Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of Israel's Likud party, is Prime Minister elect and is currently putting together a fragile right-wing coalition before taking over as Premier. Netanyahu is known as a nationalist hawk and an opponent of establishing a Palestinian state. But could Bibi, as he is known by both his friends and foes in Israel, be good for the Palestinians? Well, good is a relative word, but I'm going to suggest that he will be good for the Palestinians, or at least better than the other options.



To understand why he is good for the Palestinians, we have to remember that in Israeli politics there are essentially two camps: one which favors a land-for-peace arrangement and the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel; and a nationalist camp which believes that all of Israel, including Gaza and especially "Judea and Samaria" (ie. the Westbank), belongs to the Jewish people and that a Palestinian state is a grave threat to Israeli security. Netanyahu belongs to the second camp, the nationalist camp.



Netanyahu, during his first term as prime minister in the 1990s, reluctantly accepted the previously-signed Oslo Accords, which mandated a land-for-peace arrangement. Netanyahu did give up some land including most Arab residential areas of Hebron. But he remains opposed to a Palestinian state and supports mere autonomy for the Palestinans within a limited amount of land, and he has always dragged his heels on land transfers, citing the need for "reciprocity" from the Palestinians. While dragging his feet on land transfers, he stepped up settlement expansion in the Westbank. He also opposed the evacuation of Israeli settlements in Gaza. This is a good thing for the Palestinians.



Why is it a good thing, you must be asking? The reason it's a good thing is because the two-state solution is a farce. The purpose of the two-state solution has never been justice and giving a life of freedom to the Palestinians and solving the refugee problem. The purpose of the two state solution has always been to exclude the Palestinians from Israel's population and keep them outside its borders, while minimizing the amount of land given to the Palestinian state. Israel never had any intention of giving up its rights to the Westbank and Gaza's water sources, to their airspace, to their borders, to their main settlement blocks, and certainly not to the holy sites of Jerusalem. Israel's left wing governments have paid lip service to giving the Palestinians part of Jerusalem, but that doesn't mean the Old City or even downtown East Jerusalem. It means the outlying residential neighbourhoods and refugee camps that Israel sees as a nuisance. The entire two state solution was created to benefit Israel. The only reason Yasser Arafat ever accepted the Oslo Accords is because the PLO was almost bankrupt after he misguidedly supported Saddam Hussein in the first Iraq War and was subsequently shunned by the wealthy Gulf nations that had previously funded him.



So why is Netanyahu's nationalist platform better? Because Netanyahu doesn't believe in a Palestinian state, and because Palestinians will be a majority of Israel's residents within the next couple of decades, the only other options are apartheid or a democratic country in which all are citizens. Netanyahu claims to be a firm believer in democracy, and is unlikely to support a system of apartheid that denies the Palestinians their political rights. Instead, he supports a one-state solution with eventual citizenship for the Palestinians, while simultaneously encouraging immigration to maintain a Jewish majority. But if past numbers are any indication, the Palestinian population's growth rate is far higher than Israel's, even if we include Jewish immigrants to Israel. And there are no indications that the rate of Jewish immigration to Israel is going to increase. In the case that the Palestinians become a majority in Israel without having political rights, world pressure will be upon Israel to prove that it is the democracy that it has always claimed it is. Israel will undergo a change, just like apartheid South Africa underwent a change. The Palestinians will have power in their homeland, or at least have their fair representation in the government. The Palestinians will be able to propose and pass legislation that is to their people's benefit, and Israel will cease to be a Zionist state, instead being a state of its citizens.



These days Netanyahu does pay lip service to negotiations with the Palestinians on the reciprocal land-for-security model. But he will likely keep building in settlements while saying that he isn't, will leave illegal outposts where they are and allow new ones to spring up, and will find reasons not to negotiate with the Palestinians for as long as possible. There are already so many "facts on the ground" in place that a true two state solution is very unlikely. But with Benjamin Netanyahu in charge, a two state solution will become less and less likely. So if we look at the issues with a longterm view, Netanyahu is the best choice because he will lead the Palestinians away from phony bantustan statehood and towards integration into a single democratic Israel, or Palestine, or whatever it will be called in the future.