Renowned for his ability to pull off political miracles, Benjamin Netanyahu gradually wore down rival Benny Gantz’s resistance to joining a unity government over the past 12 months. The coronavirus epidemic proved the final straw.

What does Benny Gantz fear most: Netanyahu exploiting the coronavirus crisis to evade justice and stay in power, or damaging his own public image by seeking temporary assistance from the Palestinian parties of the Joint List?

Benjamin Netanyahu’s election win means he may yet pull off his great escape, with a criminal trial less than two weeks away. He has worn down voters by refusing to go, while his rival Benny Gantz’s racist refusal to sit with Palestinian parties means he has no visible path to power.

Much of Israel’s electorate – at least the Jewish majority – agrees on political fundamentals. They believe it is time to permanently seize much of the territory that was one day meant to form the basis of a Palestinian state. They disagree less on what needs to be done than on who should do it.

The next leader of the Labour Party has already made themself a prisoner to the “institutional antisemitism” narrative. That means their hands are chained not only to support for Israel, but to the reactionary politics in which Israel as a Jewish state makes sense – a worldview that embraces its style of ethnic, chauvinist, militaristic, segregationist politics.

The UN’s timing in publishing its list of 112 companies operating in the settlements could not be more tragic. It looks like the last gasp of those who – through their negligence over nearly three decades – have enabled the two-state solution to wither to nothing.

For Israel’s so-called peace camp, the past 12 months of general elections – a third ballot is due on 2 March – have felt more like a prolonged game of Russian roulette, with ever-diminishing odds of survival.

Under the terms of Trump’s “peace” plan, the US could allow Israel to strip potentially hundreds of thousands of its own inhabitants – members of a large Palestinian minority – of their citizenship in a so-called “populated land swap” with the settlements.

Trump’s “Vision for Peace” is needed only because Oslo has outlived its usefulness. It radically overhauls the Oslo formula: instead of a supposed sharing of obligations – “land in return for peace” – those obligations are now imposed exclusively on the Palestinian side.

The White House has discarded the traditional US pose as an “honest broker” between Israel and the Palestinians. This was a deal designed in Tel Aviv more than in Washington – and its point was to ensure there would be no Palestinian partner.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs all the help he can muster before voters head to the ballot box on March 2 – for the third time in a year. Once again, it seems as though US President Donald Trump intends to ride to his rescue.

This was the year that the antisemitism smear against the left proved the political weapon of choice. Centrists let the genie out of the bottle, but the populist right will ultimately benefit by stoking further hatred of minorities, including Jews.

Israel’s decision to trap Christians in Gaza this Christmas is only a prelude to a larger, seemingly contradictory longer-term plan. The choking blockade is designed to sap the people of the will to stay and struggle for what is theirs.

British officials have stonewalled a campaign seeking to expose a UK ‘charity’, the Jewish National Fund, that has helped to fund crimes in Israel and the occupied territories, including planting a forest used to ethnically cleanse Palestinians

With its plan for a new Hebron settlement, Israel has reminded Palestinians that there are no limits – military, legal, moral or diplomatic – to the settlers’ power. Israel will annex land where it chooses and deceptively refashion the resulting apartheid system as the rule of law.

Surveys suggesting that British Jews are frightened on a Labour election victory should not be surprising. The media have ensured we have been living in a nationwide anti-Corbyn echo-chamber for the best part of four years.

The decision to indict Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on three separate criminal counts pushes the country’s already unprecedented electoral stalemate into the entirely uncharted territory of a constitutional crisis. There is no legal precedent for a prime minister facing a trial while in office.

Digital-age weapons developed by Israel to oppress Palestinians under occupation are rapidly being repurposed for much wider applications – against Western populations who have long taken their freedoms for granted.

It is a sign of Israel’s overweening confidence in its own impunity that it so openly violates the rights of those whose job it is to monitor human rights. Palestinians, meanwhile, are rapidly losing the very last voices prepared to stand up and defend them against the systematic abuses associated with Israel’s occupation.