Visiting Ramallah these days, it is hard to say what Palestinian politicians are watching more of on TV — Palestinian news or Israeli news.

There is great curiosity within the Palestinian leadership about the eventual Israeli elections. After closely following Israeli news, they know that even if the immediate threat of early elections was averted, this eventuality should not be dismissed. In fact, most of the senior Palestinian officials Al-Monitor spoke with in recent days rejoice openly about the investigations Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under, but they doubt this will hurt him politically. A decade of Netanyahu rule has also convinced them that he may be there forever and a day.

Yet a senior PLO official close to President Mahmoud Abbas told Al-Monitor that Israeli elections are never a forgone conclusion. He is a savant of Israeli politics and recalls very well the 1996 hopes for a Peres victory on the evening of election day, only to wake up the morning after to a Netanyahu victory and to the end of the Oslo process.

According to this Palestinian official, there is a clear decision by the leadership in Ramallah not to interfere in an eventual Israeli election. He compares the current situation to that of the 1996 elections, when US President Bill Clinton supported Shimon Peres, while Hamas and Hezbollah generated violence in Israel, thus strengthening the Israeli right. Nowadays, he argued, we have again a US president backing the Israeli incumbent. President Donald Trump is backing Netanyahu by moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem and possibly attending the ceremony. And we also have again the Palestinian fundamentalists. As in 1996, they would like nothing more than a victory of the Israeli right and the settler movement because a conflict would strengthen them in the Palestinian street.