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.
]]>
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 Marsha B. Cohen
Reuven Rivlin has just been elected Israel’s 10th president. A member of Israel’s parliamentary body since 1988, he served as Speaker of the Knesset from 2003-06 and again from 2009-13. Today, Israel’s parliamentarians, by secret ballot, elected him to a 7-year term after two rounds of voting.
A native [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
Reuven Rivlin has just been elected Israel’s 10th president. A member of Israel’s parliamentary body since 1988, he served as Speaker of the Knesset from 2003-06 and again from 2009-13. Today, Israel’s parliamentarians, by secret ballot, elected him to a 7-year term after two rounds of voting.
A native born Israeli who speaks fluent Arabic, Rivlin (known as “Rubi” or “Ruvi”) comes from a family that claims 50,000 members worldwide, 35,000 of whom live in Israel. Rivlin’s father, Yosef Yoel Rivlin, was a scholar of Semitic languages who translated the Qur’an and One Thousand and One Nights into Hebrew. His cousin, Lilly Rivlin, who spent most of her life in the U.S., is a progressive writer and film maker. Her 2006 film, “Can You Hear Me?: Israeli and Palestinian Women Fight For Peace,” documented the joint activist efforts of Israeli and Palestinian women.
There are many paradoxes in the views of this right-wing Likudnik — hardly known outside of Israel — that explain why some of the most progressive Israelis respect him and believe he will be a suitable nonpartisan representative of the State of Israel in his largely ceremonial role as president.
1. Rivlin believes in democracy, free speech and political pluralism. He has vehemently opposed the witch hunts targeting progressive Israeli organizations, and resisted demands by right-wing politicians that the activities of left-leaning human rights groups in Israel be halted and outlawed. According to Dimi Reider of the progressive Israeli news site, +972:
As Speaker, Rivlin’s commitment to parliamentary democracy (and democracy in general) saw him turn time and again against his own party and its allies, stalling most of the anti-democratic legislation pushed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud and Lieberman’s Israel Beitenu, while at the same time trying to instruct his fellow right-wing legislators about the dangers of nationalist populism.
“Woe betide the Jewish democratic state that turns freedom of expression into a civil offense,” Rivlin wrote in an article slamming the Boycott Law passed by the Knesset in 2011. The legislation prohibited advocating any sort of boycott of Israeli products or institutions — economic, cultural, or educational — and made any person or entity proposing an Israel-related boycott subject to prosecution and liable for paying compensation, regardless of any actual loss or damage. Left-wing Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy praised Rivlin’s courageous stance, berating the reputedly “dovish” Shimon Peres who defeated Rivlin’s 2007 presidency bid:
Rivlin has been revealed as Israel’s honorary president; Peres, as its shameful one. The man from the right wing dared do what the man supposedly from the left did not. In the test of courage and honesty, the highest test of any elected official, Rivlin defeated Peres by a resounding knock-out.
(Earlier this year, in mid-February, Israel’s High Court considered a petition seeking to overturn the Boycott Law, but did not issue a ruling.)
2. Rivlin has consistently condemned the anti-Arab racism pervading Israeli society. He was incensed after learning that Arab construction workers on the Knesset grounds had red Xs painted on their protective helmets to distinguish them from foreign workers, and insisted on the immediate removal of the distinguishing marks. “We cannot allow the use of any markings that could be seen as a differentiation between people on the basis of race, ethnicity and religion,” he declared.
Rivlin has castigated the race-baiting and Islamophobia exhibited by supporters of the Beitar soccer team and the team’s discrimination against Muslim players. “Imagine the outcry if groups in England or Germany said that Jews could not play for them,” he said. He has also opposed proposals for the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem by radical Jewish settlers and condemned “price tag” attacks. In September 2013, Rivlin criticized the election slogan “Judaize Jerusalem” of the far-right United Jerusalem list, calling it a “disgrace” and “incitement,” and called for an investigation over whether the slogan constituted a criminal offense.
3. Rivlin opposes making civic and political rights for Israeli Arabs (or, as many prefer to be known, “Palestinian citizens of Israel”) contingent upon their serving in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). ”These calls are populist at best and carry a tone of incitement at worst,” he declared. At the same time, Rivlin endorsed civilian service projects that would help alleviate the high unemployment rate among young Arab men and improve the quality of life in their own communities. “I believe that the creation of a civil service layout within the Arab sector is a step that could benefit the Arab sector and the Israeli society at large. The Arab sector needs manpower and young volunteers can support that cause,” he said.
4. An unabashed proponent of the one state solution, Rivlin advocates giving full Israeli civil and political rights to West Bank Palestinians in a single-state scenario. Most Israeli liberals and hardliners alike oppose any one-state solution that would make Palestinians Israeli citizens. They complain that Rivlin’s stance would create a situation in which Israel could not be both Jewish and democratic. That’s because allowed to vote, Arabs would would eventually outnumber Jews and Israel could no longer be a “Jewish state.” To prevent this, most liberals still advocate a two-state solution, while right-wing hardliners want to expel as many Arabs as possible from the West Bank and Gaza while depriving those who remain of Israeli citizenship. Nevertheless, the notion that a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may no longer be viable is gaining traction on Israel’s progressive left.
5. Rivlin has pledged to Arab citizens of “green line” Israel that they won’t be forced to become part of a Palestinian state in the event of a “land swap” deal that exchanges Israeli Arab cities and towns for Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank. In 2009, Rivlin infuriated Israeli hardliners when he made his first official visit as Knesset Speaker to the Arab town of Umm al-Fahm, Israel’s second-largest Arab municipality in “green line” Israel. Rivlin assured the town’s residents they would not be subjected to “ethnic cleansing.”
6. Rivlin defended the rights of Arab Knesset members when parliamentarians from his own party and others were determined to take them away. In 2010, he joined prominent civil libertarians in objecting to Knesset Member (MK) Hanin Zouabi being stripped of her parliamentary privileges. As punishment for her involvement in the Gaza flotilla’s attempt to break the Israeli boycott of Gaza, MKs voted to strip her of her right to leave the country, take away her diplomatic passport, and deny her legal fee payments, refusing to allow Zouabi to say anything in her own defense. “Let her speak!” roared Rivlin at the shrieking MKs. Although disagreeing with Zouabi’s stance, Rivlin upheld her right to defend herself, stating, “I believe that everyone should have the right to speak their minds, even if what they say hurts me.” (In 2008, Rivlin had also opposed – and temporarily thwarted — taking away the pension of MK Azmi Bishara of the Arab Balad party, who fled Israel when he was charged with treason. Rivlin argued that until Bishara was convicted of a crime, his pension was untouchable.)
Before today’s election, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the hawkish, Russian-dominated Yisrael Beiteinu party, stated he would not support Rivlin because of his opposition to creating committees for investigating human rights organizations, and Rivlin’s defense of Arab parliamentarians’ rights.
7. Rivlin disapproves of Netanyahu’s ongoing criticism of the negotiations between world powers and Iran over its nuclear program. “We must not contradict the United States regarding the deal with Iran,” Rivlin wrote in a post to his Facebook page. “A conflict with the United States is against Israel’s vital interests.”
8. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did everything he could to prevent Rivlin’s election. After preventing the re-election of Rivlin as Knesset Speaker last year, Netanyahu tried to thwart Rivlin’s ascent to the presidency by frantically searching for a viable alternative candidate; proposing the outright abolition of the position of Israel’s president; and trying to postpone the presidential election. In a 2010 interview Rivlin had criticized Netanyahu’s leadership style:
“[Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s worldview states that ‘the majority can do anything, that the leader can demand whatever he wishes of those who entered the Knesset because of him and he can force his opinion on them.’ That is something that can greatly harm democracy and lower the Knesset’s standing to rock bottom.”
9. Rivlin has attracted both respect and support from members of Israeli opposition parties. MK Ilan Gilon of the Meretz party declared he would be supporting Rivlin while other Meretz members took an anyone-but-Rivlin stance. Even before the withdrawal of long-time Labor party stalwart Benjamin Eliezer from the presidential race due to financial impropriety investigations, Labor MK Shelley Yachimovich announced she would be crossing party lines to vote for Rivlin because he was “the most appropriate and suitable candidate for the position.” Her words of praise did not stop there:
He is an exemplary democrat, honest and uncorrupted, modest in his personal manner and statesman-like in his conceptions and public conduct. One doesn’t have to speculate on how he will behave as president. Even as someone from the right-wing, whose opinions are often the opposite of mine, he passed the test, standing like a solid rock in defense of democracy.”
Photo Credit: J-Street.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
On May 24, an unidentified shooter opened fire at the Jewish museum in Brussels, killing four people. Two of the victims were Israelis, and the other two remain unidentified, other than being described as a volunteer and an employee of the museum, respectively.
Nothing is really known yet [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
On May 24, an unidentified shooter opened fire at the Jewish museum in Brussels, killing four people. Two of the victims were Israelis, and the other two remain unidentified, other than being described as a volunteer and an employee of the museum, respectively.
Nothing is really known yet about the identity or motive of the shooter. A video of the incident offers very little in terms of defining the ethnicity of the murderer. But never fear, because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman know very well who is responsible.
Almost immediately after the attack in Brussels was reported, Netanyahu stated that it was “… the result of constant incitement against Jews and their state. Slander and lies against the State of Israel continue to be heard on European soil even as the crimes against humanity and acts of murder being perpetrated in our region are systematically ignored.”
Lieberman, who has his eye on the prime minister’s office, followed up by saying that “…activity termed ‘pro-Palestinian,’ activity that once again, just like in those dark days, calls for the boycott of ‘Jewish goods,’ and aggressively targets the only democracy in the Middle East, is nothing but anti-Semitic.”
Lieberman, as is his wont, stated bluntly what Netanyahu merely implied: the shootings were caused by support for Palestinians, and, indeed, opposition to the settlements. If you engage in such activity, you are killing Jews.
That may seem like an extreme reading, but examine Lieberman’s words in particular. He does not merely critique boycotts, but everything labeled “pro-Palestinian activity.” In targeting “the boycott of ‘Jewish goods’” Lieberman, himself a settler, intentionally fails to differentiate between calls for boycotts of all things Israeli and the increasing European practice of clearly identifying products from the settlements. This would have the effect of excluding settlement products from European programs to minimize export barriers for Israeli products, as well as letting consumers decide if they wish to purchase such products.
Being realistic, it is certainly possible that support for the Palestinian cause was at the root of this attack. But that is only one of many possibilities, and thus far, there is no particular indication that this possibility is stronger than any other. Belgium Interior Minister Joelle Milquet has not yet officially termed this an anti-Semitic attack, but he did say “there are strong grounds for presuming so.”
Of course that is true. An attack at a Muslim institution, a feminist office building, a multicultural center, or a LGBT center would and should all carry the same presumption. But the shameless, cynical and, quite frankly insulting use that Israel’s current leadership puts anti-Semitism to defies logic, or even the most basic justification.
Indeed, on one level, the Bibi-Yvet (the Israeli nicknames for Netanyahu and Lieberman) response to the Brussels murders contains a hint of desperation. The mammoth, pioneering study on global anti-Semitism, carried out by the Anti-Defamation League, and seized upon by Netanyahu (as was surely the report’s intent), was met with a great deal of skepticism, rather than the supportive outrage Netanyahu and the report’s authors had hoped. Here was an opportunity to capitalize on a real hate crime.
At this writing, though, three days have passed and there has been no public sign that the investigation has gotten very far. The murders were clearly well-prepared for and the murderer, whatever his motive, knew what he was doing. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that we will never know what prompted him to act, or who he truly is. Already, more and more fanciful theories are being bandied about in the media. But, surely more distressing to all concerned, the coverage is already starting to fade.
If this attack was indeed related to Israel’s occupation, it’s only more important to reject the notion that pro-Palestinian “incitement” is the root cause. No matter the motive, this crime was the worst kind of murderous act, targeting innocent civilians in a most cowardly fashion. No Palestinian I know would think this any less heinous than anyone else. And I know plenty of the so-called “inciters,” Palestinian and otherwise.
The very term “incitement,” which has been sheepishly adopted by the United States and sometimes also European governments, is being rendered meaningless by Israeli propaganda efforts. Every Nakba memorial, every Palestinian act affirming their own connection to the land or recalling the injustice visited upon them by Zionism is called incitement. There are certainly examples of bigoted, false and threatening statements in Palestinian media. But the same kind of statements are also issued by the Israeli government and certain Israeli media, as Yizhar Be’er, head of the Israeli media watchdog Keshev points out. But “incitement” has now become just another buzzword, meant to frighten people, to enhance Israeli propaganda efforts painting Israel as the eternal victim, and to cow critics into silence.
Maybe the attack in Brussels had something to do with the Israel-Palestine conflict. Maybe it was connected to the burgeoning populist right in so much of Europe. To me, the latter explanation seems more likely as tensions between the Jewish Belgian and Muslim immigrant Belgian communities are very low, while there is a growing and well-organized fascist/racist white supremacist fringe in Belgium that is very focused on anti-Semitism. But we simply don’t know yet. What we do know is that the attempt by Netanyahu and Lieberman to turn this tragedy into anti-Palestinian propaganda is morally repugnant. It’s up to sensible people to make it politically unviable as well.
Photo: A still from security camera footage of the man who shot four people on Saturday at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.
]]>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 Marsha B. Cohen
Israeli academics have recently provided a case study of how Israel and Iran may say and do much the same thing, but Iran alone will be criticized for it.
In their latest Iran Pulse piece, headlined “Iran and the Ukraine Crisis,” Prof. Meir Litvak, head of Tel Aviv University’s [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
Israeli academics have recently provided a case study of how Israel and Iran may say and do much the same thing, but Iran alone will be criticized for it.
In their latest Iran Pulse piece, headlined “Iran and the Ukraine Crisis,” Prof. Meir Litvak, head of Tel Aviv University’s Alliance Center for Iranian Studies, and MA student Michelle Tabariai write, “As the crisis in the Ukraine unfolded since January 2014, Iran’s official position was cautious and seemingly neutral.”
Of course, the Israeli government was also uncharacteristically quiet about the crisis in Ukraine, and has been almost silent about Russia’s takeover of Crimea. Only under pressure from Secretary of State John Kerry did the Israeli government issue its first and only official statement about the Russian incursion into Crimea on March 5 that was terse and subdued. “Israel is following developments in Ukraine with great concern for the well-being of all its citizens, and hopes the situation does not deteriorate to the point of loss of life,” said a statement released by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s office. “Israel expects the crisis in Ukraine to be solved diplomatically and peacefully.”
“We have good and trusting relations with the Americans and the Russians, and our experience has been very positive with both sides,” Lieberman then told Israel’s Channel 9 TV. “So I don’t understand the idea that Israel has to get mired in this.”
Former Mossad Director Ephraim Halevy observes that “Israel’s most articulate spokespersons have sentenced themselves to complete silence over the issue, and this discipline is being kept in an unusually meticulous manner by the senior and less senior commentators in the Israeli media.”
The Iran Pulse analysis points out:
Iran did not participate in the UN General Assembly vote on March 27, which reaffirmed Ukraine’s territorial integrity and declared the Crimean referendum invalid. While seeking to preserve its alliance with Russia, it might have been wary of Russia’s unilateral measures in the Crimea.
Iran was indeed among two dozen states that did not vote in favor of the measure. So was Israel. Neither showed up for the vote.
Another excerpt from the Tel Aviv University critique:
…From the beginning of the protests in Kiev in January, the Iranian media adopted the Russian narrative, which described the movement as a product of Western plot.
Surprisingly, Litvak and Tabariai never mention Iranian rumors that Israeli operatives were involved in the ousting of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich in what appears to have been a rather curious game of propaganda poker between Israeli and Iranian press. On Feb. 16 Press TV cited unidentified Ukrainian sources who claimed a former Israeli army officer was “playing a leading role in the anti-government protests in the former Soviet Republic.” This unnamed Israeli was supposedly commanding 20 Ukrainian militants, and four other Israelis, who had served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and “were recently reported to have taken part in opposition rallies in Ukraine’s capital, Kiev.” The Press TV report also claimed that “Ukrainian media said an Israeli tycoon provides financial support to the opposition in Ukraine, adding that Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency is one of the instigators of the unrest in the country.”
A week and a half later, Haaretz and The Times of Israel both published a Jewish Telegraphic Agency interview with “Delta,” a skull-cap wearing commander of a brigade he called the “Blue Helmets of Maidan,” which was fighting in the streets of Kiev. The pseudonymous “Delta” explained he’d been born in Ukraine, emigrated to Israel during the 1990s and served in the Israel Defense Forces. He returned to Ukraine several years ago and joined the protesters in November. He had been using his IDF acquired skills “to rise through the ranks of Kiev’s street fighters,” including “several fellow IDF veterans” engaging “in violent clashes with government forces.” Completing the circle, Press TV picked up the story on Mar. 1: “According to reports published by Haaretz and the Times of Israel on Friday, an Israeli army veteran identified as ‘Delta’ headed a street-fighting unit in Kiev.” There was no apparent glimmer of recognition that Press TV itself might have published the news that triggered the interview with “Delta.”
Write Litvak and Tabariai:
…Fars News, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, denounced the ousting of the president Viktor Yanukovych on February 22 as a “neo-Nazi-spearheaded coup” The new Ukraine, it warned, was governed by some ten “oligarchs” who were buying up media outlets and politicians, while the vast majority of the population will face a bleak future, which will include more European-demanded “austerity” (Fars, Mar. 16, 2014).
There has been no shortage of concerns expressed in the Israeli media about the widespread presence of neo-Nazis in Svoboda, the largest party in the Ukrainian opposition that brought down Yanukovych, or an equal number challenging such a claim. Israel’s official position is silence.
Mention “oligarchs” and Israelis get very nervous. A disproportionate percentage of both Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs are Jewish. Several fund the various Jewish organizations and foundations operating in Ukraine and Russia. One of them, the founder of what once was the Yukos oil empire, Mikhail Khordokovsky — once Russia’s richest man who lost the bulk of his wealth and spent a decade in prison due to his political rival, Vladimir Putin – joined the Ukrainian protestors in March, calling for the Russian people to overthrow Putin. A Ukrainian Jewish business tycoon, Vadim Rabinovich, recently announced his candidacy for president of Ukraine in the May elections. Rabinovich, founder of the All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress, is the owner and co-founder of Jewish News One and co-chair of the European Jewish Parliament. These developments, along with the calls from members of the US Congress, who are among Israel’s most energetic supporters, to arm Ukraine and sanction prominent Russian oligarchs are putting Israel in a very awkward position.
The Iran Pulse report notes that Iranian reformist media outlets “showed greater concern from a renewed outbreak of the Cold War and the repercussions of Russian use of force,” while hardliners focused more on the significance of the American failure vis-à-vis Russia”:
The reformist Sharq maintained that Russian military presence in the Crimea reveals the vulnerability and fragility of the international community in ensuring global security…(Sharq, March 3, 2014). Conversely, the conservative Khorasan asked rhetorically why Putin should respect international law while others fail to do so?…(Khorasan, March 3, 2014)
…More important, however, was the unanimous conclusion of the Iranian media that Western reactions to Russia’s measures exposed the weakness of the Western bloc and particularly the US’ declining power. Kayhan noted with satisfaction that “Putin’s agile reaction paralyzed Western response,” adding that “Western preference for economic sanctions and NATO’s contentment with issuing statements rather than acting against Russia’s military action show that the West is in a passive mode” (Kayhan, March 6, 2014).
On this point, right-wing Israelis have the most in common with their Iranian counterparts. Writing in the Sheldon Adelson-owned daily, Israel Today, Haim Shine argues for Israeli self-reliance, broadly hinting that the lesson of Ukraine for Israel is to never give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for pathetic promises of American protection.
Israel’s citizens know from their experience during the run-up to the Six-Day War what the Ukrainians are learning now — you cannot rely on Western nations. Treaties, agreements, promises and worthy guarantees are as flimsy as garlic skins just when you need them. The West is tired and weary. Its last strength rests on its lips alone…So how could Israel, in light of the circumstances, relinquish the very foundations of its security?!
This seems to be the predominant perspective in Israel, according to a head-shaking and somewhat dispirited opinion piece headlined “Israel Striking Obama, Rooting for Putin” by former Mossad head Ephraim Halevy in Y-Net on March 28:
Israel is not limiting its mocking criticism against Washington and its Middle Eastern policy: While Russia is described as a resolved, brave country engaging in a smart, shrewd and winning policy — the US is presented as hesitant, afraid, powerless, and therefore defeated.
The US president must envy his Russian rival for the respect he receives in Israel as opposed to the daily dose of scorn and alienation served to our “ally” time and again.
The Iranians can take pleasure in seeing America’s ally declare on a daily basis with hysterical cries of despair that Washington is going from bad to worse.
At least Iranian and Israeli hardliners can agree on something…
Photo: Delta, the nom de guerre of the Jewish commander of a Ukrainian street-fighting unit, is pictured in Kiev in late February 2014.
]]>