By Nidal Al-Mughrabi
GAZA (Reuters) – Arab broadcasters carried rolling coverage of Israeli protests, strikes and political chaos on Monday, drawing the rapt attention of viewers to the internal fight over government plans to overhaul the judiciary.
The crisis was featured on many channels, including Al Jazeera (pan-Arab channel), whose ticker was dominated with news from Israel, and al-Manar (run by Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah), which carried the story as its evening newscast.
Some Arabs said they hoped the crisis would lead to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political demise. Others expressed hopes for more serious consequences for Israel, which has fought many wars with Arab enemies since 1948’s establishment and still occupies the land that the Palestinians want for a state.
“As an Arab citizen I think that this is the beginning of the end of Israel, God willing,” said Qusai al-Qaisi, a citizen of Jordan, whose government signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994. “I don’t want to say that I’m happy but I’m really happy that this is happening there,” he said.
Mohammad Abdullatif from Syria, where Israel captured the Golan Height in a 1967 war, also echoed that sentiment. “What’s happening is definitely, for any Arab, good news,” said Abdullatif, 39.
Talal Okal, a Gaza political analyst, said that the crisis had brought relief to Palestinians.
“We hope it doesn’t settle any time soon, and we hope it escalates and gets worse,” he said. “But there is also a fear, they may carry out military adventures or wars to escape the internal crisis.”
The Israeli government plan to tighten parliament’s control over judicial processes triggered some of the biggest mass protests in the country’s 75-year-old history, with opponents in Israel calling the plan a threat to democracy.
Netanyahu came under pressure to ease tensions overnight when protests grew over his sacking of Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who had said the coalition’s judicial overhaul threatened Israeli security.
Netanyahu declared late Monday that he would be open to talks about the bitterly contested plans. He did so amid fears that the divisions could lead to a fracture in his coalition of three months or even violence.
‘OF THEIR OWN MAKING’
“The division is of their own making and now it is hunting them down,” said Nael Meqdad, 43, a Palestinian in the Gaza Strip. It would be a relief for the Palestinians in light of violence in Israel’s occupied West Bank.
Some Palestinians compared the division in Israel to their own factional split between the Islamist group Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank – a divide many Palestinians have accused Israel of feeding as it set back their national cause.
“What’s happening in Israel – they deserve it,” said Hani Abu Tarabeesh, another resident of Gaza.
“Just like they divided us, they are now getting divided.”
At broadcaster al-Manar, run by Hezbollah, which has fought numerous wars with Israel, a headline on its website declared that “complete paralysis” had afflicted the “enemy” due to strike action.
Israel faced a storm of Arab condemnation earlier this month when a leading member of Netanyahu’s government, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, said there was no Palestinian history or culture and no such thing as a Palestinian people.
Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a political commentator from the United Arab Emirates, said Monday that the Israeli uprisings had not affected the Abraham Accords. Commercial relations are ongoing.
But he said recent “racist statements” in Israel had caused a lot of concern.
Egypt made peace in 1979 with Israel. Hakem Sherif, a retired Egyptian citizen, voiced his disapproval of Israel’s policies towards Palestinians calling Israel an unlegitimate state.
But he also expressed respect for what he described as Israeli democracy, as he spoke in Cairo – where the army led the ouster of the country’s first democratically elected president in 2013 after the “Arab Spring” protests.
“Citizens have a space to express their opinions, they don’t randomly arrest or carry out violent dispersal of protests,” he said.
Additional reporting by Jehad Abu Shhalbak in Amman and Lisa Barrington in Dubai, Firas Machdesi in Damascus, Farah Saafan, Cairo; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing done by Howard Goller
Disclaimer: This report has been generated from the Reuters news services. ThePrint does not take responsibility for its contents.