Top 10 Political and Diplomatic Mistakes Israel Is About To Make

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#1. The loyalty oath

The Loyalty Oath is an amendment to the Law of Citizenship that would require, if approved by the Knesset, non-Jewish citizens to pledge allegiance to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. According to this law, the oath does not concern the Jewish people.

The measure has been deemed as racist and is construed as a demand of Lieberman’s Israel Beiteinu party, which is thus preparing the way for the premiership.

The amendment has already been approved by the cabinet by a 22-8 vote, and it needs passing three Knesset votes in the coming months.

#2. Deportation of children who want to be Israelis

The Interior Minister Eli Yishai, leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas, demanded that 400 children of the foreign workers who no longer have residence in Israel be expelled from the country, though many of them were born in Israel, and that they want to remain there and become citizens of Israel, feeling that this is their country.

Most of these children know no other country and, like their parents, have proved good citizens.

Yishai conceived this request of deportation as a means to fight the possible flood of millions of people to Israel, which would alter the Jewish feature of the state.

The problem could be solved by a serious policy on foreign nationals, refugees, asylum seekers.

According to the Interior Minister, the deportations will begin in a few weeks. He added that he could have asked another 10,000 people to leave but he did not do so.

#3. Expanding settlement in East Jerusalem

The expanding of settlements in East Jerusalem is a plan to expel many Palestinians from East Jerusalem areas of Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah, and to create a larger tourism site.

Any changes in Jerusalem with the implication of municipality and police would have devastating consequences as it can be seen today, when the Palestinians have become very angry because of the attempt of the Israeli PM to approve the building of 240 new housing units in East Jerusalem.

#4. Resuming construction of the Jerusalem Mausoleum of Tolerance

The construction is an idea of Simon Wiesenthal Center and is being built on a Muslim cemetery in the center of Jerusalem.

The place where the monument is being set and its extravagance have infuriated the Arabs and the moderate Jewish population in Jerusalem and throughout the world.

#5. Perpetuating the siege on Gaza

Gaza has been ruled since 2007 by the Hamas, an organization that has won democratic elections in the region. Since then, the Israeli government has imposed a blockade on the strip, preventing any person or means of transportation from going in or out.

The situation has created a huge humanitarian crisis, which has brought very angry critics upon Israel, ranging from polite request to interfere by means of humanitarian aids to drawing comparisons with the situation of the Jews during the Nazi regime in Europe in the 1940s.

#6. The use of dogs in future intervention against aid boats to Gaza

The decision was considered after the incident on Mavi Marmara in May when, according to the Israeli army statement, the Israel soldiers were attacked by the Turkish nationals aboard the ship thus provoking a response that ended in the death of nine people and a diplomatic conflict with Turkey.

#7. Preventing the entry/jailing/expelling Nobel Prize winners, intellectuals or writers

The reference is direct to the Mairead Corrigan-Maguire case, a Nobel Prize laureate, which was harassed, jailed and deported on October 5, after spending time in detention, by the state for protecting the rights of the Palestinians.

#8. Consciously and intentionally antagonizing Turkey and other Middle East neighbors

On May 30, a scandal put and (temporary) end to the close ties between Israel and Turkey, a longstanding relations that had been extremely helpful to Israel for decades.

What IDF wanted to be a simple search of a Turkish-flagged humanitarian boat called Mavi Marmara resulted in a blood bath as the Israeli army opened fire on the people aboard, leaving 9 Turkish nationals dead.

The scandal erupted, with the Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan remembering the Israeli that Turkey will not stand by and watch its citizens killed, with the Israeli PM trying to convince the international community that Israel acted under the international law and made no mistake, though it did regret what had happened on that day.

Israel found itself lonely in the military scene in a time when the Iranian threat was more present than ever. To solve at least the military drilling problem, the Jewish state made new military friends such as Romania, drilling on Romanian territory and going through a very regrettable accident that claimed the life of 6 Israeli soldiers.

In an attempt to thaw the relations between the previous friendly states, Ban Ki-moon, U.N. Secretary General proposed a panel of inquiry into the incident in May.

The panel was led by Geoffrey Palmer, former New Zealand PM, and Alvaro Uribe, former President of Colombia.

The Israeli government did not accept to talk to the panel unless it renounced its claim to interview the soldiers that participated in the Mavi Marmara incident. They claimed that it was for security reason. The people on board of Mavi say that the soldiers had looted them of their belongings, and that would be a strong cause not to come forth with it.

The conclusion of the panel, issued in September, was extremely contrary to what the Israelis had expected. In it, the Israeli army was accused of “salvage, over brutal” conduct.

Netanyahu said it was an exaggerated, “racist,” and unbalanced report, and he said the government members “will read it.”

On their part, the Turkish officials were very satisfied with the conclusions, and requested an official apology from the Israelis, to the end of ending the conflict.

However, at the U.N. General Assembly in September another diplomatic incident happened between the two parties, as President Peres refused to meet his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul motivating that the Turks had imposed unacceptable conditions.

#9. Consciously and intentionally antagonizing U.S. and the EU over the peace with Palestinians

The peace process is almost compromised because of the incapacity of Benjamin Netanyahu to extend the settlement freeze on the West Bank territory.

Mahmoud Abbas had promised that if the construction process didn’t stop, the direct talks will. And so they did.

In an attempt to settle the problem, the U.S. proposed Israel a package of incentives to extend the settlement freeze for a few more months. Israel refused and this week the Israeli PM accused the U.S. for the failure of negotiations because of the pressure they had put and the fact that they had supported the Palestinian claims.

#10. Failing to do something about Avigdor Lieberman

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman created a diplomatic incident as he revealed the content of the discussions with European leaders.

He is known also for his remarks regarding the Israeli Arabs, calling for their expulsion from Israel.11