The former Israeli prime minister launches a new campaign to return to power and thus contain the process he has opened for corruption
After a twelve-month hiatus as opposition leader, Benyamin Netanyahu is once again immersed in an electoral campaign to regain the prime ministerial seat he has held for fifteen years, twelve of them consecutively. Israel will go to the polls on November 1 and the only question is whether, unlike the last four elections held since 2019, Netanyahu will manage to forge a coalition that exceeds 61 seats. Nobody doubts the certain victory of Likud and in the next four months the conservative leader will fight to retake power by all means, since the progress of the process he has opened for corruption may depend on his return to the head of government.
These elections are a new opportunity to save Netanyahu’s political and personal career and save him from going to prison. The defections of deputies, the wear and tear every time a vote had to be overcome, the disagreements with the Arab allies when the Israeli forces stormed the Esplanade of the Mosques or after the brutal charge at the funeral of the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh forced Naftali Bennet to dissolve the House. And this occurred without the coalition in these twelve months carrying out what is known as the ‘Law of the Accused’, or colloquially the ‘Anti-Bibi Law’, a mechanism that would prevent a deputy in criminal proceedings from forming a government for crimes punishable by at least three years from prison It was not done on time and now Netanyahu is back at it with full force.
The government coalition led by two former Likud leader dolphins such as Bennet and Yair Lapid has broken up on the ultra-nationalist side and now Netanyahu hopes to fish in a troubled river. Yamina, Bennet’s party, has not passed the test and the shock of its deputies left the Executive in the minority in the Chamber and forced Bennet to cede the position to Lapid as part of the rotation government agreement they agreed and announce that he will not attend to the next elections.
Personal disputes or the process for corruption overshadow political discussions and divert attention from key issues such as the conflict with the Palestinians. The Netanyahu-era strategy of erasing the Palestinian issue from the agenda has triumphed and the normalization agreements signed with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco with the mediation of Donald Trump are one of his great triumphs. If the Arab “brothers” themselves normalize relations with Israel without demanding a Palestinian state in return, why would the Israelis make a move?
The mantra of the two-state solution agreed in Oslo, one for Israelis and one for Palestinians, has long been a fiction heard only in speeches by Western diplomats and UN officials. On the ground there is a single state that controls the lives and movements of all those who live between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.
Settlement expansion
The occupation is a kind of parallel entity and, whoever governs in the Knesset, continues with the full support of institutions and security forces. The words of foreign leaders rarely go beyond “concern” about the expansion of settlements, attacks by settlers or the demolition of Palestinian houses; the construction of the separation wall, which began to be erected two decades ago, is advancing despite international condemnation; and the reports from organizations like Amnesty International or B’etselem accusing Israel of the crime of apartheid have zero impact on the ground.
The further one moves away from the separation wall, the more distant the conflict seems to him. In cities like Tel Aviv, they only remember the Palestinians when there is an offensive in Gaza and Hamas launches rockets or when there is a knife attack like the ones that have been repeated since 2015. The wall, the draconian exit permit system and the servility of the Palestinian National Authority, turned into a kind of section of the Israeli Ministry of the Interior focused on persecuting and silencing Hamas, help the leaders of the Jewish State to avoid the conflict.
Nobody talks about this issue in the campaign, but everyone knows that it is still open. A few weeks ago Matan Kahana, deputy minister of what has been applauded as a “government of change” in the last year, lamented at a conference not being able to press a button to “send all Arabs on a train to Switzerland.” Shortly after he had to apologize, but this hatred between communities, between occupiers and occupied is natural and mutual. Israel appeals to divine right to justify its existence in the 21st century, but together with the Old Testament, military force and the unwavering support of the United States are the keys to its survival. The elections pass, the conflict remains, the hatred grows and there is no leader in the Jewish state who feels any pressure to try to solve it. For Netanyahu, the priority is getting out of prison, not achieving peace.
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