During the monthslong Israeli election campaign, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and other senior Palestinian officials maintained absolute radio silence. They were worried that any comments they might make in support of Zionist Camp leaders Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni would boomerang against them among the Israeli public. While they were quite open about their support for the Joint List — a unified slate of predominantly Arab parties — when it came to the campaign in general, they were careful not to show any involvement in “Israel’s internal affairs.”
Obviously, everybody knew what the significance of a large Arab party in the Knesset would be, and whose interests it would serve. On the other hand, what could possibly be so extraordinary about the Palestinians expressing solidarity with the Palestinian Arabs in Israel?
At the time, no one even imagined that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would exploit the fact that Arabs were voting to intimidate right-wing voters and bring them out to vote for him. Given Netanyahu’s stunning victory on March 17, the response from Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for the chairman of the Palestinian Authority (PA), actually seemed rather laconic and restrained: “It doesn’t matter to us who the prime minister of Israel is. What we demand from every government is recognition of a two-state solution and of East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state. We will continue to work with any Israeli government once it recognizes the international community’s resolutions on the matter.”
In contrast, the response of Saeb Erekat, chief of the Palestinian negotiating team, was a better expression of the real feeling in the Muqata, the Palestinian headquarters in Ramallah. “It is clear that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will form the next government, so we say clearly that we will go to the International Criminal Court in the Hague and we will speed up, pursue and intensify,” he said. But the bad feeling over the Israeli election results was quickly replaced by intense optimism. The Palestinians are now convinced that Netanyahu handed Abbas a Palestinian state on a silver platter.
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