On the evening of July 21, former Education Minister Naftali Bennett handed over control of the New Right party to his former co-chair and fastest rising star of Israeli politics, Ayelet Shaked. The two wasted no time and went off the next morning to tour their prospective constituencies. The decision to launch their election campaign in the Etzion settlement bloc in the West Bank, with activists of the radical right Regavim movement at their side, does not augur well for the campaign. Shaked complained to reporters accompanying her that the state was not allocating the right resources to stop “a massive takeover of Area C” of the West Bank, which is under Israeli control, by the Palestinian Authority (PA). She added that the next defense minister and prime minister should address this issue as “a national priority.”

Regavim, undeterred by the fact that one of its founders and driving forces Bezalel Smotrich was recently appointed as transportation minister, is going after the government at full blast. On July 19, it took out full-page newspaper ads headlined, “A Terrorist State - Just Around the Corner.” The text accused the government of “napping on the job” and allowing the PA to build 28,651 structures since 2012 in Area C of the West Bank, which is under full Israeli control as designated by the 1993 Oslo Accord, which the political right dubs “a criminal act." Regavim, whose representatives form part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current transition government, are calling on ministers and Knesset members to “take immediate action to prevent a terrorist state in our backyard.”

The parties competing against the ruling Likud for right-wing voters are holding up the red rag of “Khan al-Ahmar,” the small West Bank Bedouin village slated for eviction under a court-sanctioned government order. In May, after the Supreme Court approved the government’s sixth postponement — under heavy international pressure — of the eviction, Regavim stated, “This is a test of the government’s willingness to counter the PA’s plan to take over uninhabited lands in Judea and Samaria” (using the biblical names of the West Bank). In January, the chair of Yisrael Beitenu party, Avigdor Liberman, said Khan al-Ahmar “symbolizes the takeover of state lands by the PA.” Two months later, Bennett demanded that Netanyahu reject international pressure and allow the planned eviction. “This is a state of law, do what you promised and raze Khan al-Ahmar,” the then-chair of the New Right party pontificated.

Human rights activists involved in the struggle against the village demolition told Al-Monitor this week they were readying for the evacuation to take place prior to the Sept. 17 elections. The activists, along with international organizations, were helpless in the face of the massive police forces that took control of the Palestinian Jerusalem neighborhood of Sur Baher on July 21, to make way for the bulldozers sent to tear down 13 buildings.