 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. We have had just the Israeli election results come in. We are going to discuss with Prof. Rajaz Ahmad what are the implications of these elections. Do you see that Netanyahu seems to have remerged as the leading candidate for the Prime Minister's ship again. So he is going to lead this coalition from all accounts. Of course, it may take a little time. Do you see this coalition that is emerged around Netanyahu is more right-wing or as right-wing as last time? He has won. Gantz has conceded. So there's no doubt that Netanyahu is going to be laying the claims with about 65 seats. 61 is the required number. So the coalition is in place and he probably will be called to form the government. The coalition is basically the same as it has been in the past. What has happened with the coming of Trump to the U.S. presidency is that the U.S. is now allowing Israel to implement its maximum positions. And that is what Netanyahu has been doing with the permission of the U.S. The annexation of East Jerusalem, annexation of the Jordan, the Americans recognizing the whole of Jerusalem as Israeli capital, etc. And now Netanyahu says that he is going to annex parts of the West Bank, certainly all the ones where there are these colonies, which are called settlements or whatever. Pompeo was asked by a Democratic senator during the hearings, will the United States allow Israel to unilaterally annex the West Bank? Pompeo refused to say yes or no. In other words, yes, we will. So what I'm saying is that Netanyahu is now in a position to implement the maximum program that he has and all these extreme, so-called extreme right wing parties have no extreme right wing parties. And Likud is notice extreme. So I would say that the results are unsurprising. It is essentially the same coalition. The difference between him and his opposition was extremely minimal. That's very important to understand. So far Palestine is concerned. Gantz is the general who led those horrible invasions to big invasions of Gaza. He is the one who is saying settlements are a spiritual asset. They cannot be touched. We have Israeli law has to be implemented throughout the Jordan Valley. The border between Jordan and Judea Samaria, as they call the West Bank, is our border. This Gantz. So this is a recognition of both sides that annexation is now legal virtually, particularly after the last change of their constitution, which had said only right to self-determination is of the Jewish population, no other section. So all of this is now from de facto, we are slowly going to move to not an international law, but in terms of Israeli law to a de-jure annexation. Is that what we are looking at? Well, certainly I'd say two things about it. One is that yes, international law as a body of documents is in conflict with this. But fact of the matter is that nobody, no European power, not Russia, not China, not India, nobody has objected to their assertion of sovereignty over the Jordan or over Jerusalem or protested against this statement and so on. So there is an absolutely international consensus supporting Israel. So that's one thing I would say. The other thing I would say is that I have said this in the past, that when the New Commons said that we will need 30 years to restructure the Middle East, the central element in it which they never said is that Israelis would need a couple of decades at least to annex the whole of Palestine. And in order to make that possible, they had to create mayhem all around Israel and therefore give Israel a security cordon to proceed with that. And in that I think they have been very successful. The United States has very successfully, why we think of conventional warfare and victory and loss in terms of conventional warfare, but in terms of their objectives, they have been very successful. Israel has a completely freehand. According to the West, the entire West, it can do anything it wants. So in short, after these elections, I'm expecting the annexation and various other designs of the Israelis to move very fast. Okay, leaving out right now the Israeli situation, we'll come back to it and what happens to a formal apartheid state in the 21st century. Can't be leaving that out. And I remember about three or four months back, you had said that whatever happens in West Asia, the your sympathies today are with the Palestinians because you don't see any improvement on that count on the contrary to the worst. But geostrategically, if we look at the Israel US, particularly the US, US seems to have emerged weaker in West Asia than say what you said in 1990s that if you say they have destroyed Iraq true, Libya true, Syria true, but at the same time they have not emerged strategically a stronger in West Asia. Would you say their ability to destroy states is much greater than their ability to control the aftermath? Possibly. They cannot control the aftermath in the conventional sense as you know the point is that once you have destroyed a society and a state, that state is not able to defy. So no matter how weak in conventional terms US may appear, fact of the matter is that neither Libya nor Iraq nor Syria and now that Iran is surrounded the way it is surrounded, not Iran, not Qatar, nobody can you know defy the United States. So it may have become weaker, but they have become frequently weaker than they were. So in that sense the balance of force the great game in town is something that you can expect and this is the partition that they have. So this new map, the only coherent power is this and the billy girl era. What about Turkey? I mean Turkey has never played any significant role in relation to Israel, in relation to Palestinians. It has always had a certain military relationship with Israel which is still there. Historically there's a lot of slums of the empire, you know, rhetorically, but its relationship with Israel is very good, commercial and military. So you see Iran has the only major resistance to the US, Saudi, Israeli politics in the region. Yes, but that resistance has come down to fight for survival. Defense. Completely defense. They are entirely under defense. So particularly because of this new very deep strategic alliance between Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE and Israel. Israel has a completely free country. So I really fear very much what is going to happen in Palestine given the fact that Palestine basically does. No leadership. Particularly with the way the Palestine authority has been behaving completely supine in front of Israel. So yesterday they said we should break our security cooperation with Israel. This is their reaction to Netanyahu saying, yes, we will annex large parts of the West Bank. So you know, that's the other side of the situation. You know, what is a long-term prospect in the 21st century now of an apartheid state? Do you think, of course, we can always say in the long run, we are all dead. But do you think that in the medium term, there is a possibility that Israel will cannot maintain this for too long? No, there are two things we said. In the long run, we are dead. In the long run, revolution has succeeded. You take it. That's why I said the medium term. I didn't even say either the log on the short term. It just... So long term is concerned. Look, obviously historically speaking, apartheid states, central colonial states, cannot survive for it. Especially the ones that are established at this point in history. So, historically speaking, as a Punevegan, I would say this is going to not last. I have not more than 50 years, perhaps not more than 30 or 40 years, but it's not going to last. But as of now, with the whole... There being no resistance, all the states who could mount a challenge being vanquished, Palestinians not having been able to have a coherent leadership and a coherent strategy. We do not, in the foreseeable future, see any great change in the overall situation in the region. And so, amazingly, the only resistance coming is still from the Palestinian people, from no other Arab quarter, not from their leadership. Just on somewhat shall we say somber note. We shall conclude our discussions today. I hope that next time we can take up the other issue which is there, Ukraine, Central and Eastern Europe and what is the quote unquote great game there that's going on, particularly as we see official fascists coming into play in Ukraine. Of course, they have been in the government for quite some time. Thank you, Ajaz. We'll see you then. Thank you for watching NewsClick. Do continue to watch our shows and also visit our website.