Dear reader,

On Monday, just over a year after it was first formed, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid declared that their so-called “government of change” was coming to an end, with Israel heading to elections in the fall. The coalition — a bizarre amalgamation of hyper-nationalists, war hawks, liberals, and Islamists that was formed as a bulwark against the formation of a Netanyahu-led government — came crumbling down after months of instability and infighting.

That the government has held out this long is its greatest feat. Very few were particularly happy about the arrangement, with Palestinian MKs repeatedly threatening to quit over Israel’s policies on both sides of the Green Line. Meanwhile, the right-wing flank of the government continued to solidify Israeli control from the river to the sea and undermine any expression of Palestinian identity. The Zionist left parties, for their part, have offered little by way of resistance, capitulating to the right on the most crucial issues in order to stave off the threat of a Netanyahu reprise.

We need your help to ensure that people understand just what’s at stake in these next elections. Will you become a member of +972 today so we can continue exposing the injustices of occupation and apartheid no matter which government is in power? 

While the Bennett-Lapid government can claim credit for managing to govern under duress, passing budgets, and including an independent Palestinian party for the first time in Israeli history, it has only doubled down and emboldened Israel’s apartheid regime between the river and the sea. From near-daily, lethal raids on Palestinian cities and towns in the occupied West Bank, to the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, to the imminent expulsion of eight villages in Masafer Yatta, to the outlawing of Palestinian civil society organizations, the “government of change” has been able to carry on Netanyahu-style policies vis-à-vis Palestinians with relatively little international scrutiny.

We’ve been spending the last year monitoring these developments from on the ground. Our exposé on the six Palestinian NGOs has been both instrumental in helping to defend Palestinian civil society and revealing that while Israel’s leadership may change, its attempts to silence its biggest critics have only grown more fierce.

Our reporters have been on the ground in places such as Masafer Yatta and Jerusalem to show how the settlers and Israeli security forces work in tandem to harass, attack, and dispossess Palestinians. Our clear and incisive analyses have been essential for readers’ understanding of how the erasure of the Green Line and the brutal clampdown on all forms of Palestinian resistance are part of this government’s attempt to ensure the stability of an apartheid regime that has ceased worrying about facing any consequences for its actions.

Things appear grim, and there is no promise that the next government won’t continue to turn Jewish supremacy into the norm and quash resistance to it. But the determination of Palestinian communities fighting for their home is unbending, as is the determination of activists — Israeli and international — to stand with them no matter what.

At +972 Magazine, our tool of resistance is bearing witness and sharing information and analysis with the world. Your monthly support would give us the resources needed to keep reporting from the ground and to resist the Israeli government’s efforts to deny the truth and silence the messengers. Become a member of +972 today!

In solidarity,
Edo