Israel’s
choice: Netanyahu remaining in power or a Palestinian-backed coalition
Emma
Graham-Harrisonin Tel Aviv
Incumbent
could turn defeat into another term in office as rival parties erect confected
barrier to unseating him
Wed 28
Oct 2026 18.54 GMT
Hours
before the final results from Israel’s
elections were in, several things were clear. Benjamin Netanyahu’s
far-right coalition had lost its mandate, and the opposition had a firm
majority.
But most
of Israel’s Jewish
opposition ruled out governing with Palestinian-led parties, in the course of a
racist election campaign in which Netanyahu painted Palestinian citizens as an
enemy inside the state.
The
self-imposed ban on a broader
opposition alliance, if it holds, offers Netanyahu the prospect of turning
his defeat into another term in office – or at least a prolonged mandate as
caretaker prime minister and perhaps another round of elections.
This
confected barrier to unseating Netanyahu became the focus of Israeli media and
analysts. “No Clear Government” announced the newspaper Israel Hayom. “Road to
Unity Government Has Been Paved”, read an article on Channel 12.
Yair
Golan, leader of the centre-left Democrats, attacked that framing. “Netanyahu
lost. I know how to count,” he said in a statement calling for a government
with Palestinians, who make up about 20% of Israel’s population.
“We must
no longer accept Netanyahu’s racist division between Jewish votes and Arab
votes,” he said. “We have a majority. We have a responsibility. And we have an
opportunity to form a change government in partnership with Arab citizens of
Israel.”
Mansour
Abbas, leader of the Ra’am party, holds his daughter as he casts his vote in
Maghar, Israel. Photograph: Rami Shlush/Reuters
Other
Israelis were even more direct. “If you stop being racist two amazing things
will happen to you,” musician Yali Sobol wrote in a Facebook post. “First, you
will stop being racist. Second, you will discover you have won.”
While
Palestinian-led parties do not describe themselves as Zionist, neither do some
of the ultra-Orthodox groups who are a key part of Netanyahu’s current
coalition.
A survey
taken as polls closed on election day showed that a clear majority of
opposition voters supported forming a government with the Palestinian-led Ra’am
in order to unseat Netanyahu, political psychology researcher Eran Halperin said.
But
opposition leaders were silent on Wednesday, as they apparently tried to
balance their desire to unseat Netanyahu with promises against working with
Palestinians.
Former
general Gadi
Eisenkot, who leads the biggest opposition party, has not directly ruled
out governing with Palestinians but laid out conditions that made it
politically impossible for them to join a coalition.
Gadi
Eisenkot waves to supporters at an election night rally. Photograph: Noam
Galai/Getty Images
Palestinians
have been clearer about their priorities. “We are ready and prepared to pave
the way for the ousting of the Netanyahu government,” Yousef Jabareen, leader
of the larger Joint List, said
on Wednesday. “The change comes through Jewish-Arab partnership.”
The
Islamist Ra’am party put a Jewish former police chief in second position on
their slate, in a signal of their commitment to working with Jewish Israelis.
A
precedent from three decades ago, when Yitzhak
Rabin relied on Palestinian support for a minority government as he sought
a negotiated end to the Israel-Palestine conflict, gets little mention in
contemporary Israeli political debate.
Netanyahu
put racism at the heart of his campaign, in a strategy critics said was
designed both to bolster voter support and complicate post-election coalition
negotiations for the opposition.
A slogan
featured on many of his election posters, “The right or Palestine”, framed 20%
of the population as an enemy within Israel’s borders.
On
election night he shrugged off the loss of about 10 seats from the 64
seat-coalition he assembled in 2022 – a severe rebuke from voters by most
counts – to claim that his vision for Israel had been vindicated in the poll.
The
Knesset overall has shifted further right, as have young Israelis, and after
the results came in, he issued an open invitation to put their opposition to
Palestinian parties ahead of their opposition to him.
“The
rightwing bloc has a clear, decisive majority among the Zionist public,” he
said. “We must form a strong national-right government”.
Many in
Israel described this election as existential, as they struggled to halt the
erosion of democracy inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders, and secure a State
Commission of Inquiry into the 7 October attacks.
For
Palestinian citizens facing surging crime, discrimination and home demolitions
inside Israel and watching family and friends endure ethnic
cleansing in the occupied West Bank and a war of annihilation in Gaza, that
was viscerally true, and they came out in record numbers.
Israel
describes itself as a Jewish and democratic state. If the representatives of
Palestinians are now effectively excluded from government because of their
race, Netanyahu will have turned that promise into more of a choice – between a
Jewish future or a democratic one.
.jpeg)
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário