ZMAN YISRAEL (ISRAEL TIME)  |  APRIL 2026

The death penalty law for terrorists is not merely a moral obscenity. It is a dangerous trap for the opposition — and an existential threat to Israel as a state.

By Pinhas Inbari

The opposition has once again failed to read Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's moves. Netanyahu has once again demonstrated his genius for doing harm — his remarkable ability to engineer situations in which the opposition, even if it wins elections (should they be held), will fail to form a government.

The reason is that the opposition cannot free itself from Netanyahu's winning narrative: he is the Right, and they are the Left. In practice, there is no longer any Left in Israel.

The real fault line in Israeli politics is integrity versus corruption — but the opposition, for reasons that remain unclear, recoils from sharpening that contrast. Instead, it insists on battering itself against the right-left divide that exists only in political discourse, not among the public at large.

Netanyahu's true achievement in passing the death penalty law lies in sharpening the right-left divide along racial lines — on the basis of Arab-hatred — amplifying the chant from La Familia stands: 'Death to Arabs.'

The opposition did not oppose the law on the grounds that it is morally bankrupt and fundamentally un-Jewish in spirit — but only because it would be ineffective. In other words, the opposition aligned itself with the government's racist, anti-Arab narrative. In doing so, it played directly into Netanyahu's hands, and jeopardized the possibility of forming a coalition with Mansour Abbas. It will now be difficult for Abbas to join forces with opposition parties that lack a clear moral stance against the 'Death to Arabs' winds blowing from the coalition's back benches.

"Abu Yair" will drown the greatest opportunity Israeli Arabs have ever had for full integration into the state — using simple maneuvers that the opposition lacks the spine to confront, surrendering again and again to the false slogan of Right versus Left, which has now been sharpened into a blade of Arab-hatred.

It is no coincidence that the targets of the La Familia Bibist attacks are precisely those Arabs who represent successful integration into the state: Lusi Aharish, the Tarabin tribe that enlists in the IDF, and Supreme Court Justice Khaled Kabub. The integration of Arab citizens is a blessing for Israeli society — but for the Kahanist camp, it poses the danger of Israelization within the Jewish state. Israelis who are not Jewish stand as obstacles on the path to their vision of “a nation of priests and a holy people.”

Beyond cheap political stunts and tricks, what is at work here is a genuine intention to ignite a new Palestinian intifada — in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem — in order to cancel elections. It is clear to them that the day after any election, Netanyahu will no longer be able to halt the judicial proceedings, and many of his ministers will be called in for police questioning.

In Ramallah, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is under mounting pressure to aid West Bank villagers subjected to settler pogrom violence. Fatah recently announced the reconstitution of the Al-Aqsa Brigades to protect Palestinians from Jewish terrorism, and reports have already emerged of at least two explosive device laboratories uncovered in Nablus and Jenin.

Almost without anyone noticing, beneath the cover of the war against Iran, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir closed the Temple Mount during Ramadan. He was apparently warned that if Jews ascended during Passover it could cause problems — so he decided that if not Jews, then Muslims would not come either.

The Arab world interpreted this as Israeli preparation for a takeover of the Temple Mount. King Abdullah, who views the Hashemite dynasty as the guardian of the Al-Aqsa mosque, is showing signs of serious irritation. So too are the Bedouin tribes of Jordan, who were stung by the insult that Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked delivered to their elder, Sheikh Trad al-Fayez — who had come in 2016 to broker a sulha (reconciliation) in Hebron, and was publicly disparaged by her for speaking out not clever remarks about Israel.

Rather than resolving the matter with Jordan discreetly, Shaked issued a press release in which she publicly humiliated the distinguish sheikh. Since then, Jordan's Bedouin tribes have drifted closer to the Muslim Brotherhood, and there has been a notable relaxation in the discipline of Bedouin soldiers guarding the border with Israel.

The ongoing deterioration of relations with Jordan over the Temple Mount now extends well beyond bilateral affairs. It has become a regional obstacle to building the new energy architecture that was meant to emerge in the aftermath of the war with Iran.

The global energy order is desperate to stabilize the Middle East in order to establish alternative transit routes. Israel has positioned itself as the new corridor — but it is blocking that corridor at the chokepoint of the Temple Mount, by pushing Jordan aside and igniting the West Bank.

The intention to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab strait is not new. India is pushing aggressively to realize the IMEC plan — connecting India via the Gulf and Saudi Arabia through Jordan and Israel to the Mediterranean. Defense Minister Israel Katz, in his former incarnation as Transport Minister "Herod," championed the plan and worked to advance it by extending the Valley Railway line linking Haifa to Jordan and onward to the Arabian Peninsula and India. Jordan, however, brought it to a halt.

Israel cannot recruit Jordan for this world-spanning project while simultaneously pushing it off the Temple Mount — and while inciting unrest in the West Bank to advance Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich's "Decisive Plan," which amounts to a transfer of Palestinians to Jordan.

The global energy economy is desperately seeking calm in the Middle East and viable alternative transit corridors. Israel is emerging as the natural new route — but it is blocking itself at the Temple Mount bottleneck.

This is why Saudi Arabia demands progress on the Palestinian issue — not because it wants to establish a Palestinian state. Riyadh itself ignores Abu Mazen, and the Palestinian Authority is a party to no regional initiative whatsoever. The Saudis want regional calm and a stable new energy architecture.

The Americans understand this, and are already pressing Netanyahu to put an end to Jewish settler terrorism in the West Bank. The same applies to Gaza and Lebanon.

For now, political Judaism is intoxicated by visions of "empire" and the "Kingdom of David." But the international energy order has no need to replace Iran with Israel. Israel must integrate into regional normalization in order to become part of the new energy system.

Israel is not the only option. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is running hard on every track to position Turkey as the alternative global energy terminal. There are many reasons why Saudi Arabia does not want Turkey — but I will elaborate on that another time. Israel's choice should be sharp and clear: to be part of the world, to be a genuine energy terminal, and to be a key state in the new world order. If that does not happen, Israel will cede the role to Egypt and Turkey — and then collapse inward into a ghetto state, with all its factions squabbling over trivialities, without ever grasping what opportunity it has squandered.

What begins as 'Death to Arabs' may slide into the death of the state — not only of Israel as its founders envisioned it, but, if we are not careful, of its very existence. Unless we truly rise like a lion to save it from itself.

Pinhas Inbari is a senior Middle East researcher, journalist, author, screenwriter, and poet. He wrote the entries on the Palestinians for the New Hebrew Encyclopedia and served for many years as a researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He has authored analytical works on the Palestinian question and a linguistic study of Hebrew roots, Sipur Shoresh ("The Story of a Root"). His novels, co-written with his wife Aviva, include Al Gav Sufa ("On the Back of a Storm") — on the challenges of Christian communities in the Western Galilee under the British Mandate, radical Islam, and the status of women — and Shomer HaShe'ol, which addresses Israeli corruption.