For the Palestinians, especially in the occupied territories, Israeli elections always mean an acceleration of actions against them; they mean more violations of human rights, collective punishment, more arrests, land confiscation and other unjust measures. In general, they are an unpleasant event. Israeli political parties compete between each other as to how they will deal more harshly with the Palestinians, how they will create more obstacles to a peace settlement and obstruct peace negotiations, and how they will frustrate the ambitions of the Palestinians to have their own independent state. After 45 years of occupation and more than six decades of conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, the Palestinian people and their leaders have experience in the goals of Israel and what it wants by planting its colonialist apartheid regime in the centre of the Middle East, and in the heart of the Arab world. Any issue related to the Israeli occupation analysed apart from this perspective would be mistaken and wouldn't be an objective analysis. When Britain granted the Jewish people what is known as the “Balfour Declaration”, the goal was to create an entity to serve the United Kingdom's colonialist interests in the region, and to get rid of the Jewish people living in Britain and in Europe in general. Under many slogans and justifications, Jewish people around Europe were convinced, manipulated and in many cases dragged or pushed to migrate to historic Palestine, which they were told was their land of promise and the land of their ancestors, despite the fact that they were Europeans, and Europe was their home and where their ancestors lived and died. The goal for the British and Zionist leaders was clear, their intention was to build a colonialist entity more than anything else. Since then, the conflict has taken on many facets, resulting in the establishment of Israel in 1948 after more than 450 villages were wiped from the map of Palestine, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were uprooted from their lands, with Zionist gangs committing massacre after massacre in many towns and villages. The Zionist leaders, who have ruled Israel for 65 years, still believe in their myth — a “land without a people for a people without a land,” a myth that many Israeli historians have denied and have proved otherwise; a myth that UN Resolution 194 exposes beyond doubt, in being centred on the right of return to Palestine of its people expelled by Zionists. Zionist Israel is still dealing with Palestinians as if they do not exist, regardless of anything said about peace processes and negotiations launched in Oslo two decades ago. Israeli occupation authority practices on the ground reflect how Israeli leaders continue denying the Palestinian people their rights, deny the very fact they exist, or their right to have their own independent state. A simple review of the electoral programmes of the Israeli parties shows the competition between them; promises of confiscating more Palestinian lands, empowering and expanding existing colonies and building new colonies on occupied Palestinian land. Calls for enhancing the peace process almost disappear in the electoral publicity and programmes. Some parties are calling for annexing what is called Area C, which is about 60 per cent of the West Bank; others vow to build more Jewish colonies in Jerusalem and around it, in order to make the Palestinians a minority in the city. A few days ago, when Israeli President Shimon Perez described Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as a “brave man” and “a real partner for peace” he was attacked furiously by Likud officials and Binyamin Netanyahu. The Israeli daily Haaretz described the attack as “hysterical”. In recent years, Israeli society has been heading to the right; more rightist parties and leaders are coming to the surface of the political arena. These leaders and parties know that as long as they address their crowds with more extreme rhetoric, they will win more votes and more popularity. There is not much difference between the left and right parties in Israel; both are calling for more land confiscation and more settlement building. During the years of occupation, reality and facts on the ground show that the Israeli Labour Party, which is classified as a leftist party, confiscated more Palestinian land than the Likud Party did. And more colonies were built during the Labour Party era. Prognostications show that the Likud is coming once again to power with a coalition from the very fundamentalist right groups and parties: this will be the choice of the Israeli people. The position of this coalition with regard to a peace process is clear: more land confiscation, more colonies, Judaising the occupied part of Jerusalem, “East Jerusalem”, denial of Palestinian rights and objection to the right of self-determination for the Palestinians, and obstruction of the two state solution. When Hamas was elected by Palestinians in 2006, the Palestinian people were collectively punished for their choice. Western countries with the backing of the US accused Palestinians of being extremists for choosing an “extreme” party. If the Israeli people choose (and they will) extreme parties, are the same Western countries going to act in the same way? Are they going to boycott the “extreme government” to be formed in Israel? Or will the same double standard policy be applied as usual when it comes to Israel?
The writer is a Palestinian journalist based in Bethlehem, Palestine.
