The Joint List alliance, filled with Palestinian Arab lawmakers, is helping to prevent a majority of seats for
the Likud – something that I relish. I cannot help but be impressed by MK Ayman Odeh and others of the
Joint List, who remain a thorn in the side of Netanyahu and the Israeli right. This speaks less to Israel’s self-
proclaimed “democratic values” that are boasted of whenever the existence of its Palestinian citizens and
their participation in Israeli elections are brought up, and more to Palestinian resiliency in the face of horrid
dehumanisation.
Not all Palestinians who live under Israeli military rule and law voted. From their point of view, Israel’s
elections are merely bickering between a multitude of jailers who are seeking to win over voters with
promises of how they will further cage Palestinians.
The average liberal Zionist would find what I say to be radical. Netanyahu is problematic, they would agree,
but his centrist rivals would do a lot of good for Palestinians. They remind me of liberals in America, who
see Donald Trump as the very end of the spectrum of racism and can’t understand how a political rival on
the other end of the spectrum could also be racist (cc Michael Bloomberg).
Regardless of their differences on Palestinians and policy detail, all major Israeli politicians are much like
Bibi – the “butcher of Gaza” and the mastermind of the Nation State Law. Take Netanyahu’s main rival,
Gantz, for example. Following the announcement by the Trump administration in January of the “deal of
the century”, which was immediately condemned by Palestinians, Gantz matched Netanyahu’s elation in
hailing the plan.
We can go back even further, to Gantz campaigning in Israel by boasting of how, as a former general in the
Israeli Defence Forces, he sent Gaza back to the stone ages. Avigdor Lieberman and Ayelet Shaked have
been openly racist in the past, proclaiming that “the enemy” deserved to have their heads chopped off with
axes, that “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy”, and that they “birth snakes”. Even Yair Lapid, who
is seen as centre-left, has engaged in a horrifying denial of the Nakba (the 1948 Palestinian exodus) on his
Twitter account, and praised the Trump administration’s cutting off of aid to the UN’s Relief and Works
Agency.
To Palestinians, it is clear why elections in Israel won’t make a difference. The entire political class is racist
and hell-bent on keeping Palestinians imprisoned; they only differ in how willing they are to frame their
disdain for our existence. On the issues of annexation, settlement building, Jerusalem, the status of
Palestinian refugees, and the blockade in Gaza, the parties that are winning big in Israel are in utter
agreement. The Israeli parties that are willing to challenge these positions and assert Palestinian humanity,
such as Meretz, are smeared as traitors not only by the political class but by the Israeli public as well.
The entire political class is racist and hell-bent on keeping Palestinians
imprisoned; they only differ in how willing they are to frame their disdain
for our existence
It is important to note that despite this election being the third, and despite the threat of coronavirus, the
turnout was actually much higher than the previous ones. Israelis came out to vote. To Palestinians, this
shows another reality: that the Israeli public is very much in agreement with the positions of the Likud and
the right, and that the Israeli public is looking for a solution that involves the least disruption to their lives
and the least possible visibility of the question of Palestinians.
What can be said when thousands of people go out and give Netanyahu and his party the most votes for a
third time? Zionists constantly smear Palestinian society as hateful, but is it wrong to note that the majority