The center-left Democrats party has hinged its campaign on promising an alternative to Israel’s right-wing status quo, but their response to the killings in the West Bank last weekend emphasized how narrow that alternative actually is
In many ways, what happened in the village of Tell last week was the first test of the Democrats party. It was the first time the party’s leaders were forced to show what the politics they seek to represent looks like in practice. The party aims to offer an alternative to the current government and to be the leftmost flank of Israeli politics, and at first glance it has no qualms talking about settler violence and the price Palestinians pay as a result of the occupation, even if that word does not appear in its platform. But then it was forced to respond to the incident last week in which armed settlers and so-called hilltop youth entered a Palestinian village and assaulted residents, and four unarmed Palestinians who came out to defend their village were killed by Israeli soldiers. The party struggled to pass the test.