The media in Israel is abuzz with the news that Tzipi Livni will bring her Ha’Tnuah party into a joint ticket with the much larger Labor party. Now there is a tandem that can outpoll Likud, they are saying. The Israeli center just might be able to assert itself in this election.
Permit me to throw some cold water on this excitement. Livni, who has been the lone voice in the current government who has actively supported talks with the Palestinians, is doing this because if she doesn’t, there is a very strong possibility that her party will not get enough votes to remain in the Knesset. Labor leader Isaac Herzog, who has very little international experience, ran for the party leadership based on his commitment to resolving the long-standing conflict with the Palestinians. As the prospective Number Two, Livni gives Herzog some credibility in this regard.
But not only is there a long way to go before the March 17 election; there is also no guarantee that the party that wins the most seats will lead the next Israeli government. Of all people, Livni knows this only too well. In the 2009 election, she led the Kadima party which won the most seats in the Knesset. Then-President Shimon Peres tasked her with forming a governing coalition, but she couldn’t get enough parties to agree to join her to accumulate the requisite 61 seats. So Peres turned to Netanyahu who has occupied the Prime Minister’s office ever since.
Something very similar could happen in 2015. Although the current Israeli President, Reuven Rivlin, is not at all fond of Netanyahu, he is also from the Likud party and, while his domestic policies are relatively liberal, he is no friend of the two-state solution. He might not necessarily want to give Netanyahu the first crack at forming a government, but, if he believes Bibi has the better chance of forming a governing coalition, he will bow to precedent.
And Rivlin may well be forced to that conclusion, whether he likes it or not. Even if Labor wins a seat or two more than Likud, it would likely win no more than 24 seats. Assuming Herzog and Livni could convince all of their potential allies to join a coalition (that would mean Yesh Atid, the new Kulanu party, Shas, United Torah Judaism and Meretz), they would get 40 more seats at most, but that, frankly, is a pretty optimistic projection. They very likely would need at least one other party to join them, but there is only one other realistic possibility: Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party. Lieberman would surely demand a plum cabinet position (probably Defense), who could then bring down the government any time he strongly disapproved of its policies.
Such a government would be exceedingly difficult to cobble together in any case. Lieberman’s party has always been sharply critical of the religious parties who would necessarily have to make up part of the Herzog-Livni coalition. The orthodox parties are themselves unpredictable and share mutual hostility not only with Yisrael Beiteinu but also with other secular parties like Yesh Atid. Meretz, the only left-wing Zionist party remaining these days, would also take some convincing, given the rightward tilt of the remaining members of the coalition.
Despite Livni and Herzog’s own positions, the government outlined above would also be somewhat less than passionate about a two-state solution. Kulanu, led by former Likud minister Moshe Kahlon, is open to some evacuation of land but is unlikely to support a resolution based on the 1967 borders; Yisrael Beiteinu and Shas both theoretically support some kind of two-state solution but both also have a generally hawkish outlook. Together, they constitute nearly half the purported government. Less than a mandate for peace, especially considering that Likud and HaBayit HaYehudi in opposition would fiercely oppose any concessions — perhaps even discussions — with a Palestinian leadership they have repeatedly labelled “terrorist.”
So, an extremely unstable coalition government whose interest in reviving a peace process, let alone striking a deal, would be lukewarm at most is the best-case scenario, even with the news that Labor-plus-Livni might win a plurality in the Knesset.
That analysis presumes that the current polls reflect what will happen in March. Of course, they don’t. The campaign hasn’t even begun yet, and a Herzog-Livni ticket isn’t the most marketable for Israeli television. Israeli supporters of a two-state solution cling to Livni as a last, albeit highly flawed hope. They understand that, as a former prominent Likud member and from a family that was part of the aristocracy of Likud and its predecessors, she is not a peacemaker at heart. Herzog might be one but he is bland and thoroughly Ashkenazi (the most influential and wealthy of the Jewish ethnicities in Israel but no longer the majority). That image will work against him in the popular vote.
Israeli political campaigns are often a contest between preachers of hope and preachers of fear. In unsettled times like these, when Israelis are concerned about a growing number of unpredictable, even random, Palestinian attacks, as well as their growing sense of isolation from Europe, fear tends to do well. Historically, fear has served the Likud and other right-wing parties, especially HaBayit Hayehudi, very well.
There is a chance, albeit a very small one, that the preachers of hope can win. They’re not preaching a very high hope, merely one that is more hopeful than the demagoguery of Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett. And they have found an unexpected ally in Moshe Kahlon.
Kahlon, head of the new Kulanu (“All of Us”) party, appears to be drawing votes away from Likud, as well as from Yesh Atid. Like Livni, he is another of the former Likud pragmatists who do not identify with the extreme nationalist camp in Likud that has come to dominate that party after living for years on its far-right fringes.
It was Ariel Sharon who provoked the Likud split in order to thwart the party’s opposition to his plan to remove settlements from Gaza and a few from the West Bank as part of a larger strategic plan to pre-empt growing international pressure for a comprehensive solution. Others, like Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni, went with him. Now Kahlon is following a similar path. While he says he could support some sort of land-for-peace arrangement, Kahlon, who is more focused on economic issues in any event, has never endorsed a two-state solution. Indeed, in the past he has rejected it as impractical.
The fact that Kahlon is now deemed a suitable partner for the dreamed-of Herzog-Livni government tells you a good deal of what you need to know about how such a government might behave. Nonetheless, Kulanu will appeal strongly to the Likud old guard. For those who supported former Likud ministers like Benny Begin and Dan Meridor — indeed, those who saw Benny’s father Menachem as the exemplar of Likud leadership and reject the fanatic ideologues who dominate the party today — Kahlon offers an alternative, as well as to other centrist voters who are disappointed in parties like Yesh Atid and Kadima before it.
With Kulanu taking some votes from Likud’s centrist flank and HaBayit HaYehudi continuing to gain right-wing votes at Likud’s expense, it is unsurprising that polls give Labor-with-Livni a chance to win the most seats. But does this mean Israel’s steady rightward drift has stopped?
Not necessarily. The overall view that the conflict with the Palestinians is unresolvable remains strong. At the same time, the growing split among Israeli Jews in reaction to the rise in ethnic and religious violence since last spring may prove an important factor in the election. While more Israeli Jews appear to embrace anti-Arab racism of the kind that benefits the far right represented by Bennett, more and more Jews are expressing alarm over that trend, although they, too, are loath to really examine the roots of that tension: the institutional racism and marginalization of Arabs in Israeli society.
Still, a considerable portion of Israeli society, including some religious and conservative sectors, want to see a reduction in tensions between Jews and Arabs. They are also concerned about the relationships between Israel and the U.S. and between Israel and Europe. While Bennett and his ilk think Israel should act even more defiantly toward the rest of the world, these actors are genuinely worried about the consequences of such an attitude. Many are also concerned about the country’s growing economic stratification.
Those forces of relative reason are confronting a growing wave of nationalist extremism in Israel. As a result, the most hopeful result of the election, at least at this point, is the creation of a center-right government. Of course, if the Herzog-Livni ticket would be willing to bring the non-Zionist, communist party, Hadash, and the Arab Ra’am Ta’al party into the government, along with Meretz, that would indeed change the political trajectory. But that is even less likely than a sudden and egalitarian Israeli decision to actually end the occupation. So, outside observers must for now cling to faint hope that things will go from incredibly bad to slightly less incredibly bad. Such is the state of Israeli politics.
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The Israeli government is headed for yet another round of elections. Although the official election date for the next Knesset is November 7, 2017, no one ever expected this government to last that long. The voting will likely take place in March of 2015.
What do the new elections mean outside of Israel? Nothing very good, I’m afraid. For the most part, any elections held in the foreseeable future are going to cement the status quo even further, and where they don’t do so, elections will mean a shift even further rightward.
In the short term, Europe will likely agree with the United States to keep doing what they’re doing now with regard to an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, which is nothing. But in the long term, they are both likely to be saddled with an Israeli government that will be even more blatant about its refusal of any accommodation with the Palestinians, and even more insistent on building more and more settlements, especially in Jerusalem.
There is, however, a good deal of flux in Israeli politics right now. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has seen his popularity plummet. His Gaza operation over the summer is not being viewed positively in Israel, as many see no difference in the situation with Gaza today from earlier in the year. Israelis may agree with many of his stances, but they’re not as keen on the way he executes his policies—they see Netanyahu as having eroded the relationship with the United States and having failed to stem the increasing hostility toward Israel in the rest of the world.
But more than anything else, Bibi’s economic policies have driven down his ratings. Although the Israeli economy writ large is relatively healthy, economic disparity within Israel, even among Israeli Jews, has never been worse, as the distribution of wealth in Israel rivals the extremely skewed scale we have grown accustomed to in the United States. And just like Americans in the United States, most Israelis are primarily concerned with the economy, jobs, and supporting their families—not foreign policy.
Another similarity between the United States and Israel is the lack of leadership options. Only some 33% of Israelis believe Netanyahu is the best man for the prime minister’s job, and his approval rating is around that same figure. But that puts him far ahead of any other major player on the Israeli scene. The next most popular choice for prime minister, according to the polls, is Isaac Herzog of the Labor Party at around 17%. Netanyahu’s Likud Party also polls significantly higher than any other party, so the overwhelming likelihood is that Netanyahu will win another election.
But the real question is what his coalition would look like. As we’ve seen in the last several Israeli elections, cobbling together a governing coalition is no easy feat. It requires serious compromises that could result in the same prime minister being forced to take on rather different policies depending on the coalition. The right-wing coalition that came to power in 2013 pushed Netanyahu into even more hawkish positions than he already held, both internationally and domestically. What would the next one do?
The current government, led by Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Coalition, consists of the Russian/right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel, Our Home) party headed by Avigdor Lieberman; HaBayit HaYehudi (Jewish Home) headed by Naftali Bennett; Yesh Atid, a centrist party led by former television anchor Yair Lapid; and Ha’Tnuah, headed by Tzipi Livni. While all of these parties have clashed with Netanyahu at one time or another, Lapid and Livni are the most at odds with Bibi right now.
Netanyahu would certainly try to form a new coalition without Lapid or Livni. Between Likud and the other two far-right parties currently in the coalition, Netanyahu could reasonably count on around 50 seats in the next Knesset. Sixty-one seats are needed to form a governing coalition. But while Bennett has warmed up to Netanyahu, Lieberman, whose party formed a joint ticket with Netanyahu in the last election, has become a political enemy. So how will Netanyahu cobble together a coalition?
Netanyahu’s Likud and Bennett’s HaBayit Hayehudi are currently polling at about 40 seats between them, perhaps a few more. Another twenty or so would then be needed to form the next government. One candidate is the ultra-Orthodox Shas party. They will want to address their core demands, which are generally based on the economic concerns of their constituency: lower-income Jews of Iberian and Middle Eastern descent. They used to support a theoretical two-state solution, but have recently shifted farther to the right on the issue of the occupation and have always been firm about not dividing Jerusalem. Shas is polling between six and ten seats.
United Torah Judaism is an Ashkenazi coalition party (Jews of European descent, excluding Iberia) that is similar to Shas, but more devoted to maintaining the place of religion in Israel and less interested in foreign policy matters, including the occupation. UTJ will bring 7 or 8 seats.
If, as Netanyahu has suggested, he forms a coalition with the religious parties, it seems very possible that between Likud, and the three religious parties, he could get very close or possibly even exceed the 61-seat threshold. But he’s likely to need one more party, and while Labor, Livni, and Lapid all refuse to rule out being in a Netanyahu-led coalition, they will all face tremendous internal pressure not to do so, and, in any event, Bibi almost certainly doesn’t want them, lest he perpetuate the same unstable coalition he is trying to get out of now.
In all of this, there is a wild card, in the form of a new player in the election game. Popular ex-Likud figure, Moshe Kahlon has formed a party of his own, as yet unnamed, and it figures to be a key player in the next election. Kahlon, who is very well-liked among the Israeli public for having reformed the cellular communications industry, left Likud because he felt it had “lost its way.” He is a classic Likud hawk more in the mold of Menachem Begin than Netanyahu. But his real appeal exists in the fact that like Begin and very much unlike Netanyahu, he tends to emphasize economic equality and social welfare. He would not promote the blatant racism Netanyahu does, and that might help a bit with the current internal strife. He would also want to try to maintain a peace process, even while he holds positions on the occupation and security that are not far away from Bibi’s. Current polls have his new party winning between 9 and 12 seats.
So, what kind of government comes out of all this? Kahlon may, in many ways, hold the key to that question. The most likely coalition would consist of Likud, HaBayit HaYehudi, Shas and Kahlon’s party, with UTJ possibly tagging along or replacing Shas. The price of the latter parties’ agreements would be some change in economic and social policies in Israel. This could amount to a government that does more to assuage popular domestic anger than the current one, but is even more hawkish on the occupation. Kahlon could also turn into a somewhat more powerful version of Livni in the next government. His party would likely hold considerably more seats and he is much more popular with Israelis than Livni ever was.
If Kahlon does better in the election than currently projected, he could also possibly be the one to form the next government. Kahlon would not necessarily have to out-poll Likud to do this. He would merely need to have enough seats and support from other parties to convince Israeli President Reuven Rivlin (who despises Netanyahu and whose appointment to the presidency Bibi tried to block) that he stands a better chance of forming a coalition than Netanyahu does. That’s an unlikely move for him, but not out of the question since Kahlon could, if he wished, form a broad based government that could include Yisrael Beiteinu, Yesh Atid, and Labor, as well as Shas and UTJ. Such a government would be far more likely to renew the peace process, but, especially given the increasing apathy or even militancy with which most Israelis view the occupation, no more likely to actually move it forward.
Considered in that light, there might be reason to hope that an even more extreme right-wing government takes power. Perhaps that would fan the small sparks we are seeing from Europe toward real pressure on Israel. But when it comes right down to it, neither scenario is promising.
Photograph: Former Likud Minister Moshe Kahlon, in Haifa, Israel, November 2012
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
This past Tuesday saw the latest in a horrifyingly long line of atrocities in Jerusalem. Two armed Palestinians entered a synagogue in the Har Nof neighborhood, killed five Israeli civilians and wounded six others before police gunned the murderers down. The reactions of Israeli and Palestinian leaders are worth examining.
Hamas, unsurprisingly, praised the murders. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, equally unsurprisingly, condemned them unequivocally. In his official statement, Abbas said that he “…condemns the attack on Jewish worshippers in their place of prayer and condemns the killing of civilians no matter who is doing it.”
But this didn’t stop Israeli leaders from continuing their campaign to demonize Abbas, the Palestinian leader who has tried harder, made more compromises and sacrificed more of his own credibility to achieve a two-state solution than any of his predecessors.
“Abbas has intentionally turned the conflict into a religious one between Jews and Muslims, and the systematic incitement he leads against Jews…is the ‘go-ahead’ for these despicable terror attacks,” said Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Nov. 18, the day of the attack.
Economy Minister Naftali Bennett meanwhile told reporters that “Abbas, one of the biggest terrorists to have arisen from the Palestinian people, bears direct responsibility for the Jewish blood spilt… while we were busy with delusions about the [peace] process… Abbas has declared war on Israel and we must treat that accordingly.”
Not to be outdone by the rivals within his own governing coalition, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “This [attack] is a direct result of the incitement lead by Hamas and Abu Mazen (Abbas), incitement that the international community irresponsibly ignores.” He also dismissed Abbas’ condemnation of the attack because Abbas had said: “While we condemn this incident, we also condemn the aggression toward Al-Aqsa Mosque and other holy places and torching of mosques and churches.” To Netanyahu, such a statement, though demonstrably based on factual Israeli actions and statements, is “incitement.”
Netanyahu didn’t stop there. He accused the Palestinians of “blood libel,” a term that refers to historical incidents where false charges against Jews of ritual murder were invented to incite anti-Jewish violence.
The vast majority of Netanyahu’s venom, and that of the other Israeli leaders was directed at Abbas, despite the shameful way Hamas applauded this heinous crime. There was a touch of irony to that, as on the same day of the attack, the head of the Shin Bet, the Israeli security agency charged with internal security, had declared quite clearly that “[Abbas] is not interested in terror and is not leading [his people] to terror. Nor is he doing so ‘under the table.’”
All of this raises a question: Why is the Israeli right ignoring the low-hanging fruit of Hamas and going full bore at Abbas instead? After all, Hamas praised the attack, and Netanyahu and company could easily have stopped at tainting Abbas with the argument that he was in partnership with the Islamists via the unity government. Instead, the Israelis went much farther, to the point of virtually ignoring Hamas and the other Palestinian factions who voiced support for the attack.
The explanation for this behavior involves both the long-term and the short-term. In the short run, this is all part of Netanyahu’s broader public relations campaign linking Iran, Hamas, the Islamic State and now the Palestinian Authority. This campaign has several goals: to make it politically impossible for the United States to work with Iran against Islamic State (ISIS or IS), to make a deal between Iran and the P5+1 countries more difficult, to forestall any further international scrutiny of the siege of the Gaza Strip and to legitimize harsher Israeli measures in Jerusalem, among other goals.
On most counts, the strategy is failing, with the usual exception that Israeli actions in Gaza and Jerusalem are being downplayed, although not totally ignored. But Netanyahu’s rhetoric is having more of an effect toward his long-term goal.
The endless refrain of “Iran is ISIS, ISIS is Hamas” is designed to use the universally despised Islamic State to further de-legitimize Iran and the Palestinians. The reasons for this are obvious: to paint both Hamas and Iran as such implacable enemies that Israel would be justified in any action taken against them. But Netanyahu’s rhetoric is gradually broadening its scope of Palestinian targets. By blaming incitement from Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) for the recent attack in Jerusalem, and by repeatedly pointing out that the PA is now run by a unity government (however dysfunctional) that includes Hamas, Netanyahu is, in effect, subtly folding the PA into the “Hamas-ISIS-Iran” equation.
The strategy is working in Netanyahu’s target areas: Israelis at home and Israel’s supporters abroad, and Washington. After the synagogue murders in Jerusalem, John Kerry sounded just like Netanyahu when he blamed Palestinian incitement, clearly including the PA, for the attack. He was followed by a slew of Congress members from both parties, some of whom singled out Abbas by name.
This is part of the Israeli right’s “solution” to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It begins with rolling back the arrangements under the Oslo Accords. The vision is something similar to what existed before the Accords were signed in 1993. Israel would have full security control in the West Bank, and the PA would be reduced to an administrative body in the increasingly isolated Palestinian cities, towns and villages. Freedom of movement for Palestinians would be increased in the hope that their economic conditions would improve (possibly through increased Palestinian employment in Israeli businesses) and that this would be enough, with increased Israeli security, to maintain relative calm.
This is a shared vision among Netanyahu, Lieberman, Naftali Bennett, and numerous other right-wing figures in Israel, even though they each present it differently. It was sketched out in broad terms in the Israeli media recently. Another prize in the arrangement for Israel is that it would diminish the PA as the international representative of the Palestinians, thus blunting the gains the Palestinians have gotten through various international recognitions of their statehood. The PA would still exist, but it would be disconnected from the Palestinian street in the Occupied Territories. This would, indeed, resemble the pre-Oslo era.
Even if Netanyahu is ousted from the Prime Minister’s office in the near future (not likely, but possible given the current political waves in Israel), another right-wing leader would certainly be his successor. Thus, the rollback of Oslo would continue, as would the freeze in the peace process. And without a visible representative Palestinian leadership, international pressure for peace would diminish, simply because there won’t be anyone to press Israel to talk to (the United States, Europe and even the United Nations will not, in any foreseeable future, push Israel to talk with Hamas).
The Israeli right believes that this is a status quo that could be maintained indefinitely, with the occasional flare-up of violence with Gaza and sporadic, but disorganized attacks by individual Palestinians from the West Bank. And since right-wing leaders will be controlling Israel until an opposition that can sway the Israeli public toward a more moderate course coalesces, the vision will be pursued.
But we’re already seeing some of the reasons why this vision is unsustainable. Israeli radicals will continue to agitate for greater Jewish control of the Temple Mount, and any right-wing Israeli government cannot simply ignore them. That will lead to more and more individual acts of violence like the one this week in Jerusalem and the several that preceded it recently.
Perhaps the Israeli right thinks they can handle that as well, and they may be correct. But there is another aspect about the pre-Oslo existence that they may be overlooking.
The separation of the Palestinian masses from the leadership of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in the 1980s led to the development of a more grassroots, locally based Palestinian leadership. It was that leadership, not the PLO, which created the first, and by far the more successful, Intifada. Palestinians have been yearning for a new leadership, and a new generation of leaders with popular support would be most welcome among them.
The first intifada was certainly not non-violent, but it relied much more on strikes, protests and civil disobedience than the second one did. Violence was a very minor aspect of it at first, until Yitzhak Rabin’s policy of “breaking the Palestinians’ limbs” increased it. Even so, the non-violent aspects of that uprising remained front and center. It was then that the United States, and soon after, Israel, embraced the idea of peace with the PLO, in order to end the intifada and to blunt and co-opt that new Palestinian leadership.
If such a leadership arose again, it would be impossible to ignore politically, even in Washington and Tel Aviv. But Palestinians need to hope for it, because if the Obama administration is so removed from this issue that it is willing to blame Abbas for acts that he has strongly condemned, then the Oslo rollback-vision will prove successful, and there will be even less pressure on Israel to compromise. But that would also present an opportunity for the new Palestinian leadership to encourage renewed international activism aimed at economically pressuring Israel. And that could bring real change.
There is, however, a very long road between that sort of hope and where we are right now.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
Once again, in his speech Wednesday at the United Nations, President Obama revealed the reduced importance of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on his agenda. He also revealed just how out of touch his entire country is with respect to reality.
The Israel-Palestine conflict was the last specific global issue mentioned by Obama in his address to the UN General Assembly, and his wording was straight out of the playbook. It was also only mentioned briefly and without any hint that the United States would be taking any action at all on the issue.
Here’s what he said:
Leadership will also be necessary to address the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. As bleak as the landscape appears, America will never give up the pursuit of peace. The situation in Iraq, Syria and Libya should cure anyone of the illusion that this conflict is the main source of problems in the region; for far too long, it has been used in part as a way to distract people from problems at home. And the violence engulfing the region today has made too many Israelis ready to abandon the hard work of peace. But let’s be clear: the status quo in the West Bank and Gaza is not sustainable. We cannot afford to turn away from this effort – not when rockets are fired at innocent Israelis, or the lives of so many Palestinian children are taken from us in Gaza. So long as I am President, we will stand up for the principle that Israelis, Palestinians, the region, and the world will be more just with two states living side by side, in peace and security.
Could this have been any emptier? Just last month, Israel and Hamas were engaged in the biggest uptick in violence since the Second Intifada was in full swing.
The message from Obama comes through, though: We’re no longer interested in forcing the parties to the table. The subtext behind that is a US surrender to the stubbornness of the far-right wing government running Israel these days. The US will stop pressuring Israel for talks, and indeed, it already has. The question this raises, of course, is how the Obama administration will respond when and if the Palestinian Authority makes good on its repeated threats to bring this issue to the UN and the International Criminal Court.
In such a case, Obama will undoubtedly condemn the Palestinians’ “unilateral action”—de facto US policy dictates that when the Palestinians take action, it is to be condemned, but when Israel does the same thing, it is, at worst, “unhelpful.” Yet the real question for the Palestinians is whether the United States will have any other response outside of some pro forma public statement. Obama’s hands-off approach seems to imply that it will not, though Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would be unwise to count on that.
But there’s another piece of this statement worth examining. Obama said, as he has many times, that the situation is unsustainable. He also notes that one myth that has long been held by many has been exposed as false by recent events: the notion that Palestine is the key source of instability in the region.
Obama is correct about the exposed old myth, but he merely spouts another in its place. Of course the occupation will not remain the same as it is today. It has changed some of its characteristics, almost always to the detriment of the Palestinians, many times since 1967. But the essence of the matter, the relationship between an occupying power and an occupied people locked in a conflict over land, rights, narratives, nationalism and competing claims of justice, has endured quite well over those years.
The Israeli right-wing was long aware, and often stated, that their subjugation of the Palestinians was not the main cause of instability in the region. Of course, there was a time when there was a much stronger argument for that myth. When the many Arab regimes, throughout most of the 20th century, were comfortably entrenched in power, things were pretty stable, as they often are under dictatorships that maintain their control. Under those circumstances, the cry of “Free Palestine” was heard much more loudly, as it was the only one the dictators would permit. Due to many factors (especially the US invasion of Iraq), that stability was shattered and, as one would expect, much of the Arab world, while not forgetting the Palestinians, demonstrated a focus on the miserable conditions they themselves were living in, and conflicts within their own countries. Thus, the myth was exposed.
But we need no shakeup like the Arab Awakening to see that the claim that the occupation is “unsustainable” is a myth. We really need only see that it has endured for more than 47 years, and when circumstances did threaten the status quo, Israel adapted its occupation to meet those circumstances. The most obvious example of that is the massive tightening of the occupation and even more massive expansion of settlements that constituted Israel’s response to the Oslo Accords.
Of course, it is a truism that any oppressive regime eventually meets its demise. That is clearly not what Obama means when he calls the occupation “unsustainable.” Rather, he means what so many others mean: Israel cannot continue to hold millions of Palestinians without rights. But, like so many other myths around Israel-Palestine, this one doesn’t bear scrutiny. Israel has done this for 47 years, and can do it for the foreseeable future. The demise of the occupation regime will come, as the demise of all regimes eventually come. But there is nothing particularly unsustainable about this one.
The Israeli right has become the Israeli mainstream, and they are busily coming up with ideas for how to sustain this occupation or, as Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman likes to put it, to “manage” the conflict. They recognize that the fear, ingrained in the thinking of many of the early Zionist philosophers of a Jewish Israel ruling over a majority of disenfranchised Muslim and Christian Arabs is unfounded. It turns out that contrary to the expectations of the early Zionist thinkers, Israelis can live with denying rights to Arabs, and the world is prepared to tolerate it, despite the clucking of tongues it evokes.
This issue can be traced back all the way to Theodor Herzl, and it was actively dealt with by Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and, most notably, by the person in charge of land acquisition for the Jewish National Fund both before and after the State of Israel was established, Yoseph Weitz. In modern times, this notion has been expressed as a “demographic time bomb,” most notably by Netanyahu’s predecessor, Ehud Olmert.
But there’s no reason to believe this is really a problem. After all, according to the February 2014 report of Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, there are about 6,119,000 Jews in Israel and the West Bank. Between the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, there are some 5,894,631 Palestinians, according to the CIA World Factbook. Given the different population growth rates, Palestinians will be a majority very soon, but the day that happens, what is going to change? On the ground, in day to day life, what will be different than the day before?
The answer, of course, is that nothing will change and the Israeli right wing understands this. The United States, on the other hand, does not appear to. More to the point, the many activists who believe that Jews going from 51% of the population to 49% of it will suddenly mean that Israel is an apartheid state, as both Olmert and another former Prime Minister, Ehud Barak warned, also do not understand that when that line is crossed nothing will change. Nothing will change when that so-called demographic time bomb goes off.
So, while right wing leaders like Naftali Bennett consider ways to continue to “manage” the Palestinians indefinitely, Obama and a great any others, in the United States, Israel, Europe and even some among the Palestinians, continue to engage in myth-making and wishful thinking.
If this conflict is ever to be resolved, the only path to it entails full acknowledgment of the realities, on the ground, in the international diplomatic sphere and in politics. Anyone who truly believes that the demographic counter clicking down to under 50% Jewish will somehow shock the Israeli people and their government into recognizing the injustice of the occupation is engaging in fantasy. Such demographic changes are gradual, and this cushions the change so it is not a shock. In 1960, Whites, who were always an overwhelming minority, made up less than 20% of the population of South Africa, and Jews are unlikely to ever be anywhere near that small a minority in Israel-Palestine.
This is only one of many myths that need to be abandoned for any kind of resolution to be possible. It’s no less important to dispel these fanciful notions than it is to counter the stereotypes of Palestinians that are so widely held in the United States, Israel and elsewhere (like “they just want to kill the Jews” for instance). One way we will know people are serious about taking on this vexing conflict is when we see them abandon false notions and recognize that Israel-Palestine can contribute to a better world simply by ending the injustice and violence. When that’s the motivation, and it is applied to both sides, we’ll be getting somewhere.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
In the past, people have speculated about what Israel and the Occupied Territories would look like if the United States stopped trying to broker the mythical kind of solution that the Oslo process envisioned. Well, now we have an example.
The most radically right-wing government in Israel’s brief history was simply [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
In the past, people have speculated about what Israel and the Occupied Territories would look like if the United States stopped trying to broker the mythical kind of solution that the Oslo process envisioned. Well, now we have an example.
The most radically right-wing government in Israel’s brief history was simply waiting for an opportunity to deliver the most intense and widespread blow to the West Bank. The kidnapping of three young Israelis provided that opportunity and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seized it with a vengeance. Under the cover of searching for the kidnapped youths, Netanyahu launched a massive operation to cripple Hamas in the West Bank, further humiliate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and punish the entire Palestinian population for calling for a halt to the charade of the “peace process” and, worse, moving toward a unified leadership.
On the Palestinian side, the fundamental lack of strategy has become ever more apparent. Ditching the US-brokered process has been, for a very long time, the right move, but sloughing it off in a half-hearted way and without a substitute was unconscionably foolish. That’s especially true when you consider how much time there was to devise an alternative strategy to the US-brokered process over so many years. The result is that the Palestinian unity agreement was imperiled before it was signed by the essential incompatibility of the strategies and ideologies of Fatah and Hamas.
This is being played out on a daily basis now: Abbas appears not only weak, but like a traitor as he cooperates with Netanyahu in this massive operation that has yielded nothing with regard to the three kidnapped Israelis but has resulted in hundreds of arrested Palestinians without cause, disruption of work, school and health services throughout the West Bank, hundreds of injuries and, to date, five deaths. Hamas is fanning the flames of anger while denouncing Abbas for his quisling behavior, but it also offers no alternative, unless one foolhardily believes that yet another intifada is going to soften Israeli stances. The last intifada may have shaken up Israelis, and certainly resulted in numerous deaths and injuries in Israel, but it did no harm to Israel’s stability while killing and harming a great many Palestinians. In fact, it only hardened Israel’s positions and worsened conditions for the Palestinians. This suggests that violence, on top of being deplorable, is a foolish course for the Palestinians.
For his part, Netanyahu is playing this to the hilt. It is far from certain that Hamas, as an organization, is responsible for the kidnapping. Right now, it seems much more likely that this was a small group whose members might also have been members of Hamas, but were not acting in concert with the organization. Netanyahu, however, insists he has “unequivocal” proof that Hamas was responsible. The credibility of that claim erodes with each passing day that Bibi refuses to offer evidence for his claim.
Netanyahu’s brand of politics, like most right-wingers, functions best when the country he runs is either angry, scared, or better yet, both. The current situation creates such an atmosphere. The problem will come when and if the tension in the West Bank boils over. And that problem is going to be one that neither the United States nor much of the rest of the world will be able to ignore. They will have to choose a side.
In looking at where we’re headed right now, we must start by understanding that the US is not removed from these events. While the Obama administration has decided to take a “pause” from this conflict and certainly has other matters like Iraq and the advances of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to occupy its time, it is still Israel’s benefactor, providing arms and, quite likely, the omnipresent protective veto in the UN Security Council. So, the US is still there, whether it wants to be or not.
It will also be drawn further in if the Palestinian Authority collapses and violence in the West Bank is renewed. This seems very much to be the direction Israel is pressing matters towards. If that is the case, then it also stands to reason that the Israeli government intends to annex some part of the West Bank, using the violence as a pretext. Israel, especially given its budgetary constraints these days, is certainly not prepared to supplant the Palestinian Authority in administering the West Bank. The remainder of the West Bank would be surrounded by “Israel” and would be easily contained. From there, local councils or some such arrangements are probably what is envisioned for the lands Israel decides to leave to the Palestinians.
Netanyahu and his cohorts like Naftali Bennett, Avigdor Lieberman and Moshe Ya’alon are gambling that the violence of a third intifada will be enough to convince key governments — particularly, the US, UK and Germany — to tolerate the annexation. By “tolerate” I mean that they would object and “refuse to recognize” the action, much as they have with East Jerusalem, but would take no other action.
That is a huge gamble. It is far from certain that even the United States would acquiesce to such actions, and less so that Britain and Germany would. Even if they did, there would surely be a great uproar from other countries, in Europe and throughout the Muslim world, as well as from Russia, France and China. Even governments like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which are largely indifferent to the Palestinians’ plight would be unable to stay silent.
But the gambit has a few things working in Bibi’s favor as well. First, as much as the Israeli de facto annexation of East Jerusalem in 1980 outraged many, the reality of the whole city functioning as an “undivided” capital, however restlessly, has survived for over three decades since then. And that’s Jerusalem, the hottest of hotspots in this conflict. Netanyahu surely reasons that if Jerusalem didn’t start a war, there’s a good chance that annexing the Jordan Valley in a similar manner won’t either.
Moreover, the timing is very good for the annexationists. Not only are all eyes on Iraq with a few still lingering over Ukraine, but the specter of ISIS has renewed the sense of fright that the West feels toward Arabs. These will combine, Bibi surely hopes, to encourage a similar clucking of tongues while doing nothing that has greeted the excesses, both pre- and post-election, of the al-Sisi government in Egypt. Netanyahu’s assessment that he can take an outrageous step and get away with it is thus not without recent precedent. The annexation vision, if that is what Bibi is pursuing, would require years of violence to set the stage for it, or at least many months of intense fighting and bloodshed on both sides (though, as always, the Palestinians will bleed a lot more than Israel).
Abbas, however unwittingly, is helping that process along by working with Israel. Netanyahu is not allowing the Palestinian forces to do much of anything in the current operation, but Abbas is also doing nothing to support his own people. Hamas’ strategy isn’t entirely clear yet, but its obviously trying to capitalize on the Palestinian rage that fuels its support. In Hamas’ view, escalating violence plays into its basic strategy of confrontation rather than collaboration. But the question of whether or not Hamas actually has some endgame vision of how it can make any headway against the might of Israel’s forces, let alone triumph, remains yet to be answered.
So, this is what Israel-Palestine looks like without a sham peace process. Does that mean the sham is preferable? Is it better to have a normalized occupation, with all the banality of its entrenched administration and gradual assimilation of more and more Palestinian land into Israel; or is a possibly long period of bloodshed preferable? Only Israelis and Palestinians can answer that question. That said, the shameful behavior of the US, the international community, the Quartet, the Israeli government, and the Palestinian leadership has left few other options.
Israelis can alter this situation, of course, any time they want by electing a government that wants to make a peace deal. Palestinians can also affect change by developing, organizing and executing a strategy that wins them both attention and increased support in the international arena. At this point, however, both sides seem unwilling and unable to take these paths, which increases the odds of Israel-Palestine spiraling back into extreme violence.
This article was first published by LobeLog and was reprinted here with permission. Follow LobeLog on Twitter and like us on Facebook.
Photo: Gaza, June 16 — Women rally for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons on the 54th day of a mass hunger strike by the detainees and supporters. Credit: Joe Catron
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
They were dueling op-eds, one in the New York Times and the other in the Jewish communal magazine, Tablet. The question being bandied between them was whether Israel is becoming a theocracy. Not surprisingly, both pieces missed the mark. It’s not theocracy but unbridled nationalism that is the threat [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
They were dueling op-eds, one in the New York Times and the other in the Jewish communal magazine, Tablet. The question being bandied between them was whether Israel is becoming a theocracy. Not surprisingly, both pieces missed the mark. It’s not theocracy but unbridled nationalism that is the threat in Israel.
The Times piece was authored by Abbas Milani, who heads the Iranian Studies program at Stanford University and Israel Waismel-Manor, a lecturer at Haifa University and visiting associate professor of political science at Stanford. Their thesis is that Iran and Israel are moving in opposite directions on a democratic-theocratic scale, and that they might at some point in the future pass each other. Milani and Waismel-Manor are certainly correct about the strengthening forces of secularism and democracy in Iran, along with a good dose of disillusionment and frustration with the revolutionary, Islamic government that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ushered in thirty-five years ago. But on Israel, they miss the mark by a pretty wide margin.
Waismel-Manor and Milani posit that the thirty seats currently held in Israel’s Knesset by religious parties shows growing religious influence on Israeli policies. But, as Yair Rosenberg at Tablet correctly points out, not all the religious parties have the same attitude about separation of religion and the state. Where Rosenberg, unsurprisingly, goes way off course is his complete eliding of the fact that the threat is not Israel’s tilt toward religion, but it’s increasingly radical shift toward right-wing policies, which are often severely discriminatory and militant.
Waismel-Manor and Milani collapse the religious and right-wing ideologies at play in the Israeli government. Rosenberg is right to counter this. There are currently three parties in the Knesset (Israeli parliament) which define themselves as religious parties: HaBayit HaYehudi (The Jewish Home), Shas, and United Torah Judaism (UTJ). Shas is the most explicitly dedicated, in ideology and practice, to a religious Jewish state. But it is currently in the opposition and has not seen much rise in its share of the electorate in quite a while. It is worth noting, as well, that Shas has generally been the most welcoming of all religious parties to a two-state solution, although its stance on an undivided Jerusalem is notoriously problematic.
UTJ is made up of two religious parties, which don’t always agree and sometimes split for a while and reunite later. But UTJ generally supports the status quo of religion in the state, and HaBayit Hayehudi, while ostensibly supporting a religious state, is much more focused on its radical nationalism. This is why Bennett, after some early difficulties, has found a way to work with secular parties like Yesh Atid and, most importantly, Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel, Our Home). Neither of those two parties, both major partners in the current coalition, could find common ground with UTJ or Shas.
That is very telling, because it illustrates where both the Times and Tablet op-eds go wrong. Rosenberg, who is also the editor of the Israel State Archives blog, is zealous in his determination to be a heroic “Defender of Israel” and in so doing he comes off as both snide and dishonest in his takedown of Waismel-Manor and Milani, despite the merits of his case. Surely so keen an observer of Israeli politics as Rosenberg claims to be could not have missed the thread that the two scholars detected but mis-identified in their piece. It is not theocracy that Israel is sliding toward, it is the passionate and often brutal oppression that extreme nationalism so often leads to. At the end of that road is fascism. And while Israel, despite some bombastic rhetoric of its fiercest critics, remains a long distance away from being fascist, the distance is not as great as it once was.
Rosenberg had the opportunity to issue an important corrective to the Times op-ed and grasp a teaching moment. Instead, he waved the Israeli flag and completely ignored the very real threat Israel’s increasingly right-wing body politic poses to the structures of democracy in Israel.
That threat is manifest in the ideologies and proposals of both Avigdor Lieberman of Yisrael Beiteinu and Naftali Bennett of HaBayit HaYehudi. I’ve explored in some detail the kind of future Bennett envisions; he is a leading champion of annexation of much of the West Bank. Lieberman, who is busily pushing stronger ties with Russia to increase Israel’s freedom of action, has repeatedly proposed such ideas as loyalty oaths for Palestinian citizens of Israel and the forced transfer of Arab areas of Israel to the Palestinian Authority. These, coupled with his general style and heavy-handed methods, have brought many people to describe him as a fascist.
But the threat doesn’t stop there, nor is it limited to the Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line. Various bills have been proposed to limit Israeli NGOs that work to support human rights, international law, and peace, many of which are staffed and supported by Israeli Jews. The bills have been directly targeting NGOs in these fields, not the right-wing ones which do not disclose their funding sources and operate in various shady ways.
And the effect is not limited to Lieberman’s and Bennett’s parties. The Likud, which has always been conservative and right-wing, has also seen a tilt in this same direction. Gone from the ranks of Likud are such party stalwarts as Dan Meridor and Benny Begin who, despite supporting settlement expansion and various hawkish positions, also stood firm by Israel’s democratic processes. They opposed the rightward march and now they’re gone.
Politicians like Meridor and Begin were able to stabilize Likud leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu in the face of rightward pressure, but those days have also passed. It is a mark of where Likud has gone that, not only did it form an electoral bloc with Lieberman in the last election, but an outspoken opponent of the creation of a Palestinian state, the son of Israel’s first Likud Prime Minister, Menachem Begin (who was, himself, once considered a terrorist by the British), Benny was considered too moderate for the Likud leadership.
Instead of right-wing leaders like Meridor and Begin, Likud features explicit opponents of democracy like Ze’ev Elkin, annexationists like Tzipi Hotovely and outright racists like Miri Regev. Here we find the common cause that Bennett and Lieberman find with Likud. Not religion, but the worst kind of nationalistic bigotry, one that leads to ongoing occupation outside the Green Line and increased institutionalized racism, whether you call it apartheid, segregation or whatever, inside.
Rosenberg merely wanted to demonstrate that the Times ran an op-ed that offered an inaccurate picture of Israel, hoping to strengthen the right-wing’s and center-right’s phony contention that the Times and other mainstream media treat Israel unfairly. He was right about Milani and Waismel-Manor mischaracterizing Israel. But rather than correct them with reality, he did it with pointless sarcasm and thereby perpetrated a lie by omission that is much more harmful to Israel.
The pull of Bennett and Lieberman has made Likud even more radically right-wing. It has made a party like Yesh Atid “centrist,” even though its leader kicked off his campaign in a settlement, claims to support a two-state solution while backing every second of Netanyahu’s obstructionism in peace talks, and proclaims repeatedly that Israel should not even discuss Palestinian refugees or dividing Jerusalem. That’s the new center in Israel.
And why wouldn’t it be, when the right-wing has pulled things so far from any kind of true moderation? That is the danger of where Israel is heading. It’s not theocratic, but it is repressive and a recipe for continued and escalated conflict. Milani and Waismel-Manor may have mid-identified the threat, but at least they acknowledge there is one. And it’s getting worse.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
John Kerry’s words at a report-back to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sent shock waves all the way to Jerusalem. “Unfortunately, prisoners were not released on the Saturday they were supposed to be released,” he said. “And so day one went by, day two went by, day three [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
John Kerry’s words at a report-back to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sent shock waves all the way to Jerusalem. “Unfortunately, prisoners were not released on the Saturday they were supposed to be released,” he said. “And so day one went by, day two went by, day three went by. And then in the afternoon, when they were about to maybe get there, 700 settlement units were announced in Jerusalem and, poof, that was sort of the moment. We find ourselves where we are.”
That was well outside the usual boundaries of discourse for top US officials, and it certainly got noticed. Kerry’s own State Department subordinates quickly rushed to reaffirm that “…today, Secretary Kerry was again crystal clear that both sides have taken unhelpful steps and at no point has he engaged in a blame game.”
But the message was clear and Kerry himself has taken no steps to truly back off from it. He technically didn’t “blame” Israel. Rather, as he put it, “I only described the unfolding of events and the natural difficulties involved in managing such a complex and sensitive negotiation.”
The message, in a nutshell, is that the Obama administration is fed up with Bibi Netanyahu and his antics. That’s been welcomed by the vast majority of thinking analysts and observers who understood long ago that Israel has acted as the major obstacle to talks and that US pandering to Netanyahu was only going to harden the Israelis’ positions. But that welcome needs to be cooled a bit.
However frustrated Kerry may be by Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declining to accept a US-brokered deal that was absurdly lopsided in Israel’s favor, the peace process must, apparently, go on. The United States continues intense efforts to bring the two sides back to the table despite the fact that months of talks have only been counter-productive and that the current goal of the talks is to find a framework for talks. At this point, the entire Oslo process is little more than a joke. If anything, it resembles a zombie from the television show, The Walking Dead — it’s really dead but it just keeps walking around and making noise.
Despite Kerry’s testimony, he’s staying in the business of bringing Israelis and Palestinians back to the table, and there’s one reason: the only goal remaining on the Obama administration’s agenda is to prevent the talks from completely breaking down on their watch. Yet it seems even that modest goal is beyond Kerry’s grasp. According to Israeli officials, the method for bringing the talks back to zombie-life is to re-issue the offer Abbas pre-empted with his application to fifteen international treaties and institutions. The only changes apparently on the table are compensation to Israel for Abbas’ heinous crime.
Despite Abbas’ unusually bold action in those applications, his track record of submission suggests he will cave-in again. Still, it’s hard to see how he can justify such a turnaround under these circumstances. So, it’s slightly more likely that he will not agree to this. But the most likely outcome is that the Israelis and Palestinians will continue to squabble, and that the deadline of April 29 will be upon us before Kerry can put the sham talks back together.
Given the beating the US is taking around the world over other issues, especially Ukraine; and the always-tenuous balance of maintaining the Iran nuclear talks, Kerry may have no choice but to finally give up on this poorly planned and even more poorly executed attempt to secure a resolution of the Oslo process. It’s now too late, but given the enormous amount of energy Kerry has devoted to this quixotic task, he may not be able to admit it. In any case, the US now must choose between looking foolish by giving up or looking even more foolish by pressing on in this effort when it’s clearly not prepared to do what it would take to get something done.
Abbas has pretty much mapped his post-talks course, and it certainly seems like most Palestinians are anxious to see it happen. That is, increased activism at the United Nations, including applying for accession to the Rome Statute, which would allow the Palestinians to bring Israeli leaders to the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges. Israel is very concerned about that, and that’s why despite the total harmlessness to Israel of the Palestinians’ fifteen international applications, Israel is reacting with increased threats, including an announced intention to steal the tax revenues Israel, by agreement, collects for the Palestinians.
In fact, it is in Israel where we have seen the most activity in response to the breakdown in talks, and none of it is encouraging. The Israeli opposition took days to comment. Zehava Gal-On, head of the left-wing Zionist Meretz Party had, as one would expect, the clearest criticism, saying Israel had given the United States “the finger.” The ostensible leader of the opposition, Isaac Herzog, was less harsh, but called for new elections. That would, however, be foolish as recent polls clearly indicate a strengthening of the right-wing majority. The two parties within Netanyahu’s coalition — HaTnuah and Yesh Atid — which are supposed to be holding Bibi’s feet to the peace talks fire, scrambled desperately to find credible ways to support Netanyahu instead.
Netanyahu’s critics have come from his right flank, in two different ways. First, Trade and Labor Minister, Naftali Bennett of the religious HaBayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) party called for Israel to annex large chunks of the West Bank to punish the Palestinians for their fifteen applications. While there is no chance Israel will do that in the near future, Bennett has been pushing annexation since he rose to the top of his party and has vowed to intensify the public campaign in this direction. Given the ongoing rightward trend among Israeli citizens, this is a cause that could gain considerable momentum going forward.
Then, Netanyahu’s Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman continued his efforts to position himself as the next Prime Minister by meeting with Kerry and publicly stating that Kerry didn’t blame Israel for the breakdown. Lieberman thus gave the impression of himself as a true diplomat, an image the radically right-wing and historically undiplomatic leader of the largely Russian Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home) party, has been trying to cultivate ever since he came back to his post after being suspended while under investigation for corruption charges. Lieberman still invites great skepticism among Israelis, but his image is definitely improving.
Bennett, having gotten wind of the attempt by Kerry to revive the talks, then publicly declared that he would pull HaBayit HaYehudi out of the government if the previously arranged deal, or anything similar, went through. Bennett is known for bombast, and the fact is that this stance of his is not supported by his own party. Even HaBayit HaYehudi Housing Minister Uri Ariel, who played a central role in derailing the talks by announcing new settlement construction just as Kerry was trying to put a crutch underneath the discussions, disagrees with Bennett.
Still, these challenges from his right flank are serious for Netanyahu in the long-term, although right now, his popularity is rising among Israelis. That is probably more dismaying than anything else. Israel has, at last, killed the Oslo process and Abbas’ apparent willingness to continue working with the United States to keep them going for no discernible purpose is not winning him any points among his own public.
In the end, the situation is merely a more concentrated form of the one which has held for most of the Oslo era. The United States insists on both managing the process and keeping it going. It calls on the Israelis and Palestinians to make “hard choices” and take “bold steps,” yet administration after administration is unwilling to make its own choices and take its own steps in the face of expected political backlash to bring about a deal. Israel keeps its own goal front and center; that being to make sure that it minimizes, or even eliminates, the possibility of any significant Israeli concession. And the Palestinian people wait for a leadership that will defend their interests and recognize that cooperation with the United States will never get them to their goals of independence and self-determination.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
There was a real diplomatic blowup in the Knesset last week, when Naftali Bennett led a walkout of the chamber by his HaBayit HaYehudi party during a speech by European Union Parliamentary President Martin Schulz. The comment Schulz made that elicited his response was this: “A Palestinian youth [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
There was a real diplomatic blowup in the Knesset last week, when Naftali Bennett led a walkout of the chamber by his HaBayit HaYehudi party during a speech by European Union Parliamentary President Martin Schulz. The comment Schulz made that elicited his response was this: “A Palestinian youth asked me why an Israeli can use 70 cubic liters of water and a Palestinian just 17. I haven’t checked the data. I’m asking you if this is correct.”
Is this just another example of Israeli hyper-sensitivity and over-reaction? In fact, it is not. At first glance, this seems like a foreign leader framing a question, one that seems to be regarding an issue that makes Israel look no worse than frequent statements about settlements and foot-dragging on the peace process. It actually touches on an issue that is at the very heart of the Israel-Palestine conflict, but that is too often overlooked. That issue is water.
When one mentions water in conjunction with the Middle East, there is always this “oh, yeah” reaction as people remember that this is probably the single most important issue in the region. But it is too rarely considered in political analyses. It isn’t discussed often enough in the context of the roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict, but it is absolutely fundamental to Israeli policy and Palestinian dispossession.
People are usually puzzled as to why Israel risks international isolation and opprobrium in order to maintain its occupation. Is it religious zeal? Nationalistic fervor? An obsession with security considerations that Israel’s military might has transcended and that are based in military thinking that is a half-century out of date? All of these are very real factors. But somehow, water is never mentioned as more than an afterthought (and I confess, I am as much at fault as my fellows in this regard).
But anyone who has ever been to Israel and also to other countries in the region knows that Israel, although it certainly needs to be more water-conscious than most Western countries, lives a more water-rich lifestyle than any of its neighbors. Talk to older Israelis who remember things before 1967; that was a different Israel in many ways, and water was a big issue. The difference between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is even more starkly visible; the contrast between homes with lush lawns and, in some cases, swimming pools in the settlements, and the arid homes of Palestinians with water cisterns on the roofs that are not always filled on schedule and often hold less than what is required between fillings is quite striking.
Today, and for more than four decades now, many of Israel’s major cities get a huge portion of their water from the mountain aquifer in the West Bank. Other water sources in Israel are dependent on this aquifer, and a few other smaller ones in the West Bank as well (see the map here). So not only would abandoning the West Bank mean that Israel loses a major portion of its water supply, the Palestinians would actually have the ability to control the sources of some water that is drawn within Israel’s internationally recognized boundaries.
That’s why water is always a sensitive issue. It’s made more so, of course, because, while the Palestinians and Israel “share” this major water resources, consumption is not at all equal. According to the Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem, daily per capita water consumption among Palestinians connected to the water grid in the West Bank for domestic, urban, and industrial use is some 73 liters. In areas in the northern West Bank, consumption is much lower. In 2008, per capita daily consumption was 44 liters in the Jenin area and 37 liters in the Tubas area, according to B’Tselem’s statistics. Today it’s about 38 liter per day in Jenin, but 169 in Jericho, which is very close to Israeli usage. About 113,000 Palestinians are not connected to the water grid, however, and their daily consumption is a mere 20-50 liters.
Most Palestinian water consumption is thus considerably lower than the WHO’s and USAID’s recommended bare minimum of 100 liters per day, and considerably less than the Israeli average of about 183 liters per day. So, yes, Schulz overstated it when he said Israelis consume four times as much per capita as Palestinians. They “only” consume between 2.4 and 3.5 times as much, with the gap between the average Israeli and the worst off Palestinian being about 7.5 times as much. And, let’s remember, that this is a resource that Israel took from the Palestinians when they occupied the West Bank. Before that, under Jordanian rule, and for the most part under the British Mandate, West Bank Palestinians enjoyed full access to the water resources in their area.
The conditions described above apply only in the West Bank. In Gaza, the situation is much worse. Gaza depends almost entirely on the coastal aquifer, which is also used by Israel and Egypt. The Palestinian Water Authority pumps more than three times the aquifer’s replenishment rate per year, and even that, due to unreliable supplies of electricity, water supply is erratic on a daily basis.
Over-pumping of that aquifer is a long-term problem, one that pre-dates Israel’s occupation of the Strip in 1967, but is now reaching crisis proportions. According to WHO findings, the Strip is expected to exhaust its supply of usable drinking water in 2016. UNICEF says that at present, 90% of the water from the coastal aquifer is unfit for human consumption. The majority of Gaza’s citizens have to buy water from vendors, with some paying as much as one-third of their income on water.
The pollution of the aquifer will, of course, also have a significant effect on Israelis and Egyptians, even beyond the fact that they will have to find alternative water sources. The World Bank funded the construction of a water treatment plant to alleviate part of this problem, but although the plant has been completed, it stands idle, caught in the middle of a dispute between Israel and Hamas over Israel providing increased electricity to the Strip in order to run the plant (Gaza still depends on Israel for most of its energy needs).
One can expect that Israel will eventually address this issue. The siege has, from the beginning, been carefully managed by Israel to ensure the deprivation of Gaza’s population while avoiding the sort of massive death and illness that might create international outrage and force Israel to act. But the water issue, as it involves both Gaza and the West Bank, threatens to turn into something much greater.
Although some groups, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, had warned years before the outbreak of violence in Syria of the extent of destabilization that the water crisis there could cause, such warnings were not loud enough and went unheeded by all those world leaders (including the Obama administration) who are currently wringing their hands about their “inability” to take action to stop the ongoing civil war there. In the Occupied Palestinian Territories, a similar dynamic is currently underway, and it is complicated by the occupation, the concomitant restrictions on movement and on Palestinian access to water (while Israeli needs have not yet been impacted significantly) and by the continuing and increasingly petty bickering between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.
The subject of water is therefore a touchy one for Israel on many levels. Not only is it an issue of unequal access to this most crucial of resources, but it also illustrates the difficulties of truly separating Israel and the Palestinians. Indeed, when it comes to water, it will be impossible for Israel to end the occupation and maintain its current standard of living with regard to water. It will also be impossible for any Palestinian entity to survive without significant external investment in irrigation, water treatment, desalinization, and other methods of conserving and treating water. In other words, when it comes to water, it is highly unlikely that Israel and the Palestinians can separate from each other as the Oslo formulation of a two-state solution envisions.
It has often been said that in the 21st century, water will become one of, if not the leading cause of war. That is nowhere more evident than in the Israel-Palestine conflict. The warning signs are all there now, before things spiral even farther than they already have. But water can also become the basis for a pressing need on which Israelis and Palestinians can cooperate. That can lead to a practical solution and, while that can be a single state as some advocate, it can also be a two-state vision, albeit one that is very different from the Oslo formulation. Two states existing in cooperation and mutual dependence is the key to avoiding more conflict and opening the door to healing. That, rather than the obsessive separation of the two peoples, can exist in two states and can lead to peace. Water can either be the spark for increased conflict or the key to a better future for both peoples. This is the choice facing Israelis, Palestinians and, yes, the United States.
Addendum: The Israeli journalist Amira Hass, writing in Ha’aretz, lists some very pertinent and basic facts about the use of water and the massive inequality therein between Israel and the Palestinians. She makes it quite clear that the situation is much more dire than even Schulz realizes and that Israel is going to great pains to ensure that people (including most Israelis) don’t know how bad it is. In any case, the article is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand this crucial issue. It should be accessible, but if people have any trouble, please contact me through my web site and I will gladly send you a summary of the facts Hass relays.
Photo: Rooftop water cisterns in Jenin, a Palestinian city in the West Bank.
]]>By Mitchell Plitnick
There’s a showdown coming, and the outcome may determine how the US runs its foreign policy in the Middle East, at least for the next three years and perhaps much longer.
The issues at hand are both immediate and long-term, and both involve an awful lot of “daylight” between [...]]]>
By Mitchell Plitnick
There’s a showdown coming, and the outcome may determine how the US runs its foreign policy in the Middle East, at least for the next three years and perhaps much longer.
The issues at hand are both immediate and long-term, and both involve an awful lot of “daylight” between the positions of the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government in Israel. The very top of the Israeli government, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right “kingmaker,” Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor Naftali Bennett, has launched a full-scale attack on the policies of Barack Obama. They have dispensed with the fiction that Israel is not a domestic US issue and have brought into the light of day the enormous influence they have in Congress.
Bennett came to Washington to meet with members of Congress to directly lobby them to oppose the policies of the President of the United States, particularly with regard to a potential agreement with Iran that would forestall any possibility of a military strike. If Bennett was from any other country, no matter how close an ally, a foreign leader lobbying Congress to oppose the plans of a President whose agenda is backed by a majority of US citizens and who is trying to avoid a conflict whose repercussions could be dire would be outrageous. But with Israel, such niceties are ignored because, whether it’s Bennett or the U.S. members of AIPAC, lobbying and winning for Israeli interests over those of the United States or the rest of the world is routine.
But the issue is not limited to Iran by a long shot. Differences at least as profound have appeared in the context of the failing new round of peace talks that Secretary of State John Kerry worked so hard to put together. Kerry has had some unusually strong words for Israel in this regard, and the response from Netanyahu has been nothing short of hysterical. And while Kerry flatly denied the rumors that he would table Washington’s own plan in January if the two sides cannot make progress, a bridging proposal certainly seems like a very real possibility, and one that Israel would almost certainly resist.
As I explained elsewhere in some depth, both of these issues are consequential, but they also point to an even larger and more fundamental concern. That concern is not held exclusively by Israel, but is very much shared by Saudi Arabia and other countries throughout the region: the trajectory of U.S. policies and presence in the Middle East.
The United States has been the key external power in the region for decades, and it is not about to abandon its allies or, more importantly, its interests. But since 9/11, and especially since the invasion of Iraq, the US has extended its military in the region to no good effect. While both the US public and its president have made it clear in recent years that they wish to substantially diminish Washington’s military “footprint” in the region, Washington has come perilously close to war with Iran and to military intervention in Syria, due to its tangled alliances. Similar issues could well arise in Egypt, Jordan, and Bahrain, while the US continues a drone war in Yemen that could also escalate at any time.
What it seems Obama is trying to do is back the US away from war and limit Washington’s susceptibility to pressure from its closest allies in the region. In short, he is trying to base US regional policy on US interests, not on Saudi or Israeli ones. While US interests do indeed include supporting its allies, Obama wants to ensure that decisions on engaging in conflict are based on much broader range of U.S. interests in the region.
But Israel has come to expect a US policy based on its purported “security” needs, and Saudi Arabia has come to expect US policy to support the kingdom’s own regional ambitions. The fury of the Saudis was not hidden when the US decided not to attack Syria, nor has their irritation with Obama been difficult to detect over his lack of support for greater Saudi intervention in Bahrain and their enthusiastic backing for the military coup in Egypt. The language we have seen emanating from Israel and directed against Obama and John Kerry has been unprecedented.
Congress is where the key battles will be fought, but it’s not the only battleground. Both Israel and the Saudis have strong connections to American elites and have never had a problem getting their views aired in the White House and State and Defense Departments. But Congress is where the notion that the Saudis and especially the Israelis are the main barometers for US policy truly holds sway.
The talks between Israel and the Palestinians seem more and more like a bargaining chip for Obama with each passing day. The talks were doomed to begin with, and there seems to be little point in their further pursuit. Might Kerry be pressing forward with them so that he can present the rumored US bridging proposal, only to withdraw it in exchange for Israel’s acquiescence to an agreement with Iran? This seems like a pretty plausible scenario.
There is another aspect to both the Israel-Palestine talks and the Iran debate. In both cases, the Obama Administration is being much more forthright than any administration in decades that Israel’s view, while respected, is not shared by the administration. Congress is already stirring around this, but is treading carefully. If it appears too much like Congress is bowing to Israel against the president’s wishes, particularly at a moment when the U.S. public’s views about military intervention in the Middle East, in particular, are clearly more in line with the White House, the political risks become all the greater, especially with congressional campaigns just starting up. It is certain that such a perception is not something AIPAC relishes.
If Congress can thwart Obama’s and Kerry’s efforts regarding both Iran and the Israel-Palestine talks, US foreign policy will be entrenched on a track controlled by domestic lobbies representing Israel and, to a lesser degree, Saudi Arabia. In other words, the status quo will hold, likely for quite some time. If Obama loses this battle, the likelihood that a successor would willingly take it on is substantially diminished.
But this is as good an opportunity for a shift away from domestic lobbying forces in foreign policy making as we have seen in a very long time. It’s a battle Obama can win, if he is willing to see it through. No, he may not be able to win on both the Israeli occupation and Iran, but winning on Iran alone would be enough to bring about a profound shift in US Mideast policy. Israel knows that, and so does Saudi Arabia. The battle lines are thus drawn, and it’s a fight of profound importance, even beyond that of the two specific issues that have brought the battle to a head.
Photo: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Secretary of State John Kerry at the US embassy in Tel Aviv, April 2013. (Photo courtesy of US Embassy)
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
On the eve of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s fifth trip of the year to Israel and the Palestinian Territories, little has changed. Despite Kerry’s entreaties not only to both parties but also to Jewish-Americans to come into his “Tent of the Peace Process,” every indication on [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
On the eve of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s fifth trip of the year to Israel and the Palestinian Territories, little has changed. Despite Kerry’s entreaties not only to both parties but also to Jewish-Americans to come into his “Tent of the Peace Process,” every indication on the ground is, at best, more of the same. The only changes have made it more obvious than ever that the two-state solution, as previously conceived, is dead.
In advance of delaying this trip in order to consult with the rest of the administration’s leadership on increasing military aid to the Syrian rebels, Kerry spoke to the American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) annual meeting in early June. He entreated the audience to speak out in a voice that the Israeli leadership could hear in support of the moribund two-state solution.
Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, widely regarded as the government’s “fig leaf” whose role is to mask the rejectionism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, echoed Kerry’s call. And the AJC, along with other Jewish-American organizations, got an immediate chance to respond. Yet that very opportunity demonstrated the futility of Kerry’s and Livni’s efforts.
First, Netanyahu’s Deputy Defense Minister, Danny Danon, of Netanyahu’s own Likud Coalition, declared that “…if there will be a move to promote a two-state solution, you will see forces blocking it within the [Likud] party and the government.” Danon accurately pointed out that “…the majority of Likud ministers, along with the Jewish Home [party], will be against it.” Indeed, Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett, an outspoken opponent of a Palestinian state who advocates Israeli annexation of more than 60% of the West Bank, followed up Danon’s remarks by saying that the two-state solution is dead and “We need to build, build, build.”
Netanyahu tried to distance himself from the comments, but most understood that Danon and Bennett were simply being straightforward about the Israeli government’s makeup and direction. Indeed, it was telling that, just a few days before Kerry was due to arrive for his latest visit, Netanyahu attended the dedication of a school named after his father in the West Bank settlement of Barkan. While his aides insisted that Netanyahu did not mean to make a political statement with his appearance, his words at the school say otherwise. “The most important thing is to deepen our roots, because all the rest grows from there,” Netanyahu said. “We are here today to deepen our roots.”
The Palestinian Authority has responded to all of this by pointing out that Israel is acting against the two-state solution. “Every time Kerry comes, [Netanyahu] does something to undermine the possibility of a Palestinian state,” said Palestinian lead negotiator, Saeb Erekat. “It’s more than provocative, it’s devastating. This government’s policies are disastrous for Palestinians, Israelis and the region. I don’t know what purpose it serves to undermine the two-state solution.”
Yet the Palestinians continue to be divided, and not just between Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. Rockets launched from Gaza Sunday night are believed to have been fired by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza. The act was reported to have been undertaken to spite Hamas, which had killed an Islamic Jihad operative while ostensibly arresting him.
The continuing divisions, especially the constantly sputtering reunification process between Hamas and Fatah is yet another reason why the two-state solution as previously conceived is, in fact, inconceivable now, no matter how much wishful thinking Kerry engages in. While indications remain that both Israelis and Palestinians support the creation of a Palestinian state, the positive answers to that abstract question may not even reflect the scope of public opinion.
In December 2012, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research asked Palestinians about the two-state solution. The majority supporting the proposal was still there, though it was down to only 52%. But when asked about a demilitarized state, only 28% supported that idea, while a robust 71% opposed it. This can hardly be surprising. After all, a Palestinian state would not only be neighboring the country that has occupied it for 46 years, but there is also the flux in which the neighboring countries — Syria, Jordan, Egypt — find themselves today. If a threat did materialize against a fledgling Palestinian state, it is hard to imagine that Israel would put its soldiers in jeopardy to defend the neighbors they regard as untrustworthy and frankly, distasteful.
But such a state is a sine qua non for Israel, and not only for reluctant “peacemakers” like Netanyahu. A demilitarized Palestinian state was clearly the vision of Netanyahu’s predecessors, to the extent they would agree to a Palestinian state at all. And, in Israeli political discourse, the so-called peace camp — including such parties as Labor, Yesh Atid, Kadima and even the most left-wing Zionist party, Meretz — is unanimous in calling for a demilitarized state.
It is said that this is Kerry’s last-ditch effort. If the Israelis and Palestinians move no closer on this trip, Kerry is prepared to abandon his shuttle diplomacy to focus his efforts on issues that may prove more malleable. The Israelis would certainly like to see negotiations resume, as this takes pressure off of Israel in the international arena, especially with Europe. This explains why Naftali Bennett, who is so hostile to peace with the Palestinians, states that he would not “veto” talks.
But political realities dictate something very different. Bennett, and indeed Netanyahu, may want to see talks resume, but they do not want them concluded with a Palestinian state. The Palestinians themselves cannot present a united front; the Palestinian Authority does not represent all of the population nor do its positions align with any but a small minority of the Palestinian people. And the United States is not prepared to insist on results. That is why so many say the two-state solution is dead. Kerry should learn the obvious lesson and either re-think his policy approach or, as he is threatening, turn his attention elsewhere.
Photo: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before their working dinner in Jerusalem on March 23, 2013. [State Department Photo/Public Domain]
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