Netanyahu’s poll gamble
ISRAEL’S close-fought election battle yesterday between the centre left and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who ruled out a Palestinian state in a last-ditch appeal to the right, will determine the prospects for new Middle East peace talks.
Netanyahu, 65, brought the election on himself, calling the snap vote after firing centrist ministers from his fractious coalition just two years into its term.
The election was Israel’s third since 2009 and the biggest challenge for Netanyahu who was seeking a third consecutive term.
While the outcome was not available at the time of going to press, opinion polls suggested Netanyahu would win fewer seats than the centre-left Zionist Union.
Final opinion polls published on Friday gave Zionist Union of Labour leader Isaac Herzog a three- to four-seat lead over Netanyahu’s Likud party.
But the surveys also suggested Netanyahu would have an advantage when it came to piecing together a coalition with smaller allies from the right.
As he cast his own ballot on Tuesday, Netanyahu ruled out any alliance with Herzog. “There will not be a unity government with Labour. I will form a national government,” he said.
Netanyahu has warned a vote for the Zionist Union could endanger Israel’s security and lead to the division of Jerusalem and the establishment of a Palestinian state in the annexed eastern sector.
On Monday he was asked by the rightwing NRG website if it was true that there would be no Palestinian state established if he was reelected.
“Indeed,” said Netanyahu, who in 2009 had endorsed the idea of two states living side by side.
He later told public radio the twostate solution was now irrelevant, saying the “reality has changed” and “any territory which would be handed over would be taken over by radical Islamists”.
Netanyahu’s opponents charge that he has played the politics of fear and endangered Israel’s close relationship with the United States for the sake of ideological posturing.
Washington has accused his government of undermining US-brokered peace talks with the Palestinians through its persistent expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.
The Israeli premier then further infuriated President Barack Obama by accepting an invitation from his Republican opponents to encourage Congressional opposition to his efforts for a historic nuclear deal with Iran.
“I hope for change, of course, but doubt things will change,” Shulamit Laron, a woman in her fifties, told AFP at a polling station in Jerusalem’s German