IT'S somewhat intriguing that under Benjamin Netanyahu, perhaps the most right-wing, intransigent and controversial (not least due to his ongoing corruption cases) prime minister the country has ever had, Israel is now enjoying buoyant support and goodwill from its Arab detractors.
Israel's external front, especially with reference to its immediate (Arab/Muslim) neighbours in particular, with the sole exception of Syria, is fully secure, while domestically, or better still, it's relations with the State of Palestine remains status quo ante (the same as before).
Not only has Netanyahu secured a diplomatic coup (vis-à-vis the Gulf Cooperation Council), but he's managed to significantly "decouple" the Palestinian issue from the wider Arab agenda by leveraging on the Iran threat with help of the previous Trump administration.
But with Qatar as the principal financier of Hamas and Gaza still outside of the diplomatic equation, Netanyahu must surely realise that his triumphalism is misplaced and premature.
With the looming Israeli general election to elect members of the Israeli Parliament on March 23, Netanyahu has been trying to secure something else — his re-election — set against the backdrop of his ongoing corruption cases.
He's also capitalising on his normalisation deals with the selected Arab countries in a (vain) attempt to win over and garner Arab votes, with the ultimate aim of persuading Parliament returned to power to grant him legal immunity from the corruption charges.
This moral anomaly is not only confined to his political character, to be sure. Only last week, Israel had blocked shipment of vaccines bound for Gaza. Whatever policy reasons, Israel has a moral and legal responsibility over the fledgling State of Palestine.
Externally, Gaza only received its first shipment of vaccines on Feb 17, allowed by Israeli authorities, comprising a meagre 2,000 doses (Sputnik V) from Russia, to enter Gaza via the Kerem Shalom crossing (Egyptian-Gaza-Israeli border).
According to a Palestinian Health Ministry spokesman, as reported in France 24 news agency, Gaza has about 12,000 medical workers and the priority is to "inoculate vulnerable patients, such as organ transplant and dialysis patients".
Perhaps, with or without Netanyahu's re-election, Israel might still move towards normalisation with Qatar — a breakthrough by way of the former relaxing and easing blockade measures alongside the opening up for greater and more visible role for the latter to play in the reconstruction and development of Gaza.
On Feb 26, Qatar pledged US$60 million for the construction of a natural gas pipeline running from Israel into the Gaza Strip. With such a proposal, who needs the Deal of the Century? The deal is, anyway, a relic of history now.
So will Qatar be key, among others, in allowing Israel to gain what it covets in the eyes of the international community, namely the moral legitimacy, especially in the eyes of the wider Muslim and Islamic world?
The one and only issue was, is and has always been the viability of the two-state solution: The State of Palestine co-existing and flourishing side by side with Israel.
So long as a two-state solution remains a forlorn hope, Israel's moral legitimacy as a nation born out of victimisation is completely and unequivocally hollow and in fact shouldn't be "paraded" before the world every now and then, even in conjunction with the Holocaust.
If Israel can "decouple" the two-state solution from its normalisation deals, why can't the Holocaust be "decoupled" from Israel's moral legitimacy? By now, it should be kept separate even as Israel's behaviour and acts against Palestinians in Occupied Palestine have gone from bad to worse over the decades.
Recently, the International Criminal Court's (ICC) Pre-Trial Chamber I by a majority announced that "the Court's territorial jurisdiction in the Situation in Palestine, a state party to the ICC Rome Statute, extends to the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem".
This means that the ICC, which is the international court that rules on war crimes, can now judicially decide on the atrocities committed by the Israeli Defence Forces or related security apparatus in Occupied Palestine, which as a sovereign country in its own right, is party to the Statute of Rome (which governs the ICC).
In conclusion, the elephant in the room — the two-state solution — remains elusive as ever, particularly under Netanyahu's watch. Israel's moral legitimacy can only be gained if it pursues peace and normalisation with the State of Palestine as vigorously as it does with the selected Arab countries.
The writer is head of Social, Law and Human Rights at EMIR Research, an independent think tank focused on strategic policy recommendations based on rigorous research