{"id":4512,"date":"2026-09-18T07:55:41","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T07:55:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=4512"},"modified":"2026-09-18T07:55:41","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T07:55:41","slug":"outrageous-lies-how-israeli-voters-are-shrugging-off-western-sanctions-israel-palestine-conflict-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=4512","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Outrageous lies\u2019: How Israeli voters are shrugging off Western sanctions | Israel-Palestine conflict News"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Israeli politicians reacted to sanctions by states<\/a> including the United Kingdom, France, and Canada on the country\u2019s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank with self-righteous anger. But what is the latest example of Israel\u2019s international isolation brought on by its treatment of the Palestinian people has not been influential in swaying the electorate in the run-up to October\u2019s elections, analysts tell Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

Responding to the UK Foreign Minister Ed Miliband\u2019s accusation<\/a> that Israelis were ethnically cleansing the occupied West Bank, Israel\u2019s Gideon Saar accused his counterpart of spreading \u201coutrageous lies\u201d and attempting to interfere in the election through foreign pressure.<\/p>\n

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Israeli President Isaac Herzog also condemned the measures<\/a>, branding them a \u201cgross interference in the democratic elections\u201d of Israel.<\/p>\n

But, in reality, the majority of Jewish Israelis have supported their country\u2019s genocidal war in Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank.<\/p>\n

A poll from August, published as the death toll for Palestinians killed in the West Bank had already reached 76 this year, showed that more than half of Jewish Israelis supported retaining the illegal settlements as part of any future agreement on a Palestinian state, while nearly 40 percent supported annexing the territory in defiance of international law.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople just don\u2019t care that settlements are illegal,\u201d Israeli political analyst Ori Goldberg said.<\/p>\n

\u201dEd Miliband expressed a number of laudable sentiments when announcing the measures,\u201d Goldberg said, referencing the UK foreign secretary\u2019s references to his own Jewish heritage when announcing the cessation of trade with Israel\u2019s illegal outposts. \u201cBut we\u2019re at the stage where Israelis aren\u2019t even interested in the truth so much as they are the sentiment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Little political impact<\/h2>\n

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu goes into the elections at serious risk of losing, with many polls predicting that a coalition of parties opposed to him could win the majority in Israel\u2019s parliament.<\/p>\n

But it will not be issues like the settlement-related sanctions that will lose him votes, analysts said.<\/p>\n

Public backing for the \u201cgovernment and opposition blocs are pretty hardened, and nobody is going to switch from one side to the other over sanctions arising from [the settlements],\u201d Michael Koplow, chief policy officer at the Israeli Policy Forum, said. He added that the sanctions were unlikely to weigh as heavily with the electorate as \u201cthis government\u2019s record and the related feelings people have about Netanyahu\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen people were asked what would determine their vote, security came first,\u201d Israeli sociologist Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there are several mechanisms operating simultaneously,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

First, he said, is the normalisation of the settlements. In Israeli public discourse, the occupied West Bank is increasingly referred to by the biblical name \u201cJudea and Samaria\u201d \u2013 a shift he said was becoming institutionalised.<\/p>\n

\u201cSecond, external sanctions don\u2019t necessarily translate into domestic political costs,\u201d Shenhav-Shahrabani said. \u201cAnd perhaps most importantly, politically foreign pressure can be absorbed into an existing Israeli narrative [of anti-Semitism] rather than [changing how the issue itself is understood].\u201d<\/p>\n

No criticism of the voters<\/h2>\n

None of Israel\u2019s most prominent politicians has criticised the government for its support of the settlements in defiance of international condemnation. Yair Lapid, a former prime minister and one of Netanyahu\u2019s leading opponents, has, instead, focused his ire on the countries condemning Israel. \u201cImposing boycotts and sanctions on Israel is a grave mistake,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is a wrong and dangerous policy, at the wrong time and for the wrong reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another of Netanyahu\u2019s principal rivals, Gadi Eisenkot \u2013 whose Yashar Party manifesto does not mention either the West Bank or Gaza \u2013 has declined to speak on the sanctions directly. Netanyahu has also yet to comment on the sanctions publicly, despite his Likud party having championed settlement expansion for decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sanctions haven\u2019t particularly hurt Netanyahu, at least not as far as we can see in terms of direct influence on \u2026 polling,\u201d said Dahlia Scheindlin, a pollster and public opinion researcher based in Tel Aviv.<\/p>\n

Instead, the focus has been on other elements of an eventful electoral cycle, including the emergence of new challengers to Netanyahu on the right.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe aren\u2019t seeing any real backlash from the sanctions,\u201d Scheindlin said. \u201cInstead, it\u2019s just getting filtered through what people already think of him \u2013 his critics dislike him even more, and his supporters basically say, \u2018Well, the world hates us no matter what.’\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Israeli politicians reacted to sanctions by states including the United Kingdom, France, and Canada on the country\u2019s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank with self-righteous anger. But what is the latest example of Israel\u2019s international isolation brought on by its treatment of the Palestinian people has not been influential in swaying the electorate in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_2277560469115098_106292521332774":"","twitter_aToxNzczMzI3Njk4OTg4ODUxMjAxOw==_1773327698988851200":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-international-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t