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April 11th, 2021 
Awake Goy For those who follow Israeli politics, the news is continued stalemate. The fourth parliamentary election inside of two years on March 23 produced no clear result, and though Prime Minister Netanyahu got the nod from the Israeli president to try to form a governing coalition, it is quite an uphill climb for him. He has only 52 seats on his side, and his challenge is to pull over Naftali Bennett with seven seats and poach some defectors from the anti-Netanyahu bloc to get a majority.
Netanyahu is thought to still have the best chance to lead the government, though his presence sharply divides Israeli society and creates political instability, especially as he is tried on corruption charges. “I would say the fifth election would be a wash. Let’s meet ahead of the sixth election,” pollster Dahlia Scheindlin said earlier this week, speaking to the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies.
Let’s look at two contradictory developments of this election: 1, Israeli politics are more rightwing than ever. 2, Palestinians have been spoken of as kingmakers in the next government, with the rightwing party Ra’am, which won 4 seats, even saying it might support Netanyahu.
First, Israel’s politics are clearly moving to the right, with as many as 80 rightwing seats in the Knesset. (Gideon Levy and Scheindlin put that number at 70 or 72 — but I am counting Benny Gantz’s Blue/White in that number.)
This is the most rightwing parliament in Israeli history. The overall vote was about 60-40 rightwing to center-left; and Scheindlin says that reflects two trends in the last election.
a, A lot of center-left Israelis who support a Palestinian state voted for rightwing parties such as Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope and Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beteinu in order to get rid of Netanyahu.
b, Palestinian turnout was at historical lows, because they were demoralized. In the previous election, the Palestinian Joint List had offered to help form a center-left government, and maybe because of that feeling of inclusion, it reached a high of 15 seats; but the Joint List was promptly rejected by Benny Gantz. He wouldn’t make a government with Arabs! And this time all the Palestinian parties won 10 seats, a huge drop.
If Netanyahu were out of the way, Israel would have a rightwing government with a strong majority tomorrow. And several “hardline scenarios would happen without much resistance,” Scheindlin says. The government would move swiftly to solidify Israeli territorial claims, likely by annexation of portions of the West Bank, and also limit the independence of the courts. Scheindlin says that Israelis are still divided with a slim majority in favor of a Palestinian state, but she acknowledges there is a strong rightwing consensus on a “religious vision” of expanding and deepening and making permanent Israeli control over the occupied territories.
The Israeli political culture is dominated by a “virulent nationalist populist discourse in which it’s wrong to be leftwing,” she explains.
“It is generally understood whether you are religious or not that there is an integrity to the whole land of Israel and it must not be divided. The territories are called [by biblical names] Judea and Samaria normally, not just by the firm rightwingers.”
Now let’s look at the seemingly-contradictory trend: that Palestinians are mainstream players in a way they have never been.
Last week the head of the Islamist party Ra’am gave a primetime speech on Israeli television in Hebrew, which was hailed as a landmark political event, in which he called for co-existence and asserted his political leadership in the Arab community. Abbas did not use the word Palestinian, and did not say just who he would support. His speech was seen as a possible boon to Netanyahu, who had campaigned for conservative Palestinian votes– at the same time as he boosted Religious Zionism, a racist Jewish party that would surely expel Palestinians, and which won a shocking 6 seats, as part of that rightwing solidification. In the past this party was banned. Now it’s throwing its weight around, and people shrug.
Scheindlin says that the Netanyahu-Ra’am courtship is a continuation of the work Ayman Odeh, the head of the Palestinian Joint List, has been doing for years in Israel politics, making Palestinians players. In 2019 and 2021 Odeh broke down “taboos on Jewish Arab partnership.” Now Netanyahu is trying to take credit for that process.
But this is a fantasy. The Israeli political class is still not willing to accept Palestinians as equal players. For the rightwing parties, Palestinian citizens are simply “not legitimate” as political actors, Scheindlin says. Not for Naftali Bennett, not for Religious Zionism, not for large portions of Likud including Netanyahu. “Though Netanyahu is opportunistically considering” a deal with Ra’am, it won’t happen, Scheindlin predicts.
Just look what happened to the number 7 on the Labor list, now a member of Knesset: filmmaker Ibtisam Mara’ana Menuhin. “They [the right] went on the rampage as soon as her candidacy was known… to slander her,” Scheindlin says.
This sort of delegitimization is just as strong with respect to the non-Ra’am Palestinian parties: the Joint List, with six seats. Benny Gantz rejected them as partners last year; and those six legislators duly placed themselves outside of the Israeli mainstream when they were sworn in this week: They changed their oath of office, to commit to fighting occupation, or racism and apartheid. This caused an immediate rage among Israeli Jews. And just yesterday one of those legislators, Ofer Cassif, a Jew, was beaten during a protest in occupied East Jerusalem over the eviction of Palestinians, in the continued ethnic cleansing of the city. Video below. Yes, and why aren’t American liberal Zionists organizing American Jewish protests of the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem?
Consider Yair Lapid, Benny Gantz’s successor as the next possible Netanyahu-slayer. If Netanyahu fails to make a government, and Rivlin turns to the secular centrist Lapid, whose party Yesh Atid came in second to Netanyahu’s Likud (with 17 and 30 seats respectively) to form a Change Coalition government, arithmetic tells you that Lapid would have 61 “Change” mandates if you include all 10 Palestinian-party legislators. But Lapid won’t do that. Scheindlin says that next likely candidates for Rivlin will be a “triumvirate” of anti-Netanyahu pols, Lapid, Bennett, and Sa’ar, and they won’t touch the Palestinian parties.
In fact, she says, in the next month, Lapid and Bennett and Sa’ar will all be talking to Moshe Gafni of United Torah Judaism, the party of Ashkenazi ultra-orthodox, to try to win that party’s seven seats away from Netanyahu to a change government. “Well before they would ever consider going with the Joint List,” Scheindlin says.
The ultra-orthodox, after all, were part of Labor governments traditionally in Israel. That’s how the Jewish state works…
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