Bringing Israel's Arabs back into the political equation

"Hugh Lovatt, Israel/Palestine Project Coordinator for the European Council on Foreign Relations, wrote for the Italian-based Institute for International Political Studies:

"When Israelis go to the polls on Tuesday 17 March to elect their 20th Knesset, from which a new governing coalition will be formed‎, they will do so at a critical time in Israel's relations with the Palestinians. They will also be voting at a time of increasing US and European frustration with Israeli actions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs).‎ Yet solving the Palestinian conflict seems to have hardly featured in Israel’s 2015 election campaign.

"Even after the bloodiest round of fighting in Gaza to date and recurrent Palestinian lone-wolf attacks in Jerusalem, Israeli voters are more preoccupied by domestic issues, such as Israel’s widening socio-economic gap – amongst the highest in the OECD area – and the future of Israel’s Jewish democratic character. In fact, according to a survey conducted in February, only 19 percent of Israelis view the Palestinian question as‎ the most important issue.

"Once taboo, opposition to a two-state solution has become a rallying call for right wing politicians, not just within Naftali Bennett’s pro-settler Jewish Homeland but also within Netanyahu’s centre-right Likud. Even centre-left Labor seems to have moved away from the traditional formula of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders. Labor’s candidate for Defence Minister, Amos Yadlin, advocates Israeli annexation of the major settlement blocks in exchange for a withdrawal from the roughly 80 percent of Palestinian land that lies east of the security barrier – an initiative that falls spectacularly short of Palestinian expectations."