“Israeli president warns of civil war as Netanyahu rejects judicial compromise” was the title of an article published by The Guardian earlier this year, on March 15, 2023, against the background of the worrying transition of the Israeli public opinion from a pseudo-society to even less than that.

The Guardian articulated the report, referring to a televised address to Israelis by Isaac Herzog over the controversial judicial reforms plan of the sitting government led by Benjamin Netanyahu. “The last few weeks have been tearing us apart”, Herzog said in his televised address, warning that “Israel is in the throes of a profound crisis”.

To clarify himself further over the use of the term “profound crisis”, he continued saying, “anyone who thinks that a real civil war, of human life, is a line that we will not reach, has no idea”. And to emphasize on how imminent this “civil war” is, he said that the abyss “is within touching distance”.

This effort to sound the sirens was in line with Herzog’s attempt to bring the ruling coalition to the negotiation table, which needless to say, failed dramatically as Netanyahu immediately turned it down.

Now, around 7 months since the warning, given the unprecedented situation in Israel as the result of the Palestinian Resistance’s operation on October 7, the dark cloud of an internal conflict seems approaching closer. What seemed to be a treatable crack amongst the already broken structure of the Israeli pseudo-society nearly a year ago, is now a deep and wide split and an existential fracture for which, even the most optimistic sympathizers of Israel cannot offer any remedies.

With the Israeli government, along with the military, putting their foot down to postpone any conversations about the lives of Israelis captive in Gaza to after “erasing Hamas” on one hand, and the Israeli public opinion knowing that this objective will not get even close to realization on the other hand, a mere political disagreement within the socio-political spectrum of Israel has now transformed into a sheer matter of life and death.

And that’s when speech therapy and hiding behind trash talks on social media will not work anymore. This brief preface provides us with a better insight into a report published today by an Israeli media, reflecting the updated statistics of “requisitions for firearms license” in Israel. The title of report reads “requisitions for firearms license among Israelis since the beginning of the war has increased for more than 1800 precents”! The report quotes the latest data published by the Israeli ministry of national security.

“According to the data, in a time period of less than a month, the ministry of national security has received 236006 new requests for firearms licenses which amounts to the total number of the requisitions of the past 20 years!” reveals the report. Since the beginning of the war on Gaza, according to data, 31048 firearms licenses have been issued for those Israeli settlers who have passed the tests successfully, among whom, more than 18000 have used the license they received and purchased a firearm.

The report also mentions a record number of “1700 new requisitions per day” which indicates an increase of 1800 precents compared to similar periods in previous years! In sum, the perspective Israelis facing in the near future is dire. Although this trend might supposedly be, as Israeli propaganda machine pushes, a preparation progress for possible clashes with Palestinians in areas like the West Bank and 1948 borders soon after the tumult in Gaza is over, but any understanding form the situation will be short-sighted and naïve if the social turbulence in Israel is neglected.

The real severity of circumstances is perceived clearly only if we put the social turmoil next to the notion of “an uncapable government”; a term which can best describe the political apparatus of the Zionist Regime since more than one year ago.

The political dead-end derived from the fragility of the current radical coalition, along with never-experienced-before dissatisfaction of the military establishment from the policies put forth by the ruling government, was just one of the many poisonous combinations which dragged the Zionist Regime and its people down this path.

Therefore, in the bigger picture, on one side you have a very angry group of people (wrongfully called a nation) which sink deeper in fury as moments go by, and on the other side, a government which not only failed to maintain the security of this people, but also refrains to even speak to its own “citizens” about the lives of those held captive by the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza, let alone to negotiate for their return. And these two sides, standing opposite to each other, now both armed, constitute the “real confrontation” inside the Occupied Palestine in the near future. Or as Israel’s Herzog puts it, “a civil war” which is “in touching distance”.