FROM HARD-RIGHT TO FAR-RIGHT IN ISRAEL: 'DEFENSE' MINISTER YAALON RESIGNS

Israel's hard-line 'defense' minister Moshe Yaalon(65) has resigned today, citing 'lack of trust' towards prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu and the prime minister's 'conduct' as the reason.

His resignation is a result of Netanyahu's recent negotiations to bring far-right politician Avigdor Lieberman and his "Israel Home" -party into the government and give Lieberman Yaalon's post, which is one of the two main demands from Lieberman.

'Western' governments and several Arab governments increasingly allied with Israel have allegedly tried to get Netanyahu to take the Zionist Union bloc into government and Zionist Union's leader Isaac Herzog had put a mandate to pursue peace negotiations with president Abbas' government as the price of joining the government.

Taking Lieberman, his some-time ally, instead and choosing an exactly opposite path is Netanyahu's way of answering to calls of even a modest attempt at peace and end of the occupation, if only nominally.

Lieberman's demand of re-introduction of death penalty against "terrorists" - aka only to be used against Palestinians - as his other price of joining the government sends a clear signal that Netanyahu is no more interested of peace than before as he waits for the next president of United States to take office, expecting Barack Obama's successor to be even more pro-occupation than Obama.

Both the leading main party candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, have sought the backing of wealthy pro-occupation donors with attacks against Palestinians and declarations of support for ethnic cleansing and illegal colony building on part of Trump and from Clinton opposition to boycott of Israel, claim that "autonomy" should be enough for Palestinians and that she will take United States' relationship with Israel and Netanyahu "to the next level".

Yaalon, former chief of staff of Israel's military from 2002 to 2005 and member of Netanyahu's Likud, will resign from Knesset also. His Knesset seat will be taken over by Yehuda Glick, one of the leaders behind the attempts to take-over the al-Aqsa mosque compound and replace it with a new Jewish temple.

Yaalon's resignation is a symptom of the increasing strife among Israel's now mainstream pro-occupation hard-right, as Netanyahu allies himself with even more radical elements, buoyed by the mild international reaction to his policy of increased ethnic cleansing, illegal colony building and violence.

In this internal strife Netanyahu is seen now as having achieved at least a tactical if not a strategic victory over Israel's military, his attempts at neutering and domesticating it to better serve his agenda one step closer. Having been raised on a pedestal in Israel, the military has been able to extend pressure on politicians before, and is currently more closer to the United States' government in some of it's views towards issues like Iran than its own government.

This struggle between military and Netanyahu has recently been window dressed as a supposed struggle over military's conduct towards Palestinians and overall about increasingly racist tendencies in Israeli society, like in the recent squabble over the Holocaust Day speech by major general Yair Golan' - but in the end it's about power and the choice between accelerated or creeping colonization and annexation.

Moshe Yaalon, a hard-liner who once called pro-peace liberal Zionist organization Peace Now "a virus", represents the hard-right elements which are content with indefinitive occupation with more creeping annexation; it would be an error to mistake him as some kind of moderate even in comparison to Netanyahu and Lieberman.

Yaalon claims now that "extremists have taken over Israel" like it would be a new development; they have been in power from the beginning. What is happening now is that the Potemkin's facades that showed the world a 'liberal' Israel are falling.

Naturally the 'Western' pro-occupation media has already started to call Yaalon with terms like 'relatively moderate' (DPA) in his political obituaries. As the 'political centre' in Israel moves ever farther right, so does the 'Western' idea what goes for 'moderation' in Israel; yesterday's hard-liners are today's moderates for the 'West'.

BBC, that loyal spear-carrier for Israel, in its own article calls Lieberman's policies "a tough line dealing with the Palestinians" - implication that everything that Israel has so far done is supposedly 'soft'.

Instead his resignation shows how Israel is continuing to move ever farther to the right, with no intention of using the fig leaf of USA-led endless peace talks as a cover. Israel of Apartheid and Annexation, like the emperor in a children's story, has no clothes and feels it can flaunt this in public, without any backlash from the 'impotent' West or from the Arabs.

SOURCES:

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Extremists have taken over in Israel, says departing defence minister

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How Tony Blair and Egypt's Sissi Tried to Push Zionist Union Into Netanyahu's Coalition

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Israeli defence minister resigns due to 'lack of trust' in Netanyahu

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Israeli defense minister resigns from gov't, paving way for ultraright replacement

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Israeli PM asks Avigdor Lieberman to be defence minister in shock move

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Israel politics: Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon resigns in protest

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With political merger, Israel appears poised to move even further right

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