Citing the likely far-right nature of the next Israeli government, a senior Palestinian Authority official has declared the peace process between the two parties dead. The unnamed official declared that the next Israeli government would be “an extremist government that, in the best case, won’t go crazy building settlements and won’t escalate the security situation but will not bring about political progress during the upcoming period.” As the PA struggles to remain credible, officials appear to have no choice but to accept that the Oslo process “no longer exists.”
The process had not exactly been moving forward by leaps and bounds over the past several months, but Netanyahu’s hawkish positions and opposition to the peace process will likely only be heightened by the even more bellicose rhetoric of many of his presumptive coalition partners.