But Netanyahu was cheerfully lying about being in favor of two states, all while deliberately blocking any progress toward a Palestinian state.
Meanwhile, the number of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank increased from 520,000 to over 700,000 from 2012 to 2022, according to the United Nations. That figure makes the personal and economic constituency opposing territorial compromise by Israel more formidable with each new family — and even individual settler — than ever. With the support of the Trump administration, Israel continues to expand settlement blocs day by day, which are gobbling up the main piece of land that would comprise a Palestinian state. Netanyahu and his extremist allies don’t even humor the idea of a two-state solution, because any plausible Palestinian state can be established only in this last remnant of historical Palestine.
But we know that Israeli settlements can be dismantled and evacuated, because one of Israel’s most hard-line prime ministers, former general Ariel Sharon, did exactly that in the northern West Bank and Gaza in 2005. It’s just a matter of a political decision. The settlers were outraged, but Sharon was acting in the interests of the Israeli military, and he put his foot down. So, even though there were far fewer settlers at the time, we know that when Israel wants to evacuate settlements it can and, indeed, will do exactly that.
Moreover, the Palestinian Authority has long stated that it’s amenable to land swaps, as it has been from the beginning of negotiations. Palestinians want independence, and they will take land that is relatively undesirable in exchange for some settlement blocs just to get the thing done.
In brief, a two-state solution is definitely still possible, mainly because both sides need it to live with any sense of security. But it won’t be if Israel annexes most or all the West Bank, as the current Cabinet hopes to do before Trump leaves office.
That’s why Netanyahu and his allies believe the judiciary has to be brought to heel. That’s why they think an attorney general who blocks government decisions that are unlawful must go. The Israeli legal system is one of the last major obstacles to Israeli annexation in the occupied West Bank. If this government moves to grab huge chunks, or all, of this occupied territory, judges and attorneys general might well note the black letter international illegality of such a move.
At its deepest level, Netanyahu’s move against Baharav-Miara isn’t just about domestic politics or staying out of jail. It’s about destroying the last hope for peace in the name of a divinely mandated Greater Israel.
