The Muslim players are both from Chechnya, and since their arrival in Jerusalem they have been subjected to taunts and harassment. Four Beitar fans have been indicted on charges of racial harassment. And on Friday, there was a suspected arson attack on the soccer club’s Jerusalem offices.

It made for a tense atmosphere going into last night’s home game against a rival team from the Arab city of Sakhnin in northern Israel.

Israeli soccer is hardly alone in dealing with the problem. But in a league that’s long been concerned about racist incitement from fans, hardcore Beitar supporters have stood out for their bad behavior.

There is no alcohol on sale at the Jerusalem stadium. Still, no matter where you sit for a Beitar match at home, fans would be likely to hear chants like, “Death to the Arabs!”

Several recent incidents though – especially torching the team’s office – seem to have sparked a backlash.

Israeli officials from the Jerusalem mayor to the prime minister have denounced the behavior of Beitar fans. And last night, authorities wanted to send a message. They put 700 police and security officers on duty for the game. Outside the stadium, anyone displaying symbols of a radical fan group called “La Familia” was not allowed in. Some fans were clearly annoyed.

Hundreds of Israeli police were deployed for the Bnei Sakhnin – Beitar Jerusalem match this week. (Photo: Matthew Bell)

Waiting in line with friends to get in to the game, 16-year-old Linoy told me she’s been a Beitar fan her whole life. “This is a Jewish land,” she said. “Beitar should be a Jewish team, without any Arab or Muslim players.”

“The owner is trying to destroy the team by bringing in two Muslims,” against the wishes of supporters, she added.

The hometown crowd of mostly young men sang along with the national anthem. But only half the stadium was full. The section that is usually packed with the most enthusiastic Beitar supporters was completely empty, by order of the Israel Football Association. In their place a huge banner in team colors yellow and black read, “Violence and racism? Not on our field!”

The announcer told fans to refrain from racist chants or they would be kicked out. And that seemed to work. Nonetheless, there were still plenty of profanity-laced chants aimed at the Beitar management and the opposing team of Bnei Sakhnin.

The atmosphere in the stadium changed when the visiting team scored first. Sakhnin added another goal before half-time. Arab fans bused in from Sakhnin sat in a their own separate section, cordoned off by large numbers of uniformed police and security. As their team took control of the game, Sakhnin fans chanted “God is great,” in Arabic.

A police officer standing nearby said things might get ugly if the game remained so lopsided. But the home team came alive in the second half. Beitar answered with a goal of its own. And then another.

The cops on duty might have breathed a sigh of relief at that point, as Beitar tied the game.

With 10 minutes to play, the home team then sent in one of its new Muslim players. It was 19-year-old Gabriel Kadiev’s debut with his new team.

Some Beitar fans made a point of standing and clapping for the defender. But that show of enthusiasm was quickly overpowered as others whistled and jeered every time Kadiev touched the ball.

The match ended in a 2-2 draw. By the end, a few dozen people from either side had been ejected from the stadium by police. But there wasn’t any serious trouble.

One fan, 25-year-old Almog, had this to say about Beitar’s two new Muslim players.

“They don’t hate me. So, I should not hate them,” he said. “I believe they are good players for us.”

Almog said the fans behind most of the violence and racism are a small minority, and that he hopes the authorities will win the fight against these extremists.

“I really hope,” he said. “It’s a fight, …not just about football. It’s about the whole country, about the society.”

“Something bigger,” he said.

There are also a record number of women – 27.

And a record number of lawmakers who live in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. One of them is the first to be elected from the controversial settlement in the city of Hebron.

Her name is Orit Struk. She’s a 52-year-old with 11 children and a dozen grandchildren. Three of her young daughters accompanied Struk earlier this week, when she arrived for the swearing-in ceremony at the Knesset building in Jerusalem.

When asked how it felt to be at the ceremony, Struk said, “It’s very exciting. It’s a blessing to God that we’ll be able to do only good things, God willing.”

Struk’s religious language matches her appearance. Her covered head, long sleeves and ankle-length skirt are a striking contrast in this flashy crowd of Israeli political elites. But that’s the standard uniform, so to speak, worn by many religious Israeli women from West Bank settlements.

Some 350,000 Israelis live in Jewish settlements across the West Bank. But Hebron – or Hevron in Hebrew – isn’t just any settlement.

One reason why: The Cave of the Patriarchs. It’s where Abraham and his family are believed to be buried. And the site is located in the heart of the old city.

“First of all, Hevron is the first Jewish city in the land of Israel. Jews have lived here almost continuously for, for almost 4,000 years,” said David Wilder, spokesman for the Jewish community in Hebron.

“And the significance of Hevron is not just for the Jewish people. I think anybody that believes in one God, this is where it started. This is the roots of monotheism. Abraham was able to reveal the existence of one God and all of the major western religions are based upon that. That’s the starting point,” Wilder said.

And it’s what motivates Orit Struk. Spending time at the Knesset is nothing new for her. She’s long worked as a lobbyist for the West Bank settlements. But now that she’s an elected member of the Knesset, Struk is in a different position to help realize a certain dream for the future of Hebron.

“God willing,” Struk said, “Hebron will be a city in Israel where tens of thousands, or maybe hundreds of thousands of Jews, live. And it will be open to people of all religions to visit.”

Struk wants to retroactively legalize dozens of settlement outposts built without government permission. She and her colleagues with the Jewish Home party are also opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state. For them, Judea and Samaria – the names that religious Jews use to refer to the West Bank – is, and always will be, part of Israel.

Palestinian Muslims also revere the final resting place of Abraham in the city of Hebron, which they call al-Khalil. They know this same holy site as the Ibrahimi Mosque. But Palestinian movement is severely restricted near the mosque and the old city, which is a few minutes walk from the Jewish settlement where Orit Struk and her family live.

The treatment of Palestinians in Hebron is one of the reasons why her ascension to the Knesset isn’t welcomed by all.

Yehuda Shaul served as an Israeli soldier in Hebron. Now he’s with “Breaking the Silence,” an advocacy group that’s opposed to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. He said of Hebron, it’s “the place where our great past meets our disgusting present and future.”

“I think this is a very sad moment in the story of our society, that communities like this sit around the table and will be part of the people who make our laws, the laws under which I live,” he said.

For Shaul, the Jewish settlers of Hebron represent an extremist ideology that is damaging to Israel itself. And that’s why he sees the election of Orit Struk to parliament as a dangerous development.

“Look, today in Hebron you have 850 settlers in a city center of 175,000 Palestinians. Guarding them, you have 650 combat soldiers. Forty-two percent of Palestinian families have fled the area, because they couldn’t continue to have any kind of ordinary life,” Shaul said.

But Orit Struk and her supporters respond to that by saying the results of the recent Israeli election speak for themselves.

Hebron spokesman David Wilder said, “People think that we’re monsters. People think that, you know, we’re not people, that we’re some other species. And it’s not true.”

Not that Wilder cares all that much what people think. He said the real test for Orit Struk and her colleagues will be what they can accomplish in parliament. Then, there will be another election.

In fact, Obama’s ambassador in Israel Wednesday morning said the president will come with an “urgent” peacemaking agenda.

Some Israelis will applaud the prospects of reviving peace talks that have been nearly non-existent for the last four years. But there’s also a potent sense of skepticism in Israeli politics when it comes to the Palestinian issue.

Newly-elected members of the Israeli Knesset took the oath of office Thursday at the parliament building in Jerusalem. Among the parties that did well in the recent national election was the Jewish Home party. Its leader campaigned on a promise to prevent the ultimate goal of the US-sponsored peace process: The creation of an independent Palestinian state.

If Obama hopes to persuade Israelis to return to negotiations with the Palestinians, he could be in for some serious push-back.

Jewish Home lawmaker Avi Wortzman said, “the results of the election in Israel show that people are asking their leaders to deal with domestic issues. Right now is not the time to try and revive the peace process.”

If the American president wants his first state visit to Israel to succeed, he would be wise to lower expectations, said political analyst Shmuel Rosner, who writes for the Jewish Journal.

“He shouldn’t aim too high. He shouldn’t make any promises,” Rosner said. “And I think by this time, Obama is probably experienced enough to know that making promises such as, ‘we are going to have peace within a year or two years,’ like he said at the beginning of his first term would not be the wisest thing to do.”

Rosner said he believes President Obama’s main focus when he comes to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be something different altogether.

“I think the timing of the visit is more about Iran than about the Palestinian peace process,” Rosner said. “The Palestinians could wait for two or three more months. However, on Iran, the president has to make sure that him and the prime minister are on the same page. Let me remind you that the prime minister spoke at the UN and draw a red line. People saw it and the red line is coming this summer. So, for President Obama to come here in the spring.”

If the administration can first avert confrontation with Iran, Rosner suggested, the opportunity for renewing peace talks could then present itself.

But on the Palestinian side, there is also no small amount skepticism about Obama’s upcoming visit. Nashat Aqtash is a professor of communications at Bir Zeit University. The American president might have good intentions, he said. But that’s not enough.

“The Israelis are not sincere about finding a two-state solution. They just want a negotiation for the sake of it, for a public relations campaign, you know. The visit of President Obama might help in this. Not more than that,” Aqtash said.

Aqtash said one problem for Obama is that the Palestinian public has lost faith in President Mahmoud Abbas – the leader most closely associated with the failed peace process. At the same time, he says Hamas – the Islamic militant group that’s opposed to negotiations with Israel – is gaining in popularity.

At Tuesday’s Knesset ceremony, Israeli President Shimon Peres suggested that the peace process needs to be on the government’s agenda. He said successful negotiations with the Palestinians are a key part of Israel’s security.

The Israeli government has wasted no time in responding by taking the encampments down. But some activists see potential in the new tactic.

On Saturday morning, dozens of Palestinians gathered on a hillside in the West Bank village of Burin, outside the Palestinian city of Nablus. They were there to put up a cluster of tents and metal shacks. They gave the area the name, Al-Manatir. The Arabic word means something like guard post, which is a reference to the Jewish settlements up the hill from here and the frequent clashes between settlers and Palestinians.

The new outpost in Burin didn’t last very long though.

Palestinians say Jewish settlers showed up and started throwing rocks. Then, Israeli police and soldiers arrived and they used sound grenades, tear gas and pepper spray to disperse the protesters. The Israeli military says Palestinians threw stones at Israeli soldiers and that several were arrested. The tent camp was also torn down.

“Yes, the Israelis came and demolished the tents,” said Walid Eid, a 61-year-old sheep herder from Burin who took part in the tent protest over the weekend. “But at least we had a feeling of success for about two hours.”

Walid Eid is a farmer and sheep herder in the Palestinian village of Burin, outside the city of Nablus. (Photo: Matthew Bell)

Another villager, Ghassan Imran described himself as a 40-year-old father and a nurse who works in a hospital in Nablus. “Palestinians need to continue mounting protests like this one,” he told me during a visit to Burin.

“This is our land,” he said. “We have to stop the settlers from encroaching on our village. This protest was a victory.”

The Burin tent protest was the fourth in a recent string of similar demonstrations. Others have taken place outside of Jerusalem, Hebron and Jenin.

During an interview in his Ramallah office, Palestinian politician and activist Mustafa Barghouthi said the protests are aimed at stopping the expansion of West Bank settlements, and rescuing the chance for establishing a Palestinian state.

“We decided that instead of always being reactive to what the army does and what the settlers do, we should be pro-active and build villages on our own land, privately-owned Palestinian land,” Barghouthi said.

“We started in Bab al-Shams, in the area called E-1 around Jerusalem, and they came and kicked us out. So, our slogan was, ‘if they destroy our village, we’ll build another one. And another one. And another one, til we are free of this system of discrimination.’”

In a sense, the Palestinians are taking a page out of the playbook of the Jewish settlers themselves. Settlers have built dozens of “unauthorized outposts” across the West Bank that are considered illegal under Israeli law. The government has pledged to dismantle the outposts, but very few have been evacuated.

Barghouthi doesn’t like this comparison, however, “because you cannot compare between someone who is stealing the land from somebody else and building on it and a person who is building on his own land. These are two completely different methods.”

“But by being pro-active, we are countering the Israeli facts on the ground with Palestinian facts on the ground.”

So, how far will these new protests go? For one thing, none of them has managed to create long-lasting facts on the ground. Though they have generated a lot of media attention.

Nathan Thrall, an analyst of Palestinian politics with the International Crisis Group, said the tactic is a smart public relations move.

“I expect that more of these will pop up across the West Bank. But I also think we should be somewhat cautious about stating that their consequences would be far-reaching,” Thrall said.

Thrall added that the demonstrations don’t seem to have caught on with the Palestinian public in general, at least not yet. And he said the Palestinian Authority is also ambivalent about supporting any kind of protests that could spark violence.

For it’s part, Syrian State TV reported that Israeli jets attacked a research center in Damascus province.

Israel had been warning in recent days about stopping Syrian weapons bound for the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Other reports indicate that Israel is re-deploying units of its Iron Dome missile defense system.

Anchor Marco Werman gets the latest from The World’s Matthew Bell in Jerusalem.

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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World. One of the most feared scenarios in Syria’s civil war is that dangerous Syrian weapons fall into the wrong hands. That’s especially worrisome for neighboring Israel and today there are reports that Israeli jets attacked a convoy that may have been carrying weapons from Syria to militants in Lebanon. The World’s Matthew Bell is Jerusalem following the story. Matthew, what are you sources saying about the supposed attack?

Matthew Bell: Marco, nobody’s saying anything on the record, but there are now several reports based on anonymous sources that are saying there was indeed an Israeli airstrike on a weapons convoy, as you mentioned, somewhere near the Syrian-Lebanese border. It’s not exactly clear where it happened or precisely what the convoy might have been carrying, but this follows reports from yesterday that Israeli planes were flying over Lebanese airspace. And experts say that the details of the story as they’ve come out are entirely plausible.

Werman: So still unconfirmed, but the basic narrative is that these weapons were being carried into Lebanon to who knows who, but what then is Israel’s concern?

Bell: Israeli officials have expressed a lot of concern about the unrest in Syria creating a possible security threat for Israel, which is right next door. They’re especially concerned about the transfer of chemical weapons from Syria. Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal is no joke. It’s modern, it’s sophisticated, it’s very scary for Israelis. They’re worried about those weapons being transferred to Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group that’s based in southern Lebanon and they might just want to do something about that.

Werman: I mean if Israel did strike this convoy, to some extent that’s not really surprising because hasn’t Israel in recent days been warning about crossing certain red lines when it comes to Syria?

Bell: They have explicitly and they’e mentioned the chemical weapons. That’s probably the biggest red line. They say that they’re worried about these weapons potentially falling into the hands of some of the Islamist radical groups that are also fighting in Syria to topple the government. So yes, the details aren’t so surprising, but if this did happen it is significant. Israel, this would be the first time that Israel would have been directly involved in hostilities connected to the unrest that’s going on for almost two years now in Syria.

Werman: And it’s not just chemical weapons or weapons of mass destruction. Israel is also concerned about you know, basic light weapons like surface to air missiles, right?

Bell: Right, which you can say they’re light weapons, but from the Israeli point of view they could be a game changer. It’s interesting, I just was reading a story yesterday on one of the Israeli news sites that was specifically describing SA-17 surface to air missile systems and the concern there was these were being bought by the Syrians from the Russians and there was a worry they could be transferred to Israel’s enemies. That story came out yesterday and then today we have the story about the airstrike.

Werman: Right. Matthew, I’ve also been reading reports that Israel’s missile defense system, known is Iron Dome, is being redeployed as well. Can you give us a sense where those units are going and why?

Bell: Israel has about half a dozen of these. These are very sophisticated antimissile missile systems that the Israelis put into action during the recent war with Gaza. There were reports in recent days that two of these Iron Dome systems were moved to Haifa, which is Israel’s big port city in the North that’s close to Lebanon. That’s another dot you can connect here in this story.

Werman: We’ll leave it there. The World’s Matthew Bell in Jerusalem. Thanks a lot.

Bell: You’re welcome, Marco.

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When the Pentagon moved to lift the ban on women, in many ways it was a case of the regulations catching up to reality. Around 300,000 US servicewomen have served in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. More than 150 have lost their lives in those conflicts with no clear delineation of where the front lines lie.

One country with longer experience of allowing women to serve in combat roles is Israel. More than a decade ago, the Israel Defense Forces started lifting restrictions for would-be female warriors.

It’s about midnight on a rocky hillside in southern Israel, next the border with Egypt. Suddenly, a suspected illegal migrant who has likely crossed from the Sinai desert runs into an Israeli army patrol.

“Who are you and what are you doing here,” an Israeli soldier shouts. “Take the pants off!”

“But I’m cold,” the migrant complains.

“I don’t care! Take the pants off now!”

A squad of IDF soldiers point their assault rifles and order the migrant to strip in the chilly desert air. What follows, is some uncontrollable giggling. Because this is just a drill. And all the participants, including the unidentified intruder, are part of the same IDF unit.

The soldiers taking part in this all-night training exercise are members of the Israeli army’s only all-female combat intelligence company. It’s called “Nachshol,” which means “tidal wave” in Hebrew. Essentially, their job is to go out into the desert and sit – for days at a time – and just watch the border with Egypt.

“Basically, we need to bring from the field the best intelligence,” says Captain Dana Ben-Ezra, the company commander of Nachshol. At 28, she’s already a 10-year army veteran. Ben-Ezra says the company’s job is collect information, “without anyone knowing we’re there. Not even our own forces.”

When I ask her why the army has assigned women to this particular job, Ben-Ezra says, “no offense, but they’re just more intelligent.”

“More patient, more common sense, you know?”

“[Men] are more aggressive, you know how to scream,” Ben-Ezra says. “We know how to do the job.”

The IDF’s all-women “Nachshol” company was formed in 2006. (Photo: Matthew Bell)

The IDF has not always allowed women to join combat units.

In 1995, an Israeli pilot named Alice Miller took the air force to court for denying her the chance to become a military pilot. She won the case. And since then, more combat-related jobs have been opened up for women in the Israeli military.

Now, women can try out for 90 percent of all military professions. Special forces and commando units are still off-limits. But women make up about 4 percent of Israel’s combat forces, according to the military. There’s a potential problem here, says Major Judith Webb. She was the first woman to command an all-male squadron in the British army.

“What I’m talking about is women in the infantry,” Webb told the BBC. “I don’t feel that women have the physical capability of fulfilling an infantry role. I’m not talking about the emotional or psychological or any of those effects, or what effects it may have on men. I’m talking about the physical limitations.”

Abby Chernick does not agree. The 23-year-old grew up in the northeastern US. She took citizenship in Israel after college and then signed up for an extra year of combat service, instead of taking on the kind of less-dangerous and physically demanding role sought out by many women in the Israeli military.

Chernick scoffs at the idea that women should be banned from combat roles in Israel or anywhere else.

“Just a couple months ago,” she tells me during the training mission, “a female combat soldier in the same area that we’re in actually, she shot and killed a terrorist who had come through the fence and was firing on Israeli troops.”

Chernick says, “women have already proved themselves in [military] service in America. And the fact [is] that more women, many, many more women have died in service in America’s army than in Israel’s.”

The US and Israeli militaries are very different in a lot of ways. Israel is the only nation that has mandatory military service for both men and women. Though about half of all Jewish women in Israel do not serve in the military, with many opting to receive a deferment on religious grounds.

… we are facing a world that is liable to ostracize us because of the deadlock in the peace process.

Not much there there. But this is also how Lapid ran his campaign. It was heavy on domestic issues, thin on foreign policy matters. And that is probably one factor that helped him and his Yesh Atid (“There is a future,” in Hebrew) party do so well at the polls.

“They wanted to focus on presenting themselves as an alternative on what they think are the issues that most concern voters,” said Mark Heller of Tel Aviv University. “Namely, social and economic issues, the quality of governance and the state of democracy inside Israel.”

But now that Lapid and his party are being crowned as the kingmakers in Israeli politics, the question is, where do they stand on major foreign policy issues?

Here are some hints.

The Jerusalem Post’s Gil Hoffman did an interview with Lapid back in October and asked him how he would handle Iran differently than Netanyahu.

Netanyahu made two big mistakes on the Iranian issue. The first was instigating a conflict with the US administration, betting on the wrong pony and thinking [Republican candidate Mitt] Romney would win the election. We have an Israeli prime minister who shares the biggest sponsor as the Republican candidate in Sheldon Adelson and says things that hurt the president in an election year. It has created a situation in which it became an Israel-Iran problem and not a world-Iran problem. Netanyahu made it into a local conflict between Israelis and Iranians, and this is wrong. There is only one way to end the Iranian nuclear threat: the fall of the ayatollahs. An Israeli strike would only delay the Iranian nuclear problem. It would enable the Iranians to say we have been attacked by a nuclear country and now we have no choice but to develop nuclear weapons. The way to make the ayatollahs fall is to strengthen the sanctions. Average Iranian citizens don’t understand why they have 60% inflation, why they can’t get chicken and they can’t get gas in one of the world’s biggest oil suppliers. If this continues, the Iranian people won’t stand for it. If you listen to Netanyahu, he is more interested in giving ultimatums to the US. It is hubris to give an ultimatum to the US. People tend to forget that the plane Netanyahu is sending to bomb Iran is an American plane. He thinks he can drag America to do what it doesn’t want to do. He is leading Israel to war too soon, before it’s necessary. Like Netanyahu, I think that if we came to the point of no return, Israel would have to bomb, but there is still a lot left to do to avoid that. I had problems with Netanyahu’s UN speech. Who gives a date on war in advance? You only go to war when you have no choice. My red line is the same as that of the professional security men I talk with.

The security man Lapid presumably talks with more than any other is Yaakov Peri, former head of Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service and number five on Yesh Atid’s candidate list. Peri took part in a debate earlier this month at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, along with three other candidates from major parties, and he talked about what needs to happen to make peace with the Palestinians.

“Israel should do everything – its utmost – in order to come back, to go back, to the negotiation table and to find a compromise,” Peri said.

“I know that we have partners,” he said, warning against allowing the collapse of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, whose leaders have been much derided by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “Not easy partners,” Peri said, but “we should come to an agreement or a compromise which will build two states to the two people.”

Peri also offers a captivating quote during his appearance in the Oscar-nominated documentary, The Gatekeepers. After criticizing Israeli politicians on camera for utterly failing to make smart strategic decisions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Peri tells the filmmaker that retiring from the job of Shin Bet chief means, “you become a bit of a leftist.”

But that is a label Yair Lapid rejects. “I am not a leftist,” Lapid told Gil Hoffman, while answering a question about who should blamed for the stalled negotiations with the Palestinians.

I think the Palestinians should blame mostly themselves. After the disengagement, instead of building hospitals and schools, they fired rockets. But if an Israeli prime minister would be really determined to have negotiations, there would be negotiations. I think Netanyahu is too scared of [activist Moshe] Feiglin and [coalition chairman Ze’ev] Elkin and other extremists in his party, so he took the most dangerous conflict, delayed dealing with it, and made our children have to deal with double the number of Palestinians just so he will have an easier time passing the next Likud convention in peace.

Lapid has said he will not join a coalition that refuses to return to negotiations with the Palestinians. But he has also gone out of his way to distinguish himself from Israeli leaders like Tzipi Livni, who campaigned heavily on a pledge to rekindle the peace process. For a venue to launch his campaign, for example, Lapid chose Ariel.

“You don’t come to negotiations only with an olive branch, the way the left does, or only with a gun, the way the right does,” he said in a speech at the Ariel settlement deep in the West Bank.

“You come to find a solution. We’re not looking for a happy marriage with the Palestinians, but for a divorce agreement we can live with.”

As Jeffrey Goldberg points out, Lapid has avoided taking positions that might lead Israelis to think of him as left of center on security.

Yair Lapid and his party — a “center center” party, in Israeli parlance — might agitate for new negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. But Lapid has shifted his rhetoric since moving from journalism into politics. Two years ago, he wrote caustically about the settlers: “Four percent of the country’s residents cannot decide that they are the only ones who know what’s right.” In this campaign, though, Lapid spoke about the importance of holding onto those large settlements closest to the 1967 “Green Line,” and he spoke repeatedly about the paramount importance of Jerusalem, which he said is “the reason we are here and if we have to fight for it we will fight for it.”

Still, Mark Heller doubts that Lapid and his Yesh Atid colleagues would end up joining a government coalition and then focus solely on their social and economic agenda at the expense of other issues. “They can’t and won’t,” Heller told me, “completely abdicate everything in the foreign and defense field to the other parties.”

Heller said he could see Lapid advocating for more centrist and pragmatic positions on foreign policy, especially compared to those of hardliners from the Jewish Home and Likud parties.

Regional Arab indifference toward Palestinians living in Israel is nothing new. As this BBC piece points out, Israel’s Arab citizens were neither mentioned in the founding articles of the Arab League in the 1940s, nor the Oslo Accords of the 1990s.

A community activist told me this morning that many Palestinians in Israel welcomed the acknowledgment from the Arab League about the importance of getting out to vote tomorrow. “Too bad it comes this late,” he added, and that it’s not supported by a broader effort.

Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi has an op-ed today detailing profound concerns about where Israeli politics are leading the Jewish State and the region. She mentions Arab citizens in Israel, but doesn’t echo the Arab League’s call for them to participate in the election.

“Justice seems to have no meaning in the Israeli political lexicon unless it is in relation to Israeli Jewish citizens. This fact can be attested to by the 1.5 million Christian and Muslim Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship and yet face institutionalized discrimination within Israel itself. Incitement against Palestinians is on the rise.”

But the conflict still gets plenty of attention globally. Take the film industry, for example. Among the five titles nominated for an Academy Award in the best feature documentary category are two films shot in the Holy Land. Both take on the subject of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but in very different ways.

The film “5 Broken Cameras” is very much a work of citizen journalism. It’s about a Palestinian peasant, his family and their village in the West Bank.

Bil’in has been a hotspot for what Palestinians call popular resistance since about 2005. That’s when Israel started building its security barrier through the area, cutting off the village from some of its land. And it’s where the film begins. (Watch the trailer below.)

Emad Burnat is narrator, co-director and one of the main characters in this very personal story of the conflict. Burnat shot much of the footage himself over the course of five years, beginning with the start of weekly demonstrations against Israel’s fence. He went through five different cameras in the process, as each was damaged during protests.

Near the beginning of the project, Burnat’s son Gibreel was born. Burnat seems to keep his camera rolling constantly, capturing some of Gibreel’s first words, the ongoing protests, clashes with the Israeli army and arrests of his own family members.

One particular bit of footage shot by Burnat is what convinced Israeli filmmaker Guy Davidi to get involved with the project in 2009. It shows an older, heavyset Palestinian man trying to prevent Israeli soldiers from arresting someone by climbing on the hood of their jeep.

“It was a very strong image,” Davidi told me. “I asked [Burnat], ‘who’s this guy?’ And he actually told me, ‘well, that’s my father and he’s blocking the jeep from taking my brother to prison.’”

“I thought, ‘wow, what a moment,” Davidi said. “This is worth telling.”

Davidi joined Burnat as co-director. More than any other audience, Davidi said he wants his fellow Israelis to see this Palestinian film.

“The Oscar nomination changes everything for a small film like this,” he told me.

And if “5 Broken Cameras” does manage to win an Academy Award, Davidi said he hopes the Israeli government will not be able to refuse him, when he tries to get the film shown in Israeli high schools.

The other long-form documentary about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that’s up for an Oscar is called, “The Gatekeepers.” Its creator also had the Israeli audience in mind when he got to work. But in just about every other way, these are two very different films. (Watch the trailer below.)

The Gatekeepers is much larger in scope, covering more than four decades of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. The production also has a big-budget feel, with impressively done computer-generated imagery.

There are re-created scenes of targeted assassinations, along with the infamous “Bus 300” incident, when Arab hijackers took control of a bus carrying dozens of Israelis in 1984. And rather than hearing from ordinary citizens, the only characters speaking in this film are six former directors of Israel’s intelligence service, the Shin Bet.

“The most important thing,” filmmaker Dror Moreh told me from San Francisco, is that, “this message comes from the six heads of the Israeli security forces.”

Moreh said it was vital for him to find the right messengers, individuals the Israeli public would take seriously, and to let them deliver an honest assessment of how Israel has handled its conflict with the Palestinians.

“It doesn’t come from leftists. It doesn’t come from, you know, those people who are used to speak against the occupation. It comes from the heart and the center of the defense establishment in Israel. And all of them. There is no single head of Shin Bet who is not in this film.”

Drawn from dozens of hours of interviews with modern Israel’s senior-most spymasters, Moreh covers a lot of ground in this film: Israel’s response to both intifadas or Palestinian uprisings. Mass detentions and harsh interrogations. Targeted assassinations of Palestinian militant leaders. The emergence of violent Jewish extremists. And the murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

In a sense, “The Gatekeepers” is more blatantly political than “5 Broken Cameras.” Moreh said he wants to convey a sense that Israel’s political elites – on both the political right and the left – have failed to deal with the conflict strategically.

He said this has been evident in the current election season in Israel.

“Regrettably,” he explained, “I think that the lack of leadership amongst the Israeli leaders is …devastating. It’s the most dangerous part of this election.”

Moreh might want Israel’s occupation to end. But politicians who feel precisely the opposite are poised to do well in this week’s election.

A spokesman with Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Paul Hirschon told me that he had not seen either of the two films yet, but that he knew what they were all about. Hirschon said the Israeli government welcomes the news that the films are in contention for an Academy Award, even if they are critical of Israeli policy. It’s a sign of the maturity of Israel’s film scene.

“Art by definition is political,” he said. “And if it isn’t critical, it’s not art.”

Hirschon said he hoped that one of the films is picked for an Oscar.

Israelis go to the polls next week and the pollsters and pundits say Israeli right has this election in the bag. But the Da’am workers party insists there’s a “New Left” on the rise in Israel, with an Arab woman at the helm.

Asma Aghbarieh-Zahalka is a 39-year-old trade union organizer from Jaffa, a mixed Arab and Jewish city on Israel’s coast. Out campaigning on the street, she tells potential voters that Da’am – which means ‘support’ in Arabic – is the only party with Arabs and Jews working together.

Aghbarieh-Zahalka told me she sees an historic opportunity in this election. The party’s goal, she said, is to tap into the energy that unleashed nationwide protests in 2011 for social and economic justice. And ride that momentum straight into Israel’s parliament.

“Let’s take these demonstrations to the Knesset,” she said. “Say to the government, to the right wing, that people want change. They will vote not for the same parties that failed.”

But this level of enthusiasm about the upcoming election is rare among Arab citizens in Israel, to put it mildly.
The mixed Christian and Muslim city of Nazareth is known as the Arab capital of Israel. In municipal elections here and other Arab towns, voters turn out in droves. But unlike say, Hispanics in the US, Arab citizens in Israel have never capitalized on their sheer numbers at the national level.

A decade ago, nearly 80 percent of Arab voters took part in the national election. But this time around, less than 45 percent are expected to turn out.

Vida Mashour is a newspaper editor from a prominent Nazareth family. At the start of the campaign season, she spoke with me about the election in a popular lunch joint. Mashour said the Jewish candidates do not look after Arab interests. And Arab politicians aren’t much better. So, for the first time, she said she will be sitting out this election.

“I see that nothing helps. Even the Arab candidates, they didn’t do anything for us,” Mashour said in frustration. “It’s business for themselves, they don’t do anything.”

But part of the problem for Arab political parties is that they can’t do much. That’s because, when it comes right down to it, they operate in the margins of Israel’s democracy.

“It’s not just one man, one vote – or one woman, one vote – it’s not just about representation in parliament,” Mohammad Darawshe, director of the Abraham Fund, a non-profit that promotes coexistence between Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens, told me during an interview in his office. “It’s about participation in power sharing and that’s what the political game in Israel does not offer. It does not offer power sharing for the Arab candidates in the Knesset.”

Darawshe says some of the blame belongs to the old guard of Arab politicians who have pulled away from working with their Jewish colleagues in government. Anti-Arab racism is another factor, he said.

But the upshot is this: if Arab parties are not going to be part of a coalition – either those in power or those in opposition – they are basically an island unto themselves.

Darawshe said that doesn’t mean they should give up.

“Even if we don’t see the obvious candidate that can tango with us politically in the Jewish community, at least we need to in the market to form a coalition,” Darawshe said. “We might not get bought. But we need to have our product in the market.”

The Abraham Fund commissioned a poll on Israel’s Arab voters at the start of this election season. It found that many Arab citizens have no faith that Arab lawmakers can get things done in parliament. Still, Darawshe said Arabs who decide not to vote are making a huge mistake.

Back in Jaffa, candidate Asma Aghbarieh-Zahalka told me she is hoping to turn frustration and skepticism among Arab voters into votes for her Da’am party.

“This is a very good chance for the Arabs and Jews to combine together in the same principles,” she said. “People who want to live in peace and to live in social justice, we will not be able to do it alone – the Arabs alone and the Jews alone. We have to do it together and Da’am is the chance to do it.”

Aghbarieh-Zahalka told me she just bought a new outfit for her first day in Knesset. Then she laughed, as if to suggest that she is all too aware of the steep road ahead.

The polls don’t give Da’am much of a chance. And in any case, none of the mainstream Jewish parties, for example, has talked about working with any their Arab counterparts after election day.

As with Israeli elections past, this month’s contest includes a number of political parties on the fringe. Many of them won’t win any seats.

A new party, Eretz Hadasha, is a bit different, though. Its message is straightforward. It wants to expose big money in politics. The party’s logo in Hebrew is an allusion to some vulgar slang, and its Facebook page has pictures of people raising their middle fingers.

But for all the irreverence, the polls suggest Eretz Hadasha might actually win a couple of seats in parliament. In fact, it’s one of several smaller parties that are right on that edge. They have a shot of passing the two percent threshold and gaining access to legislative power in Israel.

“They are the kind of parties that come from outside of the system,” says Israeli writer Etgar Keret. He adds that there is something satisfying about voting for a party that may very well fail to get into parliament — it’s a protest vote, but it might still matter.

“Basically, they say to people, if you’ve been frustrated, but you think that voting is important and you don’t want to just to stay home, vote for something new. In Israel we have a tradition of such parties and some of them became surprisingly strong.”

Take the Pensioners Party, for example. In 2006, it surprised everyone by winning seven seats. It went on to join Israel’s governing coalition. But the Pensioners flamed out pretty quickly. That’s one downside of such a freewheeling political system.

Then there’s the Kadima Party. It was created in 2005 by one of Israel’s most iconic leaders, Ariel Sharon. In 2009, Kadima grabbed more seats than any other single party. But at this point, the polls say it’s in serious trouble.
Matti Friedman, who covers the elections for The Times of Israel, says Kadima is facing a Titanic-like situation.

“Kadima is currently the largest party in Knesset, and it was in the term of the previous government, Israel’s ruling party. And in probably the greatest political collapse in Israel’s history, this party is going to be erased,” Friedman says.

“The question is now, will it get enough votes to have two seats in the Knesset. That’s the minimum. Or, will it miss the threshold and have zero seats.”

Among the others expected to win either zero or just two seats in this election are a few religions parties, and two “pirate parties” calling for more online freedom. There’s a green environmental party as well as the Green Leaf party, which advocates the legalization of marijuana. It’s never won a seat, though this will be its fifth Israeli election.

The scene fits nicely with today’s must-read on Israeli politics, which comes from David Horovitz, editor of the Times of Israel. He tells his fellow Israelis that they’re going to wake up to a new reality after the January 22 national election.

A political shift has occurred in the Jewish State. Not a tectonic transformation of the right versus left divide. The polls suggest that fault line remains unchanged. But what Horovitz is talking about is a move on the Israeli right further rightward.

Curiously, the current right-wing prime minister – Benjamin Netanyahu – who’s assembled the country’s most right-wing coalition government – is going to be a moderate in the new Israeli politics. The actor who best exemplifies Israel’s “new right” at the moment is Naftali Bennett. As Horovitz writes:

In the new Israel of 2013, furthermore, kippa-wearing Bennett is the monopolistic political face of religious Zionism. The ideologically diverse National Religious Party has been entirely superseded by this new incarnation. And there is emphatically no place in our new Knesset for the dovish religious Zionist politics emblemized by the likes of ex-minister and Meimad MK Rabbi Michael Melchior. In our dawning new era, Orthodox Zionism is now all but synonymous with pro-settlement activism and advocacy, championing and concretizing the IDF’s 1967 liberation of the Jewish people’s historic Judean and Samarian territory.

For more on Bennett, listen to my profile story about him that aired earlier this week.

Naftali Bennett is Netanyahu’s former chief of staff. And he is posing a challenge to the prime minister by espousing policies even further to the right than those of his former boss.

Bennett does not neatly fit into the usual character types in Israeli politics. He is a 40-year-old high-tech entrepreneur, who likes to talk about economic justice. He is a veteran of an elite army unit and an observant Jew motivated by religious ideology above all else. But his political party includes secular Israelis too.

In recent weeks, Bennett’s Jewish Home party has surged in the polls. It’s projected to win the third-most seats in parliament by grabbing support from voters on the Israeli right. These are people who might otherwise choose Netanyahu’s Likud Party.

The biggest policy difference between Bennett and his political opponents on the right and left though is probably how they talk about the idea of a Palestinian state.

“I believe I’m the only one, and our party is the only party on this podium, that opposes founding a Palestinian state within the land of Israel, between the Jordan and the Mediterranean,” Bennett said today during an election debate at Hebrew University.

Bennett said it’s time for Israel to take “a fresh look” at an old problem.

“If a Palestinian state would be founded – just a few hundred meters from here, by the way, we’re on Mount Scopus right now – it would ensure sort of the Hobbesian lifestyle of eternal strife and miserable life between us and the Palestinians.”

Bennett accuses the current Israeli government of pursuing a “confused policy” in the occupied West Bank. Essentially, he’s saying that Netanyahu has promised all things to all sides. For right-wing Israelis, the prime minister is building settlements. For the US and the rest of the international community, he says Netanyahu is ready to talk about a two-state solution.

But Bennett says the best thing for Israel is to annex large parts of the West Bank, including most of the Jewish settlements.

“Every time over the past 20 years that we handed over land, either with an agreement or without an agreement,” Bennett told the audience of students, diplomats and journalists, “we got as a result war [and] misery for both sides.” And there is no reason why Israel should go down that road again, Bennett argues.

His critics say such views add up to dangerous extremism. Candidate Isaac Herzog of the Labor Party said Tuesday Bennett’s candidacy has already pushed the ruling Likud Party and its ideological allies further to the right.

“They will not be able in any way,” Herzog said, “to be proactive or move forward on any plan that gives any hope for the region. And that means we are doomed to eternal conflict and bloodshed.”

The question is, will Bennett and his Jewish Home party have an even greater impact on Israeli policy after the election? Political science professor Reuven Hazan of Hebrew University said the answer to that question is “yes and no,” depending on whether Bennett and his party join the next coalition government.

“Yes, …because the more seats he gets the more prominent of a position he will have if he’s part of the governing coalition,” Hazan said. “The ‘no’ answer …he might push Netanyahu to bring in parties from the center into the coalition and keep him out. Because bringing him in would be too expensive and ideologically too extreme.”

One thing to know about the Jewish Home party, Hazan said, is that some of its other candidates are even more extreme than Naftali Bennett. So they are letting Bennett be the public face for the party.

In an interview with the BBC on Tuesday, Bennett was asked: if he does join the next coalition government, would he actively try to prevent the two state solution from becoming reality?

“I’ll do everything in my ability to prevent Israel from committing suicide knowingly. It doesn’t make sense.”

Yes, most of the rest of the world supports the two state solution, Bennett said. And that includes Israel’s most important allies in Europe and the United States. But he added that this is one of those instances in history where the common wisdom is wrong.

Gaza is ruled by Hamas. The Islamic militant group that seized control of the Palestinian enclave in a violent coup in 2007. For nearly six years since then, Hamas and the secular Fatah faction have been locked in a bitter – and occasionally, violent – rivalry.

Friday’s event was the culmination of several days of celebrations. And it was unprecedented. This was the first time Hamas allowed Fatah supporters to hold a mass rally.

Gaza resident Walid Medan said this was a great day for all Palestinians. “Today is the start of the Palestinian revolution and the beginning of Palestinian freedom,” he said. “This was the first bullet fired and the start of the resistance led by the late Yassir Arafat,” the founder of Fatah.

Top Fatah officials from the West Bank, the separate Palestinian territory ruled by Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, went to Gaza to join the celebration of tens of thousands. Not too long ago, these same officials were afraid to set foot in Gaza. But today, they met crowds waving the party’s yellow banner and watched a recorded speech by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

“We should work together in unity,” Abbas said. “There is no better choice to reach our national goals and to reach victory. Regards to our brave prisoners and to our people inside the country and the diaspora.”

Mkhaimer Abusada teaches political science at Al Azhar University in Gaza. He said Friday’s Fatah rally sends a clear message to both Hamas and to Israel from Abbas, who is known by Palestinians as Abu Mazen.

“Abu Mazen is [still] politically relevant,” Abusada said in a phone interview. “He is representative of the Palestinians as a leader of Fatah, as a leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization.”

“Hamas hasn’t been able to wipe out Fatah or hasn’t been able to cancel Fatah from the streets of Gaza.”

Friday’s event does not suggest that Palestinian reconciliation is immediately at hand, Abusada added. But he suggested that the atmosphere between the two political enemies might be starting to change.

Sabri Saidam is an advisor to Mahmoud Abbas and a Fatah leader based in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Speaking from London, Saidam said it’s high time for Palestinians to end the political divide, even if that means angering Israel and US by bringing in militant groups.

“Having a political party that opposes your opinion into your scene, within your arena, is much better than excluding that party and turning it into a militant party that has no option but to destroy your politics,” Saidam said. “Including Hamas, including Islamic Jihad will be a constructive step in the right direction.”

Further steps, Saidam said, will be the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. And then, holding Palestinian elections for the first time since 2006.

As a reminder of some of the challenges ahead, the rally in Gaza City ended early today, after reports of fights breaking out between rival groups within Fatah.

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President Obama meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah in 2009. (Photo: Pete Souza/White House)

Jordan’s King Abdullah has managed to mostly fend off demands for internal change inspired by popular uprisings in neighboring Arab states. He’s done that in part by paying for a string of public works projects. But that may not work for much longer. Jordan is facing financial crisis. The World’s Matthew Bell reports from Amman on the challenges facing Jordanians.