Barring a last-minute upset as the final ballot papers are counted, Israelis have made their verdict clear: Netanyahu’s time is up.
In April’s inconclusive election, which led to this re-run, Netanyahu’s Likud party tied with its main opponent in the Blue and White party, led by retired general Benny Gantz. This time Gantz appears to have nudged ahead, with 33 seats to Netanyahu’s 31 in the 120-member parliament. Both parties fared worse than they did in April, when they each secured 35 seats.
But much more significantly, Netanyahu has fallen short of the 61-seat majority he needs to form yet another far-right government comprising settler and religious parties.
His failure is all the more glaring, given that he conducted by far the ugliest – and most reckless – campaign in Israeli history. That was because the stakes were sky-high.
Only a government of the far-right – one entirely beholden to Netanyahu – could be relied on to pass legislation guaranteeing him immunity from a legal process due to begin next month. Without it, he is likely to be indicted on multiple charges of fraud and breach of trust.
So desperate was Netanyahu to avoid that fate, according to reports published in the Israeli media on election day, that he was only a hair’s breadth away from launching a war on Gaza last week as a way to postpone the election.
Israel’s chief law officer, attorney general Avichai Mendelblit, stepped in to halt the attack when he discovered the security cabinet had approved it only after Netanyahu concealed the army command’s major reservations.
Netanyahu also tried to bribe right-wing voters by promising last week that he would annex much of the West Bank immediately after the election – a stunt that blatantly violated campaigning laws, according to Mendelblit.
Facebook was forced to shut down Netanyahu’s page on two occasions for hate speech – in one case after it sent out a message that “Arabs want to annihilate us all – women, children and men”. That sentiment appeared to include the 20 per cent of the Israeli population who are Palestinian citizens.
Netanyahu incited against the country’s Palestinian minority in other ways, not least by constantly suggesting that their votes constituted fraud and that they were trying to “steal the election”.
He even tried to force through a law allowing his Likud party activists to film in Arab polling stations – as they covertly did in April’s election – in an unconcealed attempt at voter intimidation.
The move appeared to have backfired, with Palestinian citizens turning out in larger numbers than they did in April.
US President Donald Trump, meanwhile, intervened on Netanyahu’s behalf by announcing the possibility of a defence pact requiring the US to come to Israel’s aid in the event of a regional confrontation.
None of it helped.
Netanayhu’s only hope of political survival – and possible avoidance of jail time – depends on his working the political magic he is famed for.
That may prove a tall order. To pass the 61-seat threshold, he had to persuade his neo-fascist mate Avigdor Lieberman and his ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party to support him.
Netanyahu and Lieberman, who is a settler, are normally ideological allies. But these are not normal times. Netanyahu had to restage the election this week after Lieberman, sensing the prime minister’s weakness, refused in April to sit alongside religious parties in a Netanyahu-led government.
Netanyahu most certainly tried to lure the fickle Lieberman back with an irresistible offer, such as the two of them rotating the prime ministership. But Lieberman risked huge public opprobrium if, after putting the country through a deeply unpopular re-run election, he now does what he refused "on principle" to do five months ago.
Lieberman increased his party’s number of seats to eight by insisting that he is the champion of the secular Israeli public. Most importantly for Lieberman, he found himself once again in the role of kingmaker. It is almost certain he will shape the character of the next government. And whoever he anoints as prime minister will be indebted to him.
Nonetheless, from the perspective of Palestinians – whether those under occupation or those living in Israel as third-class citizens – the next Israeli government is going to be a hardline right one just like Netanyahu's.
Gantz's backbone comprises Blue and White, led by a bevy of hawkish generals, and Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu. It will be more of the same thing as Netanyahu’s.
Gantz even accused Netanyahu of stealing his idea in announcing last week that he would annex large parts of the West Bank.
As I said above, Netanyahu has tried every trick in and out the book to win Tuesday's Knesset elections but failed to secure enough seats to form a government.
For months, the incumbent premier lied to his constituency, ridiculed his competitors, flouted electoral rules, demonised the Palestinian minority in Israel, bombed several neighbouring countries, announced new illegal settlements, vowed to annex a third of the occupied West Bank, and trotted around like a superhero with US and Russian leaders.
All to no avail.
He could not shake off the accusations of corruption, fraud and deceit. His insistence that only he can secure Israel's future fell on deaf ears. If we take these elections as a referendum on Netanyahu, then he is passe, done, expired.
Or is he?
Some reckon the Teflon premier may be down, but by no means out. They say he is a survivor, a slippery seasoned statesman. He has already formed a block of 55 parliamentarians along with his natural fanatic and fascist allies, which he hopes will get him the mandate to set up the next cabinet.
If not, he could manufacture a national crisis or go to war in order to create the type of emergency that forces his former defence minister-turned-opponent, Avigdor Lieberman, to abandon his red line and join his coalition.
But short of such fantastical scenarios, the math doesn't add up; he doesn't have the 61 seats necessary to form a government.
And since Likud fared poorer in September than in April, it may only be a question of time before voices from within the party called for him to step aside until his legal woes are over.
Worse for Netanyahu, he is likely to end up in prison like his predecessor Ehud Olmert, because Israel is far more likely to half punish its leaders for corruption than the ICC for their war crimes.
But contrary to the conventional wisdom among liberals, the alternative to a Netanyahu-led government is not necessarily any better for peace.
Unable to establish narrow coalition governments, the two major parties - White and Blue and Likud - are likely to enter negotiations over a future national (Jewish) unity government, possibly with other right-wing parties like Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu. There is no appetite for holding a third election in a year, even if this remains a possibility, especially for Netanyahu.
But a broad general-led nationalist unity government of extreme and centre-right parties does not bode well for the future of Israel or Palestine, regardless of who heads it. In fact, the result may still prove worse for those most affected by an Israeli election - the Palestinian people, the vast majority of whom get no vote at all.
Moreover, the Israeli vote confirms some larger trends that will shape the future of Israel/Palestine more than any one particular leader.
First, there is the continuing marginalisation of the so-called leftist Zionists who dominated governments during Israel's first three decades. Their leftovers, notably Labor and Meretz, have been incorporated into small centre-right coalitions which in the next parliament will command fewer seats than even the Arab List. If they had not joined other smaller parties, they might not have reached the minimum required 3.25 percent to enter parliament. The Israeli left might have failed to reconcile Zionism with the protection of basic human rights - an impossible task - but at least they showed signs of a breathing conscience. Now the left is on life support.
Second, there is the expansion of the Israeli right right, including extreme, secular/centre and religious right-wing parties, which together occupy more than three-quarters of the Knesset seats. While the populist Netanyahu may lose his leadership, the ideological right continues to grow and dominate the Israeli polity.
Anyone expecting an FW de Klerk to emerge from these elections should have their head examined. Israel's own version of apartheid continues to deepen in the occupied Palestinian territories where some 650,000 illegal settlers live with the privileges of a "superior people", not so different from pre-1994 whites in South Africa. Not a day goes by without an increase in the illegal settlements, which has created a one-state reality governed by two separate and unequal systems; one for the Jews and one for the Palestinians.
Third, this week's elections have demonstrated once again that Israelis accept and embrace only top generals as the alternative to extremist right-wing leaders like Netanyahu - generals with reputations for colonial violence and war.
Like Labor's Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak, and Kadima's Ariel Sharon, former military chief of staff Benny Gantz campaigned on a record of toughness and a notably bloody war in Gaza, in which hundreds of Palestinian children perished. He has shown no interest whatsoever in a fair and just settlement with the Palestinians.
If Netanyahu is shameless, Gantz is ruthless.
Fourth, religious parties are becoming even more radicalised. In the first three decades of the state, religious parties were either allies or appeasers of secular Labor Zionism, but over the past four decades, they have increasingly tilted towards Likud and the radical right, so much so that they will not even consider joining a coalition with centrist Zionist parties today.
Fifth, the secular-religious divide is deepening. The hostility between secular and religious camps is the main reason Netanyahu failed to form a government last April. The divide is mostly cultural or social and hovers over issues like civic marriage and exemptions from military service for Orthodox Jews.
However, there is little or no disagreement on maintaining the occupation, or demonising Palestinians and denying them equal rights in their own homeland. Indeed, those like the secular or even atheist Zionists who insist on driving on Sabbath and eating nonkosher food, are the same who also hold that God promised Palestine to the Jewish people.
All of this leads us to the sixth trend confirmed by this election, which stands in opposition to the depressing nature of the others. This is the continuing rise and coalescing of the Palestinian minority in Israel. What once was a meagre, divided, and humiliated indigenous group has risen as a defiant and confident national minority insisting on full democratic and cultural rights in an Israel that represents all its citizens - Jews and Palestinians - alike. They have done this despite the growing hostility and racism emanating from the Israeli right. Or perhaps because of it.
The formation of a national unity government will de facto render the Arab List - the third-largest bloc in the Knesset - the official opposition party, with privileges, including top-level security briefings for its leader. But the next prime minister may well ignore or get around the law which grants such prerogatives to the opposition, as racism against the Palestinians deepens further.
I keep hearing the question: What is next?
All these trends will continue to shape and constrain the behaviour of the next prime minister. No leader of a national (Jewish) unity government will be willing, let alone capable of, taking any serious step towards peace, not when the likes of Likud is omnipresent.
The 1980s Labor-Likud national unity government following the disastrous Likud years in government failed miserably to undo the damage or reverse the rise of the right, championed by its founder, the late war criminal Menachem Begin, the polish immigrant and former leader of Zionist terrorist group Irgun during the Nakba in 1948.
Any new leader will also strive to maintain and strengthen Israel's relations with the Trump administration which have proven a very staunch supporter of Israel.
Indeed, the next prime minister might find the White House's disastrous "deal of the century" the most practical course of action and the safest way to keep his coalition intact. It may prove the best way to keep the Americans in, the Arabs out, and the Palestinians down.
This may all be quite depressing for those who care about peace and justice in Israel/Palestine. But at least, for now, we will not have to suffer through another of Netanyahu's pompous and pugnacious Goebbles-style performances at the United Nations this year.
All to no avail.
He could not shake off the accusations of corruption, fraud and deceit. His insistence that only he can secure Israel's future fell on deaf ears. If we take these elections as a referendum on Netanyahu, then he is passe, done, expired.
Or is he?
Some reckon the Teflon premier may be down, but by no means out. They say he is a survivor, a slippery seasoned statesman. He has already formed a block of 55 parliamentarians along with his natural fanatic and fascist allies, which he hopes will get him the mandate to set up the next cabinet.
If not, he could manufacture a national crisis or go to war in order to create the type of emergency that forces his former defence minister-turned-opponent, Avigdor Lieberman, to abandon his red line and join his coalition.
But short of such fantastical scenarios, the math doesn't add up; he doesn't have the 61 seats necessary to form a government.
And since Likud fared poorer in September than in April, it may only be a question of time before voices from within the party called for him to step aside until his legal woes are over.
Worse for Netanyahu, he is likely to end up in prison like his predecessor Ehud Olmert, because Israel is far more likely to half punish its leaders for corruption than the ICC for their war crimes.
But contrary to the conventional wisdom among liberals, the alternative to a Netanyahu-led government is not necessarily any better for peace.
Unable to establish narrow coalition governments, the two major parties - White and Blue and Likud - are likely to enter negotiations over a future national (Jewish) unity government, possibly with other right-wing parties like Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu. There is no appetite for holding a third election in a year, even if this remains a possibility, especially for Netanyahu.
But a broad general-led nationalist unity government of extreme and centre-right parties does not bode well for the future of Israel or Palestine, regardless of who heads it. In fact, the result may still prove worse for those most affected by an Israeli election - the Palestinian people, the vast majority of whom get no vote at all.
Moreover, the Israeli vote confirms some larger trends that will shape the future of Israel/Palestine more than any one particular leader.
First, there is the continuing marginalisation of the so-called leftist Zionists who dominated governments during Israel's first three decades. Their leftovers, notably Labor and Meretz, have been incorporated into small centre-right coalitions which in the next parliament will command fewer seats than even the Arab List. If they had not joined other smaller parties, they might not have reached the minimum required 3.25 percent to enter parliament. The Israeli left might have failed to reconcile Zionism with the protection of basic human rights - an impossible task - but at least they showed signs of a breathing conscience. Now the left is on life support.
Second, there is the expansion of the Israeli right right, including extreme, secular/centre and religious right-wing parties, which together occupy more than three-quarters of the Knesset seats. While the populist Netanyahu may lose his leadership, the ideological right continues to grow and dominate the Israeli polity.
Anyone expecting an FW de Klerk to emerge from these elections should have their head examined. Israel's own version of apartheid continues to deepen in the occupied Palestinian territories where some 650,000 illegal settlers live with the privileges of a "superior people", not so different from pre-1994 whites in South Africa. Not a day goes by without an increase in the illegal settlements, which has created a one-state reality governed by two separate and unequal systems; one for the Jews and one for the Palestinians.
Third, this week's elections have demonstrated once again that Israelis accept and embrace only top generals as the alternative to extremist right-wing leaders like Netanyahu - generals with reputations for colonial violence and war.
Like Labor's Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak, and Kadima's Ariel Sharon, former military chief of staff Benny Gantz campaigned on a record of toughness and a notably bloody war in Gaza, in which hundreds of Palestinian children perished. He has shown no interest whatsoever in a fair and just settlement with the Palestinians.
If Netanyahu is shameless, Gantz is ruthless.
Fourth, religious parties are becoming even more radicalised. In the first three decades of the state, religious parties were either allies or appeasers of secular Labor Zionism, but over the past four decades, they have increasingly tilted towards Likud and the radical right, so much so that they will not even consider joining a coalition with centrist Zionist parties today.
Fifth, the secular-religious divide is deepening. The hostility between secular and religious camps is the main reason Netanyahu failed to form a government last April. The divide is mostly cultural or social and hovers over issues like civic marriage and exemptions from military service for Orthodox Jews.
However, there is little or no disagreement on maintaining the occupation, or demonising Palestinians and denying them equal rights in their own homeland. Indeed, those like the secular or even atheist Zionists who insist on driving on Sabbath and eating nonkosher food, are the same who also hold that God promised Palestine to the Jewish people.
All of this leads us to the sixth trend confirmed by this election, which stands in opposition to the depressing nature of the others. This is the continuing rise and coalescing of the Palestinian minority in Israel. What once was a meagre, divided, and humiliated indigenous group has risen as a defiant and confident national minority insisting on full democratic and cultural rights in an Israel that represents all its citizens - Jews and Palestinians - alike. They have done this despite the growing hostility and racism emanating from the Israeli right. Or perhaps because of it.
The formation of a national unity government will de facto render the Arab List - the third-largest bloc in the Knesset - the official opposition party, with privileges, including top-level security briefings for its leader. But the next prime minister may well ignore or get around the law which grants such prerogatives to the opposition, as racism against the Palestinians deepens further.
I keep hearing the question: What is next?
All these trends will continue to shape and constrain the behaviour of the next prime minister. No leader of a national (Jewish) unity government will be willing, let alone capable of, taking any serious step towards peace, not when the likes of Likud is omnipresent.
The 1980s Labor-Likud national unity government following the disastrous Likud years in government failed miserably to undo the damage or reverse the rise of the right, championed by its founder, the late war criminal Menachem Begin, the polish immigrant and former leader of Zionist terrorist group Irgun during the Nakba in 1948.
Any new leader will also strive to maintain and strengthen Israel's relations with the Trump administration which have proven a very staunch supporter of Israel.
Indeed, the next prime minister might find the White House's disastrous "deal of the century" the most practical course of action and the safest way to keep his coalition intact. It may prove the best way to keep the Americans in, the Arabs out, and the Palestinians down.
This may all be quite depressing for those who care about peace and justice in Israel/Palestine. But at least, for now, we will not have to suffer through another of Netanyahu's pompous and pugnacious Goebbles-style performances at the United Nations this year.
PALESTINA
Must Watch - Abby Martin introduces her documentary: "Gaza fights for Freedom"
Before leaving office, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is moving quickly to alter the political reality in Palestine, and facing little or no resistance.
On September 10, Netanyahu declared his intentions to annex swathes of Palestinian land adjacent to the Jordan River, an area that covers 2,400 square kilometers, or nearly a third of the Occupied West Bank. That region, which extends from Bisan in the north to Jericho in the south, is considered to be Palestine’s food basket, as it accounts for an estimated 60 percent of vegetables that are produced in the West Bank.
While Israel has already colonized nearly 88 percent of the entire Palestinian Ghoor (or Jordan Valley), dividing it between illegal agricultural settlements and military zones, it was always assumed that the militarily occupied region will be included within the border of a future Palestinian state.
Netanyahu’s announcement has been linked to Israel’s general elections of September 17. The Israeli leader is desperate, as he is facing “unprecedented alliances” that are all closing in to unseat him from his political throne. But this cannot be all. Not even power-hungry Netanyahu would alter the political and territorial landscape of Israel and Palestine indefinitely in exchange for a few votes.
Indeed, talks of annexation have been afoot for years and have long preceded the September elections, or the previous ones in April.
A sense of euphoria has been felt among Israel’s rightwing officials since the advent of Donald Trump to the White House. The excitement was not directly linked to Trump but to his Middle East team, like-minded pro-Israel US officials whose support for Israel is predicated on more than personal interests, but religious and ideological beliefs as well.
White House senior adviser, Jared Kushner, selected his team very carefully: Jason Greenblatt as special envoy for Middle East peace, David Friedman as United States Ambassador to Israel, and layers of other second-tier officials whose mission was never aimed at resolving conflict or brokering peace, but supervising a process in which Israel finalizes its colonization of Palestine unhindered.
Kushner’s master stroke is epitomized in the way he presented his objectives as part of a political process, later named “Deal of the Century”.
In all fairness, Kushner’s team hardly labored, or even pretended to be, peacemakers, especially as they oversaw the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and of the occupied Golan Heights as Israeli territories. Indeed, none of these officials tried to hide their true motives. Just examine statements made by the just-resigned Greenblatt where he refused to name illegal Jewish settlements as such, but as “neighborhoods and cities”; and Friedman’s outright support for the annexation of parts of the Occupied West Bank, and much more.
The US political discourse seemed in complete alignment with that of Israel’s right-wing parties. When right-wing extremist politicians, the likes of Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked, began floating the idea of annexing most or all of the Occupied West Bank, they no longer sounded like marginal and opportunistic voices vying for attention. They were at the center of Israeli politics, knowing full well that Washington no longer had a problem with Israel’s unilateral action.
It could be argued, then, that Netanyahu was merely catching up, as the center of gravity within his right-wing coalition was slipping away to younger, more daring politicians. In fact, Israel, as a whole, was changing. With the Labor Party becoming almost entirely irrelevant, the Center’s political ideology moved further to the right, simply because supporting an independent Palestinian state in Israel has become a form of political suicide.
Therefore, Netanyahu’s call for the annexation of Palestinian land east of the Jordan River must not be understood in isolation and only within the limited context of the Israeli elections. Israel is now set to annex large parts of the West Bank that it deems strategic. This is most likely to include all illegal settlement blocks and the Jordan Valley as well.
In fact, Netanyahu said on September 11 that he was ready to annex the Jordan Valley region even before the election date, but was blocked by the Attorney General’s office. Netanyahu would not have taken such a decision if it represented a political risk or if it faced a pushback from Washington. It is, then, sadly, a matter of time.
Suspiciously absent in all of this are the Palestinian Authority (PA), the Arab League, the European Union and, of course, the United Nations and its many outlets and courts. Aside from a few shy statements – like that of the spokesperson of the UN, Stéphane Dujarric, decrying that “unilateral actions are not helpful in the peace process” – Israeli leaders are facing little or no hindrance whatsoever as they finalize their complete colonization of all Palestinian land.
Unable to stage any kind of meaningful resistance against Israel, the Palestinian leadership is so pathetically insisting on utilizing old terminologies. The official Palestinian response to Netanyahu’s annexation pledge, as communicated by Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh, came only to underscore the PA’s political bankruptcy.
“Netanyahu is the chief destroyer of the peace process,” Shtayyeh said, warning that annexing parts of the West Bank would have negative consequences.
For his part, the PA leader Mahmoud Abbas resorted, once more, to empty threats. Abbas said in a statement, “All agreements and their resulting obligations would end if the Israeli side annexes the Jordan Valley, the northern Dead Sea, and any part of the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967.”
Neither Abbas nor Shtayyeh seem troubled by the fact that a “peace process” does not exist, and that Israel has already violated all agreements.
While the PA is desperately hanging on to any reason to justify its continued existence, Netanyahu, with the full support of Washington, is moving forward in annexing the West Bank, thus making apartheid an official and undisputed reality.
The Palestinian leadership must understand that the nature of the conflict is now changing. Conventional methods and empty statements will not slow down the Israeli push for annexation nor Tel Aviv’s determination to expand its apartheid to all of Palestine. If Palestinians continue to ignore this reality altogether, Israel will continue to single-handedly shape the destiny of Palestine and its people. No matter who the Prime Minister is.
BRASIL
VENEZUELA
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