'Natanyahu, Gantz only different in degree of brutality toward Palestinians'

Political analysts say as far as Palestinians are concerned, it makes no difference which party is going to win in the Israeli elections since both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the right-wing Likud party and his main challenger centrist Benny Gantz of the Blue and White alliance back occupation of the Palestinian territories.

With 92 percent of the votes counted in Israel’s Tuesday repeat elections, Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party and the centrist Blue and White alliance of former military chief Gantz, failed to garner enough seats to secure a parliamentary majority needed to form an administration.

Likud Party and Blue and White Party have respectively secured 31 and 33 parliamentary seats.

The outcome dealt a new blow to Israel’s longest-serving premier, who was already weakened by the inability to put together an administration after an inconclusive election in April.

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“Regardless of which blocs form the next government, the Zionist project to dispossess Palestinians incrementally day after day and week after week will continue,” Mick Napier, activist and commentator from Edinburgh, said on Press TV’s The Debate show on Wednesday.

He said Netanyahu and Gantz are only different in the “methods” or “degree of brutality” they employ.

“Netanyahu would be the equivalent of [US President Donald] Trump and Gantz would be the equivalent of some of the US presidents who continued to facilitate Israeli dispossession of the Palestinians but did so with a softer language,” he said.

The political commentator further said that Israel’s next administration “will pose a serious danger to its neighbors and the Middle East” either formed by Netanyahu’s party or by that of Gantz.

Sa’d Nimr, professor of political science at Birzeit University from Ramallah, also speaikng on the show, pointed to the so-called two-state solution to the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and said regardless of their parties, Israeli officials are not “ready for a real peace that would give the minimum of the requirements of the Palestinian people.”

“I don’t think that Gantz or anyone else is going to order a withdrawal of all [Israeli] settlers from the West Bank and Jerusalem (al-Quds]… He can’t stand in front of the Israeli public and say I’m going to get those settlers out to achieve the two-state solution,” he said.

“Neither Gantz nor anyone else is willing to stand in front of the Israeli audience and say that ‘I’m going to give East Jerusalem [al-Quds] to the Palestinians, let alone to discuss even remotely the idea of the return of some of the Palestinian refugees,” he added.

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