‘Outrageous lies’: How Israeli voters are shrugging off Western sanctions
New sanctions highlight Israel's isolation, yet analysts say they won't sway voters before October's elections.
Israeli politicians reacted to sanctions by states including the United Kingdom, France, and Canada on the country’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank with self-righteous anger. But what is the latest example of Israel’s 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’s elections, analysts tell Al Jazeera.
Responding to the UK Foreign Minister Ed Miliband’s accusation that Israelis were ethnically cleansing the occupied West Bank, Israel’s Gideon Saar accused his counterpart of spreading “outrageous lies” and attempting to interfere in the election through foreign pressure.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog also condemned the measures, branding them a “gross interference in the democratic elections” of Israel.
Public backing for the “government and opposition blocs are pretty hardened, and nobody is going to switch from one side to the other over sanctions arising from [the settlements],” 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 “this government’s record and the related feelings people have about Netanyahu”.