The Arab media maintain harsh criticism of Israel despite their satisfaction
with the drop in popularity of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s party, Likud
Beytenu. They predict no progress in peace talks with an Israel dominated by the Right, and are pessimistic regarding Palestinian reconciliation.
“The
roots of Netanyahu’s current troubles can be found in his extreme arrogance,
overconfidence, ‘me against the world’ approach, warmongering against Iran and
neo-colonial racist policies,” wrote Abdel Bari Atwan, the chief editor of the
London-based Arab daily Al-Quds al-Arabi in an editorial on Thursday.
He
went on to say that these results mean the likely end of Palestinian
reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, as PA President Mahmoud Abbas will move
away “from Hamas, waiting to know the real intention of the United States and
Europe regarding the peace process, which he still fails to recognize has
decayed long ago.”
A day earlier the same paper ran another editorial
saying that Israel’s voters were not swayed by support of the peace process,
“but by insisting on accelerating settlement activities, confiscating
Palestinian land, storming the Aksa Mosque and the Buraq Wall [the Wailing Wall]
to provoke and terrorize the Palestinians, and by insisting on controlling
occupied Jerusalem and refusing to make any concessions.
“These
elections and their results, as well as the climate of incitement against the
Arabs that accompanied them, will be a major turning point in the history of the
Arab/Israeli conflict. They will kill off the two-state solution and the peace
process that will lead to it, and annex the West Bank or major parts of it in
the best of cases.”
On Thursday, Ahmad Jamil Azem in the Jordanian Al-
Ghad, argued that the new government will lead to an unstable coalition that
will not last long.
The Daily Star of Lebanon writes, “The new Israeli
government that eventually emerges will have little to offer the Palestinians,
who shouldn’t be discouraged, but rather motivated to break with their
decades-long legacy of turning in a disappointing performance when it comes to
confronting the Jewish state.”
Mohamad Bdeir wrote an article in the
Lebanese paper Al-Akhbar titled, “Apartheid Democracy: Israel
Elects Itself,” on Tuesday. It says that peace talks were not mentioned during
the campaign which is a sign of “the growing clout of the Israeli
right-wing.”
It argues that only Meretz categorizes itself as left-wing
and the rise of Naftali Bennett’s Bayit Yehudi religious nationalist party
demonstrates “an extremely important social transformation in
Israel.”
Bdeir adds that the next Israeli government will likely confront
a “new intifada.”
The Teheran daily, Javan states that Netanyahu’s
decline seems to be due to the victory of Hamas in its last war with
Israel.
The Iranian Hemayat says that “Netanyahu’s re-election shows that
Zionist policies have not changed and they still pursue extremism. In other
words, it means continuation of occupation. Negotiations are meaningless for
Zionist extremism.”
On Wednesday, Muhannad Abdel Hamid wrote in the
Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam that Israel is a “rogue state that appears to be
beyond international law,” and the elections only demonstrate “the country’s
drift to the right.”
An article by Barcin Yinanc in the Turkish Hurriyet
Daily News writes that Israel is “sliding more toward the far right” and that
the shift may be permanent, because of the higher birthrate of Orthodox
Jews.
She goes on to say that Turkey will oppose a strike on Iran even
though they have strained relations with the country.
And an article in
The National of UAE states that Israeli politicians sell their people “the lie
that a political solution is not possible, much less necessary.”
“Now,
Israeli governments are all about managing the status quo, pretending the
occupation can carry on indefinitely.”