Palestinians alarmed, sceptical of change after Netanyahu's victory in Israeli elections

Palestinian reacted from alarm to indifference towards the results of the latest Israeli elections, in which the alliance between Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party and right-wing religious Zionism parties won a clear majority and set to form the next Israeli government.

Israeli right-wing parties continue to dominate the Israeli Knesset, with an ever-stronger presence of the religious Zionist forces. 

For their part, Palestinian political and military factions unanimously expressed alarm at the results of Israeli elections.

The spokesperson for the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine - DFLP, Saleh Nasser, said that Israeli elections "demonstrate the return of the Israeli extreme right, well-known by the Palestinian people".

"It is a leadership hostile to the rights of our people," said Saleh.

"It is time to reorganise the internal Palestinian house and prepare for the coming aggressive measures by the new Israeli government against Palestinians," he added.

"We are in front of a new wave of aggression against our Palestinian people, which will increase tensions in the region as a whole," Munther Al-Hayek, spokesperson of Fatah, the leading faction of the Palestinian Authority, told the press.

"Resisting actions must increase, as well as the efforts to unify the Palestinian positions through achieving a real national unity," Al-Hayek stressed.

"The results of Israeli elections show that the Zionist society is heading towards more fascism aimed against the Palestinian people," said Hazem Qassem, spokesperson of Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian movement and the main rival of the PA's Fatah.

"The Palestinian leadership must not put any hopes in the results of these results," he said.

Similarly, Palestinians on various social media platforms commented on the Israeli elections, emphasising its impact on Palestinian politics and daily life.

"The patriotic forces that accepted to lower their political expectations to enter the Knesset have lost a great deal of their force," said Muhannad Abu Ghosh, a Palestinian from Haifa, on his Facebook page, referring to the Palestinian parties in Israel who took part in the elections.

"However, they have not lost in favour of Ben Gvir, as they say," he further said, referring to Netanyahu's far-right extremist ally. "They lost those who no longer believe in the morality of bending down for the sake of daily interests," he added, about the abstention in voting by Palestinian citizens of Israel who were eligible voters.

"It is incorrect to say that the former and present Israeli governments are the same things," wrote Razi Nabulse, another Palestinian from Haifa. "There is a difference between he who kills you and then opens an investigation and he who just kills you".

In the streets of the occupied West Bank, Palestinians were sceptical towards the possibilities of change in Israel's brutal colonial policy regardless of which Israeli party is in power in the Knesset. 

"There is no difference between a government that kills us while chanting racist slogans and another that kills us chanting slogans of peace," said Ahmed Salahat, a Palestinian graduate engineer from Ramallah, retorted to The New Arab.

"As long as our land is occupied and Israeli candidates compete to continue the occupation, there is no difference for me between political labels," Hamza Aqrabawi, a popular artist in Ramallah, said to TNA, as well.

"In Jerusalem, we are taxed without representation and it has been the case throughout Israeli governments for decades," a Palestinian legal researcher from Jerusalem who asked not to be named said to TNA.

"The Israeli policies that aim at pushing us out of our city have never changed, therefore I see no interest in the change of Israeli governments," the researcher added.

Wednesday's Israeli elections were the fifth to take place in under four years. Netanyahu's victory and his return to lead Israel's government are expected to end an unprecedentedly long political deadlock.