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RATTLED Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed yesterday that his return in today’s general election would ensure that a Palestinian state would not be established.
Mr Netanyahu is banking on intransigence as his trump card to persuade illegal West Bank settlers to rally to his Likud party banner.
Last-minute opinion polls showed Likud trailing the Zionist Union, comprised of Isaac Herzog’s Labour Party and Tsipi Livni’s Kadima outfit.
Speaking in the Har Homa settlement yesterday, the prime minister claimed that withdrawing from the occupied West Bank would ensure that land’s use by Islamist extremists intent on attacking Israel.
The PM had called the election two years ahead of schedule, hoping to secure a fresh mandate in the face of popular discontent over the economy and bids by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to assert his leadership case.
Politicians and media dub the Zionist Union centre-left, but it only appears so in comparison with Likud’s ever more extreme stance.
Labour in office has proven as supportive of the West Bank colonisation programme as Likud, while Ms Livni’s party was established by notorious war criminal Ariel Sharon.
Yet even if the Zionist Union wins the most seats today, Mr Netanyahu has already shown himself adept at doing deals with a variety of far-right and religious extremist groups to confect a majority.
However, this election has seen the first-ever agreement by Arab parties, together with the Arab-Jewish Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash), to construct a joint list.
The joint list was a response to a constitutional change proposed by Mr Lieberman to raise the minimum percentage for representation in the Knesset to 3.25 per cent.
Although designed to eradicate Arab representation, the new measure could even threaten the parliamentary presence of Mr Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party.
The joint list, led by Communist Party lawyer Ayman Odeh, is targeting the large numbers of Arab citizens who don’t usually vote, as well as looking to increase the percentage of Jewish voters normally attracted by Hadash.
The list could potentially become the third largest group in the Knesset, with 13 out of 120 seats.
