The election for the 25th Knesset should be a repeat of the previous ones – in other words, something that propels Benjamin Netanyahu back to the driver's seat, even at the price of total diplomatic paralysis. Anyone who really believes in the vision of a Jewish, democratic state and that Zionism is not an anarchistic concept, cannot allow the peace process to stop.
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The parties that believe in dividing the country should form a united front – one that will not erase their individual existence, but all them to form a single Knesset faction and fight for a common goal. The agreed-upon target could be to search for a two-state solution (preferably under the auspices of a confederation that would prevent the need of evacuating settlements located east of a future border), and if not that, then a unilateral move.
The risk of a de facto single state from the Mediterranean to Jordan is greater than the security difficulties that could result from a non-consensus solution. The shared front should be formed before the election campaign, and Prime Minister-designate Yair Lapid should be the consensus leader. In recent years, he has proven his political and leadership capabilities. If a broad front like this cannot be formed, we should welcome any alliance that can be formed in the peace camp – primarily one between Labor and Meretz. In any case, it would be a painful missed opportunity if the same parties that ran in the last election run in this one.
This election will see a head-to-head battle between Lapid and Netanyahu. The last thing the center-left camp needs is an election campaign in which all the other candidates are vying to weaken Lapid. The opposite, Lapid attempting to weaken his ideological allies, will also damage that camp's chances of winning. If the center-left camp wins a lot of seats, it will have a chance of joining the center-right parties in an effort to form a government, if the latter group allows a peace process to continue that would be decided in an election or a referendum.
US President Joe Biden's planned visit to the region next month will be completely different than the one that was supposed to take place with Naftali Bennett still serving as prime minister. Biden was on good terms with Bennett, and he made an effort not to attack him, despite their serious differences of opinion. Biden and Lapid are closer in terms of ideology, and that could make it easier to hold a regional meeting on the sidelines of the presidential visit that would include Lapid, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and possibly a high-ranking Saudi official. A move like that would make Biden's visit an important one, because it would send a message that the US and Saudi Arabia – as well as the other Arab states that signed the Abraham Accords – are willing to mentor (and help fund) an Israeli-Palestinian agreement for which negotiations would begin after the election.
Yair Lapid began his first campaign, back in 2013, in Ariel in an attempt to prove he wasn't a left-winger. He really isn't, but the hard-core Netanyahu fans see even Avigdor Lieberman as a leftist, and no attempt to dissuade them will work. The main effort should be in getting people on the center-left to vote in order to block a Netanyahu-led government that would necessarily include Itamar Ben-Gvir and his problematic friends. We aren't talking about word games like "It's Bibi or Tibi," but actually making Israel into a different country. Netanyahu was the one who brought Ben-Gvir –who has been convicted twice for supporting a terrorist organization, and about twice more for possession of propaganda for a terrorist organization and for incitement to racism – into the Knesset plenum. A "Bibi/Ben-Givr government" isn't just a scary election slogan, it's the most likely scenario.
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