We now know that Netanyahu and his Likud party won more seats in the Israeli Knesset than any other party. But he has to form a coalition (you need 61 seats/votes to hold a majority in the 120-seat parliament, and Likud won 30), which might be possible if he finds common cause with the smaller ultra-nationalist parties which got 10, 7, 6 or fewer seats.

Doing so, though, means he pretty much has to abandon the two-state peace process the Palestinians, the Americans and the United Nations have been pushing for what seems like an eon. He said so while campaigning. The other reprehensible thing he did while campaigning was post on Facebook “Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls. Left-wing organizations are busing them out.”. That’s straight out of the playbook of some Southern American GOP party chairmen.

So now the Palestinians find themselves without an Israel to partner with for a two-state solution, and they find instead a man and a country which seemingly wants to continue to occupy the West Bank, continue to settle more and more settlers on Palestinian land, and keep the Palestinians from moving freely about the land they do control.

Those being the circumstances, I expect them to continue to take their case to the United Nations.

With Mr. Netanyahu having dropped, for now at least, the pretense of seeking a two-state solution, the Palestinians can argue to Europe and the United States that they no longer have a negotiating partner, strengthening their case for full statehood and recognition in the United Nations, as well as membership in important international bodies. They are already members of the International Criminal Court and Unesco.

“If somebody said, ‘We are with two states, and real negotiations,’ we would return to negotiations,” said Assad Abdul Rahman. “But there is no partner for that.”

One wonders if they might try to get the UN Security Council to recognize them as a state.

Palestinian officials said they were still weighing whether to try to seek full statehood recognition from the Security Council. They failed in a previous bid, in December, for a Council resolution that would have set a deadline to establish a sovereign Palestinian state. The United States and Australia voted against it.

Would the US and Australia vote against it again, now that Netanyahu has declared the peace process dead? The entire Republican party in this country would explode with anger if the Obama Administration did concur or even abstain, I imagine, and the Israel lobby AIPAC would throw seven kinds of fit, but Congress can’t override a UN Security Council vote, so what could they do? Impeach Obama? Hardly.

We live in interesting times. Again.