Netanyahu courted the far-right – and set his government on a reckless path

The Israeli prime minister faces protests against plans for the judiciary and settlements on one side, and the religious and far-right forces that he summoned up on the other, writes Donald Macintyre

The Israeli PM has provoked criticism from home and abroad to his plans (Amir Cohen)

The few dozen residents of Avigayil, a little Jewish settlement outpost in the arid, rocky South Hebron Hills had something to celebrate last week. The Israeli government gave it legal status for the first time in the two decades it has perched on its hilltop deep in the occupied West Bank.

All settlements, swallowing ever more of the land Palestinians want for their own state, are deemed by most democratic governments, including Britain’s, as illegal in international law But Avigayil, like eight other outposts similarly “authorised” last week, was illegal even in Israeli law, and indeed had been slated for demolition in the early 2000s by the then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

This legalisation, along with a pledge to build homes for 10,000 more settlers than the 475,000 already in the West Bank. followed recent murders by two lone Palestinians in East Jerusalem of at least ten Israelis including two children. The foreign ministers of Britain the US, France, Germany and Italy then announced their “strong opposition” to a “unilateral action which... will only serve to exacerbate tensions between Israelis and Palestinians.”