Annexation was advanced in the U.S. “peace plan” by Ambassador David Friedman, says Palestinian member of Knesset Ahmad Tibi: “The most dangerous figure pushing for this annexation is the American ambassador… Friedman.. He is the most dangerous, and he is to the right of Netanyahu, he is much more Yemina and Settler Council than Likud even. He is playing a very, very dangerous role.”

Netanyahu will move ahead to annex territories in Palestine near the Green Line containing Jewish settlements, says Yair Golan of Meretz. “He will explain to the rest of the world, Alright, we did what was reasonable, what was accepted by the Palestinians in former negotations, and what was heavily accepted by President Trump according to his future plan.”

The Israeli Jewish right wants to keep 620,000 settlers in West Bank– and the left wants to keep 585,000 there, says legislator Yair Golan. So there is no real opposition to the settlement project, or the one-state reality, even though it threatens “the Zionist dream.”

Israeli Greens Party leader Stav Shaffir describes the demoralization of the Jewish left in Israel. It has lost “foundations of democratic infrastructure,” media and parliament, and so is afraid to talk about its issues and seeks to flatter the right wing settler government.  

Following a contentious third election, Gantz’s betrayal of his allies came as a surprise to many in Israel; but not to the Joint List and Palestinian citizens of Israel, who saw straight through his false image of change and reform. Now, with the complete collapse of Blue and White, and the Jewish centrist bloc, the Joint List stands as the sole voice of progress, equality, and change.

Palestinians are players in Israeli politics in a new way, Yael Patir of J Street says. Three-fourths of Israeli Jewish centrist voters supported a possible government that would have had Palestinian political backing, and that is “huge,” she says, seeing a silver lining in the collapse of the effort to remove Netanyahu.

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?

As Netanyahu likens himself to the captain of the Titanic amid the coronavirus pandemic, Israeli political protests of his powergrab have gone forward despite lockdown, with people in cars with black flags.

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.

Netanyahu has adopted a fatherly tone in responding to the COVID-19 crisis, trying to present himself as the indispensable Prime Minister, even as he runs a racist campaign against rival Benny Gantz’s effort to build a coalition to put him out of office.