"The question is who will keep bombing us": Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have no illusions about Israel's government

Barcelona"What should make us expect any significant change with a new government in Israel? Will new acronyms or new faces change the reality in which we Palestinians have been living for decades? After all, since 1948, we have only experienced dispossession, occupation, forced displacement, and the denial of our most basic rights." This is the response of Maisara Baroud, an illustrator from Gaza, regarding what he expects from the new government in Tel Aviv. "Political methods and justifications may change and governments come and go, but the fundamental reality remains the same: we Palestinians are losing our lands, our homes, our people, and the right to live with freedom and dignity."

After Tuesday's elections in Israel concluded without a clear winner, the parties are negotiating possible governing coalitions. The polls have shown a clear majority against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but it is by no means clear that he will end up leaving the government. The opposition bloc does not want to make a deal with the parties representing Israeli Palestinians, and the deadlock may lead to a repeat election or a grand coalition of Jewish parties, with Netanyahu and some Zionist opposition leaders and without the Arabs. Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank could not vote in these elections, but the government that emerges will be decisive in their lives.

The illustrator, who spent years under the Israeli genocide publishing a single-ink drawing on Instagram every day to show his friends and family that he was still alive, notes that "from Gaza, after so many years of siege, destruction, and mass forced displacement, it is difficult to find hope in a change of government in Israel." "Our lives," he adds, "are secondary to their political calculations." And he points out that, while political negotiations for a governing coalition are taking place, the fundamental questions remain: "Will the massacre stop? Will the occupation end? Will we Palestinians be able to return to our homes, rebuild our lives, and live with the same rights and dignity as any other people?"

Baroud is convinced that nothing will change until Israeli officials face accountability for the crimes they have committed. "If this does not happen, everything will just be a change of faces. We Palestinians only ask that our existence stops being in question and that our freedom stops being negotiable: we do not ask for sympathy, we ask for the right to live," he proclaims. And he summarizes it all in one sentence: "A lasting peace cannot be built on the denial of the other's right to freedom."

In the West Bank, which is subjected to an intensification of settler violence, acting with impunity against the Palestinian population and backed by the army and the government, Nisreen Azzeh is no more optimistic. She lives in Tel Rumeida, a neighborhood in the city of Hebron that was declared a closed military zone by the Israeli government in 2015 and is subject to a strong military presence and isolated from the rest of the city. To enter and exit, all residents must pass through a military checkpoint. Azzeh and her children have survived several attacks by settlers who established a settlement on a hill next to their home. Her husband, who had a heart condition, died when a tear gas canister was thrown into their home. After a Palestinian attack on a military checkpoint last week, Netanyahu ordered the eviction of 2,500 people from their homes and the destruction of their houses in Hebron. "It is collective punishment: they have thrown everyone out of their homes without them being able to collect their belongings. They were people who had done nothing wrong. They have closed all checkpoints and we cannot go anywhere." The woman has no hope that things will change with a new government: "None of the candidates defend a Palestinian state. I follow the news and see that none of them accept the two-state solution, and that they support the Jewish gangs that attack Palestinian towns and cities and that they will not stop the attacks against us".

Mahmoud, a young photographer who lives in Gaza City, also does not show a glimmer of hope: "Here in Gaza, the only doubt we have is who will bomb us from now on, and, in the end, if the bad one leaves, the worse one will come. They are two sides of the same coin: both Netanyahu and Eisenkot want to kill the Palestinians of Gaza". This does not mean that he would not celebrate Netanyahu's departure: "Everyone would be happy, but not because they have illusions about any other Israeli politician".

The same sentiment is shared by Dr. Nabil Arouf, a trauma surgeon from Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza who now lives in exile in Cairo. "Netanyahu is not an exception or a mutant being, he is one more of those who appropriated our land, and after the elections it will be him or another colonizer. They all have Zionism as their ideology and we cannot expect anything to change. They believe they are part of a chosen people, who were promised our land, and they want to build Greater Israel: they are all thieves and murderers".