Zionists Vote Again as Political Crisis Grinds On
AL-QUDS (Dispatches) – For the fifth time since 2019, Zionists were voting in parliamentary elections on Tuesday, hoping to break the political deadlock that has paralyzed the regime for the past three and a half years.
The elections are aimed at ending four years of a paralyzing political stalemate in Tel Aviv, amid deep political divisions among the regime’s political parties that have prevented them from forming an effective coalition cabinet.
Again, the vote centers around former premier Benjamin Netanyahu’s fitness to lead while he faces corruption charges. And while polls predict another stalemate, Netanyahu is looking to the surging power of far-right lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir to propel him back to power.
The final network polls provided by the occupying regime before the elections have all predicted that Likud will fall just short of a majority in the 120-seat Knesset.
Surveys aired by Channel 12 and Channel 13 news on Friday, and the Kan public broadcaster on Thursday, gave the parties expected to back Netanyahu for premier 60 seats in the upcoming Knesset — one fewer than needed for a majority.
Netanyahu sees a comeback possible due to the alliance that Likud has forged with the far-right Religious Zionism party.
‘Vote Not to Legitimize
Occupying Regime’
The Palestinian Hamas resistance movement says the apartheid regime is an occupying force in its entirety and it cannot give legitimacy to its occupation of the Palestinian territories by staging elections.
In an interview with al-Ahed news, Abdul Latif al-Qanou, a Hamas spokesman, highlighted the rift and discord in the occupying regime’s internal circle, saying the Gaza-based resistance movement does not count on the outcome of the new elections, which are the fifth of their kind in less than four years.
The official said the entire regime, including its social, political and security components, is considered an occupying entity, and that all parties in Tel Aviv are hostile to the Palestinian nation.
Elections cannot legitimize the occupation, he said.
The Palestinian people, Qanou added, have “the right of resistance against the Zionist occupation which kills them.”