As Israelis prepare to go to the polls on April 9, predicting the winner would be a fool's errand. A series of major losers, however, are already evident: peace with the Palestinians and the Arab world, public trust in the institutions of government, co-existence between the Jewish majority and Arab minority, and freedom from religion. Israel’s 35th prime minister, whoever he is, will find himself bound by social and geopolitical realities that will sap his ability to affect change in each of these important areas. Various considerations dictated by the need to forge a coalition with smaller, disparate parties will shrink any remaining room for maneuver.

Hopes for peace: The overriding agenda throughout the election campaign, the Zionist parties’ candidates, opinion poll results and the political parties' discourse all reflect attitudes deeply ingrained in Israeli society over the past decade under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu. It is far easier to spread fear, injected continuously and skillfully into Israelis’ brains, than to deconstruct it. It is far easier to sow hatred, spread abundantly throughout Israeli society for years, than to uproot it. Conducting realistic peace negotiations based on the 1967 borders with certain adjustments, on the evacuation of settlements and recognition of East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state would now be even harder, if not impossible, given the sheer weight of fear and hatred of the “other” amassed over the Netanyahu decade.

The right-wing bloc is openly striving for territorial annexation of West Bank lands. Its representatives in the outgoing Knesset have bequeathed the next government no fewer than 60 proposed bills containing some degree of annexation. The Knesset has already adopted eight into law. Legal opinions and a change in the state’s position on the status of the West Bank as occupied territory and Israel’s authority to act there have buttressed these de jure annexation measures. A new database maintained by the anti-occupation organization Yesh Din points out that the growing annexation measures increase the impression that Israel is turning itself into an apartheid state, with two categories of people under its sovereignty and rule: Israeli citizens enjoying full rights and Palestinian residents devoid of all political and other rights.

The center-left parties do not stand a chance of pulling together a “Jewish majority” in favor of the two-state solution, which matters due to the troubling yet likely correct assumption that no Jewish leader would sign an agreement with the Palestinians stipulating Israeli withdrawal from most of the occupied territories based on a non-Jewish Knesset majority, meaning one that relies on Arab votes too. A distinct majority of Israeli Jews do not want to pay the price of peace. A small minority, estimated at less than 15%, supports Labor and Meretz, the only two parties advocating a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The leadership of the Blue and White party, running neck-and-neck against Netanyahu and his Likud, includes distinctly right-wing elements, such as former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, former Netanyahu Director of Communications Yoaz Hendel and former Cabinet secretary Zvi Hauser. All regard the term “two-state solution” as an obscenity.