The Israeli elections do not represent a contest between right and left, or between extremism and moderation, but between an extremist racist Zionist right and an even more extreme racist Zionist right. The competition, as far as the Palestinians are concerned, revolves around who can lead Israel with greater effectiveness and fewer losses to achieve the goals of the Zionist movement through annexation, Judaization, and whatever ethnic cleansing of Palestinians can be achieved. The evidence for this is conclusive, as the Zionist opposition parties, without exception, agree on rejecting an end to the occupation, rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state, and rejecting the dismantling of Israeli settlement colonies or a halt to their growth.
One of the leaders of the Israeli opposition, Avigdor Lieberman, says: "We will not evacuate any settlement, and there will be no Palestinian state," and calls for cancelling the Oslo Accords and dismantling the Palestinian Authority. The leader of the Zionist opposition, Gadi Eisenkot, a former chief of staff, affirms his support for the continuation of Zionist settlement in the West Bank and his explicit opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state, and stresses the role of settlement in preserving Israel as a state with a solid Jewish majority, adding: "There must not be any military force between the Jordan River and the sea other than the Israeli army, with continued freedom of security action." His plan practically calls for annexing 58% of the West Bank and keeping the rest under Israeli security control, and he pledges to renew the war on the Gaza Strip to eliminate the Hamas movement, as he says.
The program of Eisenkot's party (Yesh Atid) affirms the necessity of strengthening settlement blocs and establishing new settlement colonies legally in accordance with the Israeli national interest. The program of Naftali Bennett's list, the other pole of the Zionist opposition and ally of Lapid, says: "We support Jewish settlement anywhere it takes place legally (according to Israeli law, of course, not international law), and oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state and withdrawal from the occupied territories, as well as oppose the evacuation of Jewish settlements, and consider Area C part of Israeli sovereignty." The Democrats party, which represents an alliance between the Labor and Meretz parties, says: "The concept of managing the conflict failed after October 7; the Israeli army and Shin Bet must have complete freedom of action in the occupied territories and beyond."
There is, of course, no need to review the positions of the ruling fascist Zionist parties, whose terrorist practices precede their words, and most of whose programs boil down to one sentence: annexation, Judaization, and ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the entire West Bank. The practices of its ministers, from Netanyahu to Ben Gvir to Smotrich, have become the embodiment of fascist racism in its ugliest forms.
The similarity of the positions of the government and Zionist opposition parties is no coincidence, as they all seek to win the votes of Israeli voters, who represent a society that has turned, by its overwhelming majority, toward extreme racism, reaching the limits of fascism in its view of the Palestinian people. At the same time, attempts by many Western bodies and governments, in addition to supporters of the shameful normalization with Israel and its advocates, do not stop trying to portray the Israeli opposition as seeking peace, and they bet on it to beautify Israel's ugly image, marked by scenes of genocide and colonial settler terrorism, and to justify their inaction in taking any punitive measures against Israel's violations of international law and the decisions of international courts, and its persistence in using settler terrorism and state terrorism to complete the implementation of the "settler-colonial replacement project" and expel those remaining Palestinians from their homeland.
The error becomes even more grave when some Palestinian officials believe or think that the Israeli opposition might fulfill their hopes by reviving the Oslo Accords, after the Israeli government tore them up and made them scattered dust, ignoring that the Israeli opposition parties themselves reject that agreement and every idea of a compromise solution with the Palestinian people. The whole matter turns into a sad scene of trying to salvage an illusion whose failure has been proven, by clinging to new illusions for which there is no justification.
Whether Netanyahu's ruling coalition wins, or the Zionist opposition wins, or a coalition government is formed between the two sides, which is most likely, in addition to the possibility of Netanyahu's government remaining as a caretaker due to everyone's failure to obtain a majority, the task before the Palestinian people and their living forces remains as it was: the necessity of changing the balance of power in favor of the Palestinian people through steadfastness and remaining, and resisting settler terrorism and the war of genocide by all available means, and through mobilizing the broadest international solidarity support to impose boycott and sanctions on the occupation government and racist oppression. This requires abandoning the stubbornness of division and partisan and personal factionalism, and prioritizing the supreme national interest, by forming a unified national leadership that adopts a sincere struggle strategy to confront the most dangerous stage in the history of the Palestinian people and their life.
Do not cling to illusions, and do not allow those complicit in and covering up the occupation's crimes to sell illusions once again, and "the believer is not bitten from the same hole twice."
