BENJAMIN NETANYAHU’S victory in the Israeli elections last week marks an important development.

The Israeli leader ran on a platform of more occupation, racism and international isolation — and the Israeli public voted for him.

He stated what everyone already knew, but what many governments have chosen to ignore — that he has no intention of ending Israel’s war crimes or even toning down the racism and apartheid.

Netanyahu “has torn off his mask,” as Israeli journalist Gideon Levy said.

Out of the mouth of Netanyahu came the clearest possible case for immediate sanctions on Israel.

For decades, successive Israeli leaders have claimed that they really were committed to peace — even as settlement construction grew, Palestinians were slaughtered and international law was violated.

This enabled governments, including our own, to claim to their increasingly concerned citizens that negotiations between Israel and Palestinians — the oppressor and the oppressed — were the answer, rather than serious pressure to end

Israeli occupation and apartheid and uphold international law.

But in the run-up to the Israeli elections, held on March 17, Netanyahu stopped pretending to play the “peace process” game.

Just one day before the election, Netanyahu stood in an illegal East Jerusalem settlement, pledged in a televised interview that he would never agree to a Palestinian state if he was re-elected and made an election commitment not to halt settlement construction.

He boasted that he had built the settlement of Har Homa as “a way of stopping Bethlehem from moving toward Jerusalem.”

Then if that wasn’t clear enough, on election day itself he further fuelled the fires of racism by issuing an election video claiming that “Arab voters are heading to the polling stations in droves” — a direct attack on Palestinian citizens of Israel, who comprise 20 per cent of those living inside the Green Line, and who face a myriad of discriminatory laws.

The next day, Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing Likud party were re-elected to power with a decisive majority, giving a mandate to his election commitments — commitments which fly in the face of any “peace process,” freedom and justice for Palestinians and international law.

No matter how Netanyahu tries to “clarify” these positions, he can’t rewrite his extremist policies.

Netanyahu’s Likud party is now approaching other parties which are even more right-wing to form the next government and negotiating positions.

The man who looks likely to take either the defence or foreign affairs brief, Avigdor Lieberman, threatened to cut off Palestinians’ heads with an axe in the run-up to the election, stating: “Anyone who’s with us should be given everything — up to half the kingdom. Anyone who’s against us, there’s nothing to do — we should raise an axe and cut off his head.”

At the time he made this statement, this extremist enthusiast for head-chopping was Israeli foreign minister.

For over 20 years, since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, Israel has used the so-called peace process to take more land, build more settlements and entrench its illegal occupation.

And the same “peace process” has been the cover which governments, including our own, have rolled out, time and time again, in order to justify their inaction.

As settlements mushroomed on hilltops across the West Bank, British government ministers issued statements opposing

Israel’s illegal settlement building, but took no concrete measures to stop it.

But Netanyahu’s election, on a clear platform of rejection of a Palestinian state and commitment to increasing illegal settlements, removes the last vestige of cover for those who claim that negotiations can somehow end the injustice.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) organises virtual conversations between students in Britain and Gaza — and the conversation last week focused on the Israeli elections.

The Palestinian students’ immediate collective response to the election result was one of disbelief and sadness — because, if the Israeli public voted for Likud and for Netanyahu, that meant they agreed with what he did to them over the summer, and they supported the massacre of their friends and families in Gaza.

How could any human being support the deliberate killing of others and the destruction of their homes, schools and hospitals?

And even if they could understand that maybe one or two people could support this, how could such a large chunk of the Israeli population be prepared to get behind it?

This is an incredibly harsh realisation, even for Palestinians who have seen the worst of the Israeli war machine.

They worried that if Israeli leaders had such an uncritical and unquestioning electorate to draw upon, future attacks on Gaza would be imminent and would be challenged by only the small minority of Israelis who stood up for Palestinian human rights and international law.

With Netanyahu elected on such blatant policies, those students in Gaza hoped that this meant Western countries would finally impose much-needed sanctions.

They hoped that maybe this would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. This, they said, is the glimmer of hope.

These students are right. Netanyahu’s statements embarrassed the US, which has repeatedly prevented action from being taken to uphold international law by using its veto against motions condemning Israel’s war crimes.

Press reports are that President Barack Obama’s administration was driven to new levels of fury by Netanyahu’s comments, and that Obama is “reassessing” his options.

Even after Netanyahu’s attempt, after the election, to roll back on his comments, White House press secretary Josh

Earnest said that regardless of Netanyahu’s clarifications, his pre-election statements mean that the US “is in a position to re-evaluate our thinking.”

It would be incredibly naive to take these words at face value. But at least that’s further than David Cameron has gone.
Cameron appears to be trying to pretend he hasn’t seen the face of racism and apartheid underneath Netanyahu’s threadbare mask.

The morning after the election result, he tweeted his congratulations to Netanyahu, saying he was looking forward to working together. This obviously begs the question — working together on what, precisely?

Now is the time to tell the government to stop allowing Israel to continue violating international law and human rights, and stop its war crimes.

This is why PSC has launched a petition, calling on the government to impose sanctions now. And this is why we need your help to insist that your parliamentary candidates in the general election stand up for Palestinian rights. Now is the time for action.

- Sarah Colborne is director of Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

•  To sign the petition, and email your parliamentary candidates: www.palestinecampaign.org. To read more about Chat2Gaza, and the conversations between students in Britain and Gaza: www.chat2gaza.com.