In a dramatic day for the Israeli parliament, legislators failed to renew the extension of an emergency order that affords Jewish Israeli settlers in the West Bank civil governance, while Palestinians in the same area are governed by military rule. This is one of the most blatant Apartheid laws, regularly renewed every five years since Israel began its 1967 occupation. When Palestinian lawmaker Mazen Ghanaim voted against it Nir Orbach of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s party charged at him and shouted that “the experiment with you has failed!” “You” is of course Palestinians in general, and the experiment is the idea of including Palestinians in government.

Israel withholds Palestinian tax funds from the PA so as to enforce its collective punishment of the families of militants. Now Defense Minister Benny Gantz is seeking to “loan” the P.A. that money in line with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s promise to Joe Biden to improve Palestinian conditions.

Israeli centrist Yair Lapid will forswear an alliance with Palestinian political parties if he gets the nod to form the next government. Instead he will court a rightwing religious Jewish party.

Many seem to see Netanyahu as an illiberal, corrupt, anti-democratic leader. But we must also see, that he is part of a regime that itself is illiberal, corrupt and anti-democratic. It’s always been the case. Who is the new hope? Gideon Sa’ar who is even to the right of Netanyahu? Naftali Bennett who is even to the right of Sa’ar? Or Yair Lapid, who is to their left, alas with the “principle” which says “maximum Jews on maximum land with maximum security and with minimum Palestinians”?

The Israeli election appears to be deadlocked, judging by exit polls. Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party has the upper hand with 31 or more seats, far more than the nearest competitor, per the polls, but the anti-Netanyahu parties have as many as 60 seats, or half the parliament.

The last polls before March 23 election show Netanyahu with commanding position. 45 percent of voters think he is the best candidate for prime minister, nearly double the number of the hope of American liberal Zionists, centrist Yair Lapid. And Likud polls at 20 seats, way out ahead of Lapid’s party at 18.

Rightwinger Naftali Bennett is the kingmaker in Israeli election next week, and signals, correctly, that the Israeli right should not be fearful of Yair Lapid. For Lapid’s party states in Hebrew that it is for the settlement project, though it scrubs that section from the English version intended for US liberal Zionists!

The two elections in Israel and Palestine this spring are meaningless because they only reinforce an unequal structure in which Jewish nationalists contend on one side, Israel, and dictate the terms of the election to the subject population in occupied Palestine. And that’s the news. There’s no news under the burning sun of the Apartheid state.

Dahlia Scheindlin’s comments on the “stability” of leftwing Jewish Israeli attitudes show the lengths that liberal Zionists will go to prove that the apartheid project possesses some sort of fundamental decency. Because young people’s hardline attitudes are just the “romantic spirit of the nation… militarist and nationalist.”

According to Dahlia Scheindlin’s polling, some left-wing Jews will vote for a right-winger, Gideon Sa’ar. And as for the young being so right-wing — “the romantic spirit of the nation is militarist and nationalist” going back to the 1950s among the young.