Photo by JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images

The Israeli election that concluded on 27 October is perhaps best seen as the beginning of two things at once: a political shockwave with the potential to unravel the very fabric of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a prolonged, sometimes agonising, sometimes tedious political wrangle that may instead result in Benjamin Netanyahu remaining in power.

The shockwave is the incredible turnout by Palestinian citizens of Israel, who set aside decades of highly justified distrust in the “Jewish and democratic state” and secured for two Palestinian-led parties, the Joint List and Ra’am, a proportion of seats that correlates closely with their share in the population. This not only puts Palestinians in Israel in the position of kingmakers, potentially deciding Netanyahu’s fate, but also normalises binational cooperation in a setting in which both conflict and peacemaking have been defined by separation since at least the 1930s.…