The government’s only strategy is to "go from one use of force to the next without considering any measure, idea or tool that could restore calm. The only tools it uses are those that lead to further deterioration.” This was how the former head of Israel’s Mossad, Shabtai Shavit, described on Dec. 17 the approach of the government in the face of the violent escalation in the West Bank. Shavit, interviewed on Kan Radio, argued that decisions such as expelling terrorists’ families from their homes or bulldozing their homes, allegedly aimed at deterring potential terrorists, are unacceptable by international law, and their damage to Israel could far outweigh their benefits.

Indeed, by using more and more force, Israel’s right-wing government doggedly refuses to draw the obvious inference from its policies — deeper occupation, settlement expansion and destabilization of the Palestinian Authority (PA) — and the price Israel is paying and will be forced to pay for generations.

The decision adopted on Dec. 16 by the Ministerial Committee on Legislation was perhaps the strangest measure taken by the government recently, in that respect — a bill that has nothing to do with terror deterrence and everything to do with advancing the West Bank settlement ideology. In fact, the proposal simply exploits the current West Bank escalation for advancing that ideology. The ministers overwhelmingly approved the bill that was proposed by far-right Knesset member Bezalel Smotrich of HaBayit HaYehudi. If approved by the Knesset plenum, it would legalize more than 60 outposts and settlement neighborhoods built illegally on private Palestinian lands over the past 20 years. The bill also calls for the government to provide residents with municipal services and freeze all plans to raze their homes. What’s more, it authorizes the finance minister to guarantee mortgages taken out by settlers to buy homes in the newly legalized outposts.

Advancing this controversial bill was the government’s way of reacting to a string of Palestinian terror attacks against Israelis in the West Bank over the past week, especially the Dec. 13 shooting death of two soldiers adjacent to the outpost of Givat Asaf some 4 kilometers south of the established settlement of Beit El.