VIDEO: What Israel’s Fractured Election Results Mean for Gaza, Iran, and the U.S.
In a panel discussion on Al Jazeera’s Inside Story, Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, breaks down the implications of Israel’s inconclusive election results. She warns that regardless of who ultimately forms a government, the dangers for Palestinians, for Iran, and for U.S. policy remain acute.
There is no major difference between the likely prime minister candidates, Phyllis says, on “whether there should be genocide in Gaza, whether there should be ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, whether there should be continued land theft and dispossession in Lebanon, or land theft in the Golan Heights.”
Yet because current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “symbolized, not inappropriately, the extremism of Israeli policy in recent years,” the election of a new leader might make it easier for U.S. lawmakers to continue enabling the same policies under a new face.
“Some of them may be swayed by the notion that this is no longer Netanyahu. So we can end our rhetorical criticism,” Phyllis warns. A new leader could be “welcomed with open arms, open wallets, open armories,” from Washington. “‘What do you need? More weapons? Sure. More money? Of course. More protection? Absolutely.’”
Phyllis also draws a parallel between Netanyahu’s legal jeopardy in Israel, where he is facing corruption charges, and President Trump’s use of elections to evade accountability in the United States. Netanyahu “is facing the possibility of going on trial in a serious way and facing serious consequences if he loses this election. In that way, he’s very much like Trump, who sees the election as a way of maintaining power when he is under attack in court cases all across the United States.”
On the possibility of a renewed U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, Phyllis warns that a weakened Trump administration after the midterms could make military escalation more, not less, likely: “The possibility that he will change his reluctance to go back to war directly with Iran may be reversed, and he would be prepared to go right back with Netanyahu into another major assault on Iran, which would have devastating consequences not only for human beings in Iran and the rest of the region, but also for the regional sets of politics that are in shifting motion.”
Watch the full interview here:
