Polls showed that Netanyahu would win a fourth election in Israel, and the deal he cut for a unity government with Benny Gantz reflects his strength. Fewer than a third of Israeli voters believe Netanyahu will respect his rotation agreement with Gantz.

Palestinian lawmakers decry the political deal in Israel. Aida Touma-Sliman calls new Netanyahu-Gantz government “dangerous” and vows to fight its plan too annex portions of the occupied West Bank.

As a deadline looms in Israeli election tonight, Netanyahu has broken Benny Gantz and may be playing for a fourth election, as the coronvirus PM. Gantz and Netanyahu appeared to be very close to a unity government agreement in Israel, between Likud and the now-reduced Blue White. But then Netanyahu wanted to renegotiate terms, and Blue White broke off.

American liberal Zionists are panicked over the possibility of annexation of the West Bank under a governing agreement between Benny Gantz and Benjamin Netanyahu. Please Nancy Pelosi call Benny Gantz on the phone, Tal Shalev urges the Blue White leader on a J Street phone call.

Israel’s year-long political stalemate appears to be over. Netanyahu was saved by coronavirus and racism. The virus made him popular. Racism stymied Benny Gantz’s efforts to form a government with Palestinian support.

The Israeli hospital system would collapse without Palestinians, who make up a sizeable percentage of doctors, nurses and pharmacies, but the Jewish politicians who are trying to form the country’s next government exclude the 15 Palestinian legislators from any real role in that future. And they call that a democracy?

This week, several extreme measures were taken to suspend core features of Israel’s ‘democracy’ – the parliament was closed, the courts, and more. This has been framed as a necessary response to the coronavirus epidemic. But Israel has a long and sordid record of exploiting ’emergency’ for cynical aims.

The Israeli left is shocked when one of its legislators– Orly Levy-Abekasis — refuses to support a government that has the outside backing of Palestinian politicians. They shouldn’t be shocked. This is Zionism.

In a humorous video intended to dispel the rumors about intense tensions within the “cockpit” of four leaders of the Blue and White party – Benjamin Gantz, Yair Lapid, Moshe “Bogie” Yaalon, and Gabi Ashkenazi – Lapid is heard telling Ashkenazi that “Bogie was quite a murderer in the army, in his military career.”

Benny Gantz plays into Netanyahu’s racist attack, and says he will refuse to have the Palestinian Joint List as participants in a government, preferring the rightwinger Liberman, as if the math makes sense. It doesn’t. Gantz needs the Joint List. He spurns Palestinians because of primal Israeli Jewish fears that by welcoming the other into the Zionist community, Jews will want to leave the fold.