Benjamin Netanyahu did not burn little 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh to death – but he fanned the flames of the settler fanatics who almost certainly did. It was Mr Netanyahu who helped build and encourage the very ideologies and climate of racist hatred and bigotry from which such acts arise.
So, as much as Mr Netanyahu and other ministers condemn the killing of Ali in the strongest possible terms – including calling it terrorism – they and the settler lobby must not be allowed to extricate themselves from their own responsibility.
They cannot be allowed to pretend that this was a single unique act as opposed to a systematic pattern of accepted behaviour. (Few commentators even mentioned the immolation of 17-year-old Muhammad Abu Khdeir in Jerusalem just over a year ago.)
Last summer, an Israeli policeman posted on Facebook: “I support torching Arabs every night no matter what age.” That sort of hatred is not uncommon. Only if there is a clear understanding of how Israeli officialdom and its military establishment has nurtured this monster and excused its most hideous actions, is there any hope that Israel can recover.
This is not just an issue for Palestinians. It is also about Israel’s future – can it truly become a democracy or does being a Jewish state matter more? The attacks on a gay pride parade in Jerusalem are just one other startling example of the deep-rooted divisions that Israel has to face up to.
The reality is that in today’s Israel, peaceniks have become the extremists on the edge of society. The colonial movement is in power, its pernicious primacy unchallenged.
The Netanyahu game plan for handling the killing is clear. Drown out any international criticism with more effusive condemnations from Israel itself, together with a full investigation. He knows that media and political attentions last mere days. His condemnations may be laudable in this one instance, but they are simply token if the entire infrastructure of the settlement industry that incubates these actions and views is not uprooted.
The ultranationalist settlers, intoxicated by their unbridled power, insist on more and more expansion – 600,000 settlers are not enough. To make way for this, Palestinians who block their path must be made as uncomfortable as possible.
Tensions, clashes and violence are inevitable. For settlers it is essential as only through conflict can they complete their colonial mission.
This is not some marginal extremist project. It is the official goal of the Israeli government. This is no side current, no acts of lone wolf madmen – this is as mainstream as it gets.
So beholden is Mr Netanyahu to the settler movement who repeatedly vote him into power, that the rare demolition of two illegal settler homes at the settlement of Beit El over the past week had to be compensated by major new settlement expansion announcements the day after.
Mr Netanyahu’s message was clear – yes, the court says we have to destroy two homes, but fear not, I shall build hundreds more. Yet even this was still not enough to prevent a revenge attack.
Mr Netanyahu has been turning a blind eye to settler terrorism for his entire political career. He did nothing to stop the violence, the harassment, the destruction of Palestinian olive groves, the torching of cars and the destruction of solar panels.
Even churches and mosques have been desecrated. In Hebron, settlers enjoy Friday outings in the Casbah where they trash shops and spit on Palestinian faces. The army is there to protect them not the Palestinians.
What about all the settlements perched on top of West Bank hills? They scalp the landscape around them and drain their untreated sewage down onto Palestinian agricultural land below, contaminating what would otherwise be prime fertile land. Nothing is done. Settlements come first.
Israeli human rights groups have produced an unending supply of reports on the climate of impunity for settlers. According to one such group, Yesh Din, only 7.4 per cent of investigations into settler violence have resulted in indictments against suspects.
Some of the sentences beggar belief. Nachum Korman got just six months public service for manslaughter after clubbing 11-year-old Hilmi Shousha to death with his rifle butt.
The lack of action against Israeli settler violence was raised as long ago as 1982 in the Karp commission report. This judicial inquiry found that the number of cases where the offender was “unknown” was inordinately high. It also found that eyewitnesses were rarely questioned.
Fast-forward to 1994 and the Shamgar Commission set up after the Hebron massacre (when Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein murdered 29 Palestinians at prayer), it too made similar findings.
The truth is Mr Netanyahu has been stoking the fires from which the arsonists drew their inspiration for years. He opposed Oslo. He opposed a two-state solution, briefly became an advocate of convenience for it, before reverting to type by ruling it out on the eve of this year’s poll.
He did not hesitate to tap into the racist zeitgeist by posting: “Hurry friends, the Arabs are going out in droves to vote, bussed in by the left.”
Many still charge the prime minister with creating the atmosphere that led to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. Mr Netanyahu spoke at rallies where the crowd was chanting that Rabin was a traitor. Did he ask them to desist? No, he used it to full effect.
In those days, Rabin was often referred to as a Nazi collaborator. At many rallies, Mr Netanyahu addressed there were pictures of Rabin in a Nazi SS uniform (despite such imagery being against Israeli law). Sadly in Israel today, the far right does not hesitate to promote and disseminate pictures of Israeli figures as Nazis including Mr Netanyahu. This is the level to which public debate has sunk.
Mr Netanyahu’s current and previous cabinets harboured a full range of pro-settler and anti-Arab views. Palestinians will be looking for justice but what can they expect from the new Israeli Minister of Justice, Ayelet Shaked, who has promoted the view that Palestinian children are “little snakes”.
She believes that Israel is at war with the Palestinian people, that they are the enemy (not Hamas or other hardline groups). Her party leader Naftali Bennett casually boasts: “‘I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life and there’s no problem with that.”
Palestinians remain unconvinced at Israeli protestations. They remember the 551 children killed in Gaza last summer. Then the overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews were urging the government to bomb more. Mr Netanyahu did nothing about the far right extremists screaming “Death to the Arabs” or chanting “Gaza is a graveyard”.
Let us hope that Israel will make a break from the past and face up the challenge of the ultranationalist settler movement and the violence and racism it foments. It is just unlikely that this can happen with Mr Netanyahu in power at the head of a cabinet where even he looks a moderate by comparison.
Chris Doyle is director of the London-based Council for Arab-British Understanding
On Twitter: @Doylech
