I recently asked a Palestinian friend what she thought about the upcoming Israeli elections. “It’s like we’re on a train speeding toward a cliff,” she said, “and we’re being asked whether we’d prefer a conductor who drives faster or slower. Neither! We want to get off the train.”
Many countries seem eager to pin the blame for years of Israeli atrocities across the Occupied Palestinian Territory solely on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. If the current government falls, the thinking goes, things will get better.
But ignoring the train and focusing on the conductor overlooks — or willfully refuses to see — reality. The root causes of abuse in the Occupied Palestinian Territory predate Netanyahu and have persisted for decades regardless of the face of the government. They are embedded in long-term policies implemented by successive Israeli governments.
Individually, an unlawful air strike, a demolished home, or a soldier who walks free after killing a Palestinian teenager can each be explained away as an isolated incident, a security measure, or an individual failure. But a new report from Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, “The Elimination Project,” argues that treating these as separate events misses the point.
The group says that violence, movement restrictions, economic strangulation, the destruction of Palestinian institutions, and the seizure of land are parts of an overall strategy to make Palestinian collective life in the West Bank impossible to sustain and Israeli control permanent — elements that demonstrate Israel’s crimes of apartheid and persecution.
This is the cliff the train is speeding toward.
In the last few years, the train has been driven with increased intensity and openness about its destination, and the impact on Palestinians has been disastrous. In the West Bank, state-backed settler violence has risen to all-time highs, and the number of illegal settlements has nearly doubled, including the E1 settlement project long declared a “red line” by Israel’s allies. Nearly 50,000 Palestinians have been displaced and 1,333 killed by settlers or soldiers since the start of 2023.
In Gaza, the scale of deliberate destruction and other atrocities, including acts of genocide, have demonstrated the Israeli authorities’ contempt for their fundamental obligations under international law. Reconstruction has not yet begun, and Israeli forces keep pushing the “Yellow Line” (the limit of Israeli territorial control inside Gaza) westward beyond its agreed boundaries as Israeli authorities say they seek to control 70 percent of Gaza. Israel’s continued obstruction of humanitarian aid and its unlawful blockade have left more than 90 percent of the population lacking adequate shelter and at risk of reaching high levels of acute food insecurity by December.
Whoever leads Israel next will be faced with these ongoing rights violations. If a less extreme government is elected, there may be marginal improvements. They may let more aid trucks into Gaza or crack down on settler violence and dismantle some outposts. But absent commitments that address the root cause of abuses, these differences won’t change the underlying reality. They slow the train, but do not change its destination.
None of the leading candidates have called for ending apartheid or ethnic cleansing. They have not promised to end Israel’s unlawful blockade of Gaza, repeal its discriminatory death penalty bill targeting Palestinians, end its use of unlawful administrative detention, halt demolitions of Palestinian homes, or end other collective punishment policies. They have not promised to dismantle illegal settlements, nor even stop their expansion.
The current authorities are not an exception to Israel’s abusive treatment of Palestinians — they are just not trying to hide it. This is precisely why other governments should not wait for a change of government to act.
If officials in other countries believe that the current government’s conduct is unlawful — and they increasingly say they do — they should not ask Palestinians to suffer continuing harm in hope for a political possibility that may never materialize. More fundamentally, an approaching election or any change in government does not suspend states’ legal and moral obligation to prevent further harm, ensure accountability, and remedy violations.
Instead, governments should commit to concrete action that looks beyond election day, toward a more just, peaceful, and rights-respecting future for both Palestinians and Israelis. Protecting human rights requires ending Israel’s apartheid, not fixing it.
Governments can keep underwriting this system, or prove they’re serious about ending it and remedying its harm by imposing targeted sanctions on senior officials implicated in ongoing grave abuses, suspending arms transfers to Israel, banning trade with illegal settlements, considering suspension of preferential trade agreements with Israel, and supporting the International Criminal Court and its ongoing investigations, including by executing its arrest warrants.
The train is racing for the cliff. Will governments intervene to stop it?