As Israeli politicians begin to try to build a coalition government, after an election that saw no clear winner, response from politicians in surrounding Arab countries has been muted or non-existent. This may be because, for the time being anyway, it remains unclear as to whether the new Israeli government will continue with "business as usual" under incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or whether a new government headed by Netanyahu's opponents will take what is expected to be a more moderate domestic course. Whatever the eventual outcome, the consensus is that there is unlikely to be a huge change in Israel's foreign relations with neighboring countries like Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt, and, further afield, the Gulf states.
Nor is it likely to produce very different policies toward Palestinians, which many Arab populations in the region feel strongly about. Both Netanyahu and his main opponent Gadi Eisenkot "are two sides of the same coin," Egyptian politician Mostafa Bakry wrote on X after exit polls seemed to indicate an Eisenkot victory (something that's increasingly contested) and Israeli-Arab parties had displaced Netanyahu's far-right allies. "Arab joy at Netanyahu's near-failure to form the government does not mean that what is to come … differs greatly from his predecessor." "An Eisenkot government would likely be politically fragile, limiting its room for maneuver," Beth Oppenheim, a policy fellow in the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in a commentary last week.
"The biggest differences from the current government would be at home: It would halt the judicial overhaul, open a state commission of inquiry into October 7th and pass a conscription law." However, Oppenheim explained, "when it comes to foreign policy, there would not be a fundamental transformation. Netanyahu's post-October 7th security doctrine — pre-empting threats, operating far beyond Israel's borders and holding 'buffer zones' in neighboring territories — has been embraced by nearly all Jewish Israeli parties." One of the election campaign posters for Netanyahu's Likud party bore a stark message — "The right or Palestine" — the message being that if voters did not choose Netanyahu and his right-wing allies, his opponents would be too accommodating toward Israel's Arab-led political parties and would be open to the establishment of a Palestinian state. But observers believe that message is exaggerated, and that the two-state solution is already dead.
"Support for Palestinian statehood has collapsed across most of the Jewish political spectrum, and permanent Israeli control over Palestinians has become normalized," Oppenheim pointed out. With the exception of one party, "all mainstream Jewish parties support, or at least acquiesce in, the settlement enterprise in some form and publicly oppose a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines." In August this year, Eisenkot himself said that, "there is no Palestinian state, and no Palestinian state will be established under the government we form." An Eisenkot-led government would, however, cooperate with more left-wing Israeli parties, which have previously supported a two-state solution. Any new coalition may also need the backing of Israel's Arab-led parties, who are currently thought to have increased their seats in parliament to around 19.
But as Mairav Zonszein, senior Israel analyst at the International Crisis Group, told the news agency this week, "At best, [a new government] would be able to slow down the extremely crazy acceleration that we've seen in the last four years of every aspect of Israel's aggression in the occupied territories and inside Israel itself." A less extreme government would tone down religious messaging, might be less demanding when it came to conditions on disarming Hamas in Gaza, and could potentially move forward with the next stage of the Gaza ceasefire, agreed to in late 2025, but barely implemented. It might also do more to contain settler violence in the West Bank. "That's because [settler extremism] is a phenomenon that doesn't enjoy the support of the majority of Israelis, damages Israel's international reputation, and suppressing it is feasible," Elizabeth Tsurkov, a senior fellow at the Washington-based think tank, the Middle East Policy Council, explained on social media.
"[A new Israeli government] would keep expanding the settlements and Palestinian statehood would remain taboo," Oppenheim wrote. "Without a diplomatic track with the Palestinians, further flare-ups of violence in the West Bank and Gaza are inevitable, destabilizing the region — and normalization with Saudi Arabia will remain off the table." After the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas and Israel's ensuing military campaign, which has resulted in at least 70,000 Palestinians killed and Gaza devastated, Saudi Arabia's conditions for normalization with Israel have hardened. The country, hugely influential in the Muslim world, has put out several statements saying there could be no path to normalizing relations with Israel without some progress on Palestinian statehood.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
