RAMALLAH: On Tuesday Israelis are heading to the election polls to cast their ballots, and, if they can be relied upon, almost all public polls uniformly suggest another victory for sitting Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu. According to Ha'aretz, over 5.65 million Israelis are eligible to vote, and there are over 10,000 polling stations spotted across the small country. If rightwing Likud member Netanyahu is indeed elected to third term as PM, it is widely assumed that what will follow is an even larger rift between the Obama administration and Israel, more inching towards war with Iran, and the further decomposition of the already dwindling Israeli-Palestinian peace process towards a two-state solution. Netanyahu, who bragged in the early 2000s of having singlehandedly dismantling the Oslo Accords, recently vowed to continue expanding illegal settlements throughout the Israeli-occupied West Bank, despite its having been recognized as the sovereign territory of the recently upgraded Palestinian “observer state" in the United Nations General Assembly. Furthermore, it's widely expected that Israel's drift rightward on the political spectrum will accelerate, as Netanyahu's Likud has formed an electoral pact with the ultranationalist rightwing party Yisrael Beitunu, home to such figures as Avigdor Lieberman and Danny Ayalon. Other notable candidates include Naftali Bennett, formerly of the National Religious Party but now from the Jewish Home Party, another ultraconservative party that promises to swallow the ever decreasing remains of the land set to be a Palestinian state in any two-state solution. Among the Arab Palestinian minority within Israel, there has been a lively debate over how to vote strategically, or whether to boycott the elections all together. In respect to Palestinians in the occupied territories, pessimism dominates their understanding of Israeli elections. “The world watches Israeli elections and thinks it's democracy," one Palestinian who asked to remain unnamed told BikyaNews.com. “Those of us who know the truth just look on with disappointment." Although the rest of the Middle East has been engulfed in uprisings over the last two years, Israeli elections are not expected to drastically change the makeup of the country's political landscape. BN
