By Khalid Amayreh

A Republican administration, Netanyahu calculates, probably correctly as well, wouldn't only curry favor with him but grovel at his feet.(Reuters)
The landslide victory scored by Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud Party and its jingoistic allies this week underscores a long-known fact pertaining to the Israeli-Jewish society, namely that this society is consistently drifting toward fascism.

Hard-core Jewish extremists, along with the Likud, won enough seats in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, to form a stable and strong government.

The Israeli left (Meretz), won no more than five seats out of 120, while the Joint Arab List, which represents the Arab community in Israel, won 13 seats. The Zionist Union, erroneously described by the media as a center-left Party, won 24 seats, leaving a fascist and quasi-fascist bloc led by Netanyahu in control of as many as 78 seats.

“Centrist” among Radicals

Last week, Lieberman said Palestinians not loyal to Zionism ought to have their heads chopped.
The Zionist Union does advocate the establishment of a small Palestinian state with limited sovereignty and under crippling restrictions. But it doesn't do so out of love for peace and justice, but rather because it dreads the prospects of Israel becoming a bi-national state, which would cause the Jewish state to lose its Jewish-Zionist identity. In fact, the ideology and election platform of this party would be considered decidedly racist in any western setting.

However, in the context of the Israeli ideological-political spectrum, the Zionist Union is considered "centrist" only when compared to the plethora of right-wing religious and secular parties which more or less adopt brazenly racist platforms, especially with regard to the Palestinians.

Most of these parties are fascist to the core. Consider, for example, Habayt ha-Yehudi (Jewish Home) which won 8 seats in this week's elections. It shamelessly advocates depriving Palestinians of their political and national rights.

Similarly, Yisrael Beitenu (Israel is our Home) headed by Avigdor Lieberman. It calls for withdrawing the Israeli citizenship from as many Arabs as possible in the context of any prospective peace agreement with the Palestinians. On several occasions, Lieberman called for carrying out Nazi-like crimes against humanity against Palestinians, including carrying out sustained aerial bombing of Palestinian population centers and dropping Palestinian prisoners in the Dead Sea from high altitudes. Last week, Lieberman said Palestinians not loyal to Zionism ought to have their heads chopped.

Other Talmudic parties hold extremely racist views of non-Jews whom they view as less that completely human. For example, the late spiritual leader of Shas, Ovadia Yosef, was quoted as saying during a Sabbath homily in January 2013 that raison d'être for the very existence of non-Jews was to serve Jews. "Without that, they have no place in the world-only to serve the People of Israel.” Shas won six seats in this week's elections.

Bye Bye to the Peace Process

Zionism has always been about seizing as much Palestinian geography as possible while taking as little Palestinian demography as possible.

Even before the elections, the so-called peace process was actually in a state of "clinical death" due to the intensive and unmitigated expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, especially in East Jerusalem.

Now, with a most hawkish government in Israel's history in power, it is widely expected that the peace process or what has remained of it, which is not much, will be consigned to its final resting place.

I am not a prophet of doom and gloom, but the naked facts on the ground leave no room for realistic optimism in this regard. Indeed, just hours before the election campaign closed, Netanyahu ruled out the establishment of a Palestinian state if reelected¸ reneging on a 2009 announcement endorsing such a state.

The perennially optimist would probably argue that electioneering is one thing whereas the need to deal with outstanding political realities is quite a different matter. This might be true in a certain sense. However, it is also true to argue that no government in Israel will willingly agree to undo hundreds of settlements in the West Bank, inhabited by as many as 600,000 fanatical Jews who view their arrogation of Arab land as an integral part of their religion.

Nor will any Israeli government, today or in the foreseeable future, agree to relinquish East Jerusalem where millenarian Messianic Jewish fanatics carry out nearly daily provocations at al-Masjid al-Aqsa, for the purpose of wresting the exclusively Muslim sanctuary from Muslim hands. Interestingly, according to media reports, Netanyahu received overwhelming support from Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

Of course, it is highly likely that Netanyahu will be indulging in a modus operandi of prevarication, foot-dragging, and other stalling tactics for the purpose of gaining more time until the Obama administration's term in office ends.

Netanyahu justifiably hopes for the emergence of a more Netanyahu-friendly Republican administration in Washington. Such an administration, Netanyahu calculates, probably correctly as well, would not only curry favor with him but actually grovel at his feet, which would enable him to openly institute a full-fledged apartheid system in the West Bank, having succeeded in tearing up the peace process to smithereens.

Apart from the prevarication and foot-dragging, the upcoming Netanyahu government is also expected to indulge in more violence and terror against the Palestinians, both in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Indeed, if election promises and pronouncements can serve as a clue, a government comprising such gung-ho figures as Lieberman, Bennet, and like-minded extremists is likely to carry out another blitzkrieg against the Gaza Strip " to finish the job," a clear allusion to unrelenting Israeli efforts to eradicate the mainly Islamic resistance in the coastal enclave. But such a scenario is unlikely to materialize while the Obama administration is still in office, given the bad chemistry between Obama and Netanyahu.

PA Facing Existential Predicament

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Following the Israeli election and Netanyahu's apparent determination to decapitate any remaining prospects for the creation of a viable and territorially contiguous Palestinian state, the Palestinian Authority (PA) seems to be facing an unenviable situation.

Voicing his frustration at the outcome of the Israeli elections, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said he would work with any Israeli government "that accepts the principle of a two state solution."

However, Abbas must know rather too well that Netanyahu and his even more extremist colleagues won't allow a genuine viable Palestinian state to see the light of the day, that if we suppose that the opportunity to establish such a state is still within reach.

As to the US, the only country that could arguably pressure Israel to allow for such a state to rise, it is utterly unlikely Washington will exert any meaningful pressure on Israel, given the huge political clout Israel's supporters have on the American government. Indeed, the US has had more than 50 year to pressure Israel to walk in the path of peace, but to no avail.

Hence, pining any realistic hopes on the US to carry out a late-day miracle in the Middle East is really an exercise in naivety and wishful thinking.

So, what is Next?

The mantra of Israel being a Jewish and democratic state is really a big joke intended to mislead western governments and peoples.

Some observers might argue that the de-facto liquidation of the two-state solution would open the way for the one-state solution whereby Palestinians and Jews would live in peace and equality in a unitary state between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean.

But such a scenario is the ultimate anathema to Zionism since it would lead to Israel becoming a bi-national state and ultimately losing its Jewish identity.

After all, the true goal of Zionists, especially the so-called nationalist camp (a more appropriate epithet is the fascist camp) is one state (a Jewish state) with as few Arabs and non-Jews as possible. Zionism has always been about seizing as much Palestinian geography as possible while taking as little Palestinian demography as possible.

In the final analysis, a fascist Israel would employ a host of ghoulishly sinister tactics to make as many Palestinians as possible flee the country, their country, in order to maintain Israel as a Jewish (and Talmudic) state.

The mantra of Israel being a Jewish and democratic state is really a big joke intended to mislead western governments and peoples. This is because "Jewish and democratic" are an eternal oxymoron when it comes to the identity of state, which can never ever coexist since one nullifies the other.

Israel will continue to employ all forms of repression to further torment the Palestinians and force them to leave their ancestral homeland.

This includes daily acts of murder, home demolition, land confiscation, wanton terror and vandalism by settlers, sweeping arrests and imprisonment without charge or trial, as well as brazen discrimination in every conceivable sphere.

Israel is also likely to promulgate more draconian laws intended to "facilitate" Palestinian emigration.

Would the international community allow Israel to have its way?

Related Links:
US-Israel Alliance: Strange but “Stable”

NSA: Spies on Americans, Shares with Israel

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http://www.onislam.net/english/politics/middle-east/484103-netanyahu-in-peace-process-realistic.html

Khalid Amayreh is a Palestinian journalist based in Dura, near Hebron. Amayreh has been a correspondent for Sharja TV (1994–2001), Islamic Republic News Agency (1995–2006), Middle East International, London (1995–2003), Al Ahram Weekly (1997–present), and Al Jazeera English (2003–2006). In 1981, Amayreh earned a BA in journalism at the University of Oklahoma and an MA in journalism from the University of Southern Illinois in 1983.