article_snippet: (CNN)Are the upcoming elections in Israel crucial?
article_snippet: Will the results -- a fourth term for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or a first for opposition leader Isaac Herzog -- change Israel's policy in a significant way?
article_snippet: As Israelis prepare to go to the polls, the answer seems to be negative.
article_snippet: But the fact is that when it comes to the most crucial question regarding the future of Israel and the Middle East -- what to do about the Palestinians -- the difference between the two candidates is negligible, a divergence that is short on substance but long on style and rhetoric.
article_snippet: But at the end of the day, neither Netanyahu nor Herzog have any real intention to put an end to the occupation of the Palestinian territories.
article_snippet: This whitewash has been so evident throughout the entire election campaign that a foreigner arriving in Israel would have had a hard time understanding anything about what is really going on here.
article_snippet: Israel is a country that is still looking for Israel way forward; one that lacks internationally recognized borders; one that has not yet decided whether Israel is a Western society or a Middle Eastern one; one that cannot decide whether Israel wants to be religious or secular, Jewish or bi-national.
article_snippet: Most of the parties running in the elections have not even bothered to try to answer questions about what the parties running in the elections plans are for the Palestinians.
article_snippet: But the unending occupation of Palestinian territories also continues to be a non-issue for too many ordinary Israelis, who know very little -- and care even less -- about the cruel reality for the millions of Palestinians who live without civil rights in the West Bank and who are kept under siege in Gaza.
article_snippet: Labor never had a real plan for the Palestinians, except to time and again renew the endless peace process, which may be the longest in history.
article_snippet: This is still true now, on the eve of elections that stand a real chance of bringing the Zionist Union to power.
article_snippet: But the reality is that here in Israel, it is only the masters who will vote and decide on the future -- not only for only the masters who will vote and decide on the future --, but for the millions of Palestinians who have for nearly half a century been living under only the masters who will vote and decide on the future -- control, directly in the West Bank and indirectly in Gaza.
highlights_snippet: Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory has gone mostly undiscussed ahead of Tuesday's election .
  
highlights_snippet: Netanyahu, Herzog don't have the courage to end Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory .