Palestinians threaten to press back
The bad blood from Benjamin Netanyahu’s divisive and successful election campaign threatened to drive a wedge between Israel and its Western allies yesterday as the Palestinian leadership vowed to escalate its campaign for recognition overseas.
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, accused Israelis of choosing ‘‘settlements, racism and apartheid’’ over peace in voting to give Netanyahu a third term as prime minister.
Erekat said the Palestinians would ‘‘speed up, pursue and intensify’’ their efforts for international recognition and to see Israel prosecuted for war crimes in the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
The West gave a muted response to Netanyahu’s stunning re-election in Tuesday’s vote, achieved with an 11th-hour lurch to the Right after he had spent most of the campaign trailing in the polls.
In the final 72 hours Netanyahu said he would never create a Palestinian state, used a text message to warn supporters of a high Arab turnout and claimed an international conspiracy lay behind Opposition efforts to oust him.
His Likud party won 30 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, against 24 for its main challenger, the Labour-led Zionist Camp.
The bloc of Right-wing and religious parties will control 57 seats, close to the 61 required to form a coalition.
The White House said it would communicate ‘‘deep concern’’ at the ‘‘divisive rhetoric’’ of the cam-
Divisiveness: paign directly to the Israelis. President Barrack Obama left it to Secretary of State John Kerry to congratulate Netanyahu.
While senior Republicans took to social media to offer tributes – likening the Israeli leader to Sir Winston Churchill – Obama chose not to make time in his schedule to call in person, even though he had no engagements until 11.25am and had time to tweet his predictions for the big United States college basketball tournament which starts today.
The strained relationship between Netanyahu and Obama reached a nadir this month when Netanyahu flew to Washington to address a joint meeting of Congress about Iran’s nuclear programme. The speech was not coordinated with the White House, which saw it as a partisan stunt aimed at scuttling the continuing negotiations between six world powers and Tehran.
European countries also greeted Netanyahu’s re-election with little enthusiasm. Federica Mogherini, the European Union foreign affairs chief, issued a brief statement congratulating him on his victory.
However, she linked the prospect of good relations with Europe with the relaunch of the Middle East peace process.
Behind the scenes, EU member states are already mulling sanctions against Israel over its settlement-building. Netanyahu vowed a big new wave of construction if re-elected.
The United Nations said yesterday that it expected Israel to con- tinue with the peace process and resume negotiations towards a Palestinian state, which Netanyahu ruled out on the final day of campaigning. The last round of talks collapsed in April.
Official election results will not be published until next week, but with 99 per cent of ballots counted the tally is unlikely to change much. Netanyahu will now attempt to woo Moshe Kahlon, a popular former Likud minister whose Centrist Kulanu party won 10 seats, to give him a governing majority. He has already offered Kahlon the finance ministry.
There had been talk in the weeks before the election about a possible ‘‘unity government’’ between Likud and the Zionist Camp, the coalition led by the Labour party chief Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni, a former minister. However, Herzog ruled that out yesterday, saying his ‘‘only realistic option’’ was to lead the Opposition.
Joining him in the Opposition will be the Joint List, a coalition of Israel’s four Arab parties. They ran together for the first time and won 14 seats, a record high. Netanyahu exploited fears of this bloc to urge his supporters to the polls, further driving a wedge between Israel’s Jewish and Arab communities.
‘‘There is a broad segment of the Jewish public that is permeated by racism and narrowmindedness,’’ said Ayman Odeh, the leader of the Joint List. ‘‘And this segment decided to support Netanyahu in a big and tragic way.’’