The apparent comeback of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the dramatic rise of his far-right and ultra-Orthodox allies in Israel's general election this week have prompted little more than shrugs from many Palestinians.
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"It's all the same to me," Said Issawiy, a vendor hawking nectarines in the main al-Manara Square of Ramallah, said of Netanyahu replacing centrist Yair Lapid and poised to head the most right-wing government in Israel's history.
"I'm just trying to eat and work and bring something back to my kids," he said. Some view the likely victory for Netanyahu and his openly anti-Palestinian allies, including ultranationalist lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir who wants to end Palestinian autonomy.
The sharp rightward shift of Israel's political establishment pushes long-dormant peace negotiations even further out of reach and deepens the challenges facing 87-year-old President Mahmoud Abbas, whose autocratic Palestinian Authority already seemed to many Palestinians as little more than an arm of the Israeli security forces.
"If you want to use the metaphor of a 'nail in the coffin of the Palestinian Authority,' that was done earlier," said Ghassan Khatib, a former Palestinian peace negotiator and cabinet minister. "This election is another step in that same direction."
Palestinians see successive Israeli governments as seeking to solidify a bleak status quo in the West Bank: Palestinian enclaves divided by growing Israeli settlements and surrounded by Israeli forces.
"We had no illusion that this next government would be a partner for peace," said Ahmad Majdalani, a minister in the Palestinian Authority. "It's the opposite, we see a campaign of incitement that began more than 15 years ago as Israel drifted toward extremism."
The Gaza Strip's terrorist Hamas rulers said the election outcome would "not change the nature of the conflict." But for the first time, surging support for Israel's far-Right has made the party of Ben-Gvir the third-largest in the Israeli parliament.
On the campaign trail, Ben-Gvir grabbed headlines for his anti-Palestinian speeches and stunts – recently brandishing a pistol and encouraging police to open fire on Palestinian stone-throwers in a tense Jerusalem neighborhood. Some Palestinians have found reason for optimism. After Tuesday's elections, they say, Israel will no longer present to the world the telegenic face of Lapid. A win for extremism in Israel, some say, could bolster the moral case for efforts to isolate Israel, vindicating activism outside the moribund peace process.
"It will lead to some international pressure," said Mahmoud Nawajaa, an activist with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, which calls for an economic boycott of Israel as happened to apartheid-era South Africa in the 1980s. "Netanyahu is more honest and clear about his intentions to expand settlements. The others didn't say it, even if it was happening," Nawajaa added.
Lapid and his predecessor, Naftali Bennett, a former settler leader who rebranded himself as a national unifier, had presided over a wobbly coalition of right-wing, centrist and dovish left-wing parties, including the first Arab party to ever join a government.
Foreign leaders who shunned the divisive Netanyahu embraced what appeared to be a less ideological government. Bennett became the first Israeli leader to visit the United Arab Emirates after the countries normalized ties – an honor repeatedly denied to Netanyahu. President Joe Biden, who had a rocky relationship with Netanyahu, basked in Lapid's warm welcome during his visit to Israel last summer.
But even as Lapid voiced support for the two-state solution during his address to the UN General Assembly in September, Palestinians saw no sign he could turn words into action. They watched Israel approve thousands of new settler homes on lands they want for a future state.
"In terms of violence, the Lapid government has outdone itself," said Nour Odeh, a Palestinian political analyst and former PA spokeswoman. "As far as new settlements and de facto annexation, Lapid is Netanyahu."
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