Knesset Member Ofer Cassif, who represents Israel’s communist Hadash party, says the rolling back of Israel’s democratic values is a consequence of the way the country has been ruled for more than half a century.
“There is no democracy with occupation. For more than 50 years now, Israel has been engaged in an ongoing dictatorship, a military dictatorship, in the occupied Palestinian territories, East Jerusalem, West Bank and the Gaza Strip,” Cassif told Al Jazeera.
“Either there is democracy or there is no democracy. With occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, which Israel has been pursuing for ages – in the last two years and especially in the last seven months even more so – there cannot be any democracy,” he said.
Therefore, Cassif said, the country is unsurprisingly undergoing a transformation. “Other laws are behind the corner and they are going to turn Israel into a full-fledged fascist dictatorship in which the most fanatic zealot components are in power,” he said.
