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
The saga of the three kidnapped Israeli youths in the West Bank took a tragic, if expected, turn today, when their bodies were discovered near Hebron. None but the most starry-eyed optimist thought the young men would be found alive after all this time. But the story is [...]]]>
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Mitchell PlitnickThe saga of the three kidnapped Israeli youths in the West Bank took a tragic, if expected, turn today, when their bodies were discovered near Hebron. None but the most starry-eyed optimist thought the young men would be found alive after all this time. But the story is far from over.
Even before the announcement was made that the bodies were found, clashes were reported between Israeli forces and Palestinians in the town of Halhul, where the grisly discovery was made. A massive Israel Defense Forces (IDF) presence was reported, roads were closed and the area was generally closed down. The Israeli security cabinet is meeting at this writing to decide on further measures.
The only thing that seems certain right now about the Israeli response is that it will be unjust and have nothing to do with addressing the terrible crime that has just been confirmed. For the moment, at least, it appears that the perpetrators, Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Aisha, are beyond the reach of Israel. Since Israel cannot punish those who so profoundly deserve punishment, they will punish those that they can. This, sadly, is the calculus of occupation. There is already violence reported by residents of Hebron. Some might see justice in that, but ask yourself how you would feel if your son, brother or father – or just a neighbor— was a murderer and you were the one who had to pay for their crime.
There is still no evidence that the two killers, who were apparently members of Hamas, did not act alone. Nonetheless, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that he will hold Hamas responsible and has repeatedly called on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to sever the unity government that he only recently forged with Hamas. Now, Netanyahu has declared, in a meeting of Israel’s security cabinet that “Hamas is responsible and Hamas will pay.”
What might that mean? Well, earlier, some members of Netanyahu’s Likud party described the response they wanted to see.
Danny Danon, the Deputy Defense Minister said “This tragic ending must also be the ending of Hamas! The nation is strong and ready to absorb [attacks] for the sake of a mortal blow against Hamas. … [W]e have to destroy the homes of Hamas activists, wipe out their arsenals everywhere, and stop the flow of money that directly or indirectly keeps terror alive… make the entire Palestinian leadership pay a heavy price.”
For Danon, it is not even enough that Hamas pay for this, but the Palestinian Authority as well. Yet there remains no evidence Hamas, as an organization had anything to do with this. The Shin Bet, Israel’s intelligence service, issued a very telling statement about the murders: “Following intensive operational intelligence work by the Shin Bet, less than 24 hours after the kidnapping it became evident that two Hamas activists, Marwan Qawasmeh and Amar Abu Aisha, are those behind the kidnapping of the three teens.” No mention made of Hamas’ involvement; merely that the two men were members. If Bibi really has anything connecting Hamas to this crime, he’s keeping it inexplicably secret.
No matter to the outspoken Tzipi Hotovely of Likud, who said, “The despicable kidnapping and murder of the students cannot go by in silence, and those responsible in Gaza must pay the price. The government of Israel must declare a war to the death on Hamas, which is responsible for the murders, and return to the policy of [targeted] assassination.” Like Danon, Hotovely expresses no concern about the Israeli lives this will put at risk, much less those of innocent Palestinians. Nor do they care about the consequences of such actions.
One might think that these Likud members might have some interest in actually tracking down the murderers. But no, they’d prefer to cynically use this despicable crime to further a political agenda of the worst kind—one that legitimizes intense violence that will mean a far greater loss of innocent life. In this, they are joined by their fellow travelers of the American right wing. The extreme pro-occupation forces took to Twitter even before Netanyahu made his announcement to politicize and distort these events.
Whatever the two killers were thinking, their monstrous crime will yield no positive results for anyone. The PA is crippled, quite likely permanently, by its response to the initial kidnapping. Hamas has been devastated in the West Bank by the Israeli response, leaving it unable to take advantage of any political opening that might be created. The people of the West Bank will see a major crackdown, and Israel will surely follow the call of Housing Minister Uri Ariel for more settlements to be built in response. Gaza will be hit by more missiles. The only victors might be the most radical elements in the Occupied Territories, the ones Hamas has been in conflict with in Gaza and who have generally laid very low in the West Bank.
There seems to be little interest in capturing the perpetrators of the crime, and a great eagerness to make Hamas in particular and the Palestinians in general suffer for this outrage. And I’m sure that is just what will happen. The question will then become how Hamas, Islamic Jihad and even the PA will respond.
Will they attempt to hit Israel back with more attacks on civilians? If they do, we may well have witnessed the beginning of a third intifada. Will they make a mere show of firing a few rockets that land harmlessly as most do? If they do that, there may be a backlash of rage that strengthen the more radical groups in the Territories. There are ISIS- and al-Qaeda-like groups there, which have seen little support among the Palestinian people, but this could change if the existing groups are seen as doing nothing in the face of Israeli aggression.
Whatever the outcome, the episode demonstrates yet again the futility of acts of violence. No one will gain from any of this, even if they think they will. And lost in it all, the murder of three young men, a heinous crime which everyone condemns, while everyone who gets hurt on both sides will have had nothing to do with it.
This article was first published by LobeLog and was reprinted here with permission. Follow LobeLog on Twitter and like us on Facebook
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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
In part one of this piece, I began sketching the picture that emerges from the words of U.S. diplomats to an Israeli reporter. There’s more here, and the image is one of the United States as the party ultimately responsible for the failure of not only this [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
In part one of this piece, I began sketching the picture that emerges from the words of U.S. diplomats to an Israeli reporter. There’s more here, and the image is one of the United States as the party ultimately responsible for the failure of not only this round of peace talks, but also the previous rounds. I’ll resume here by completing the analysis of what was reported in YNet.
On the Israeli demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a “Jewish state,” the group of anonymous U.S. diplomats told Israeli reporter Nahum Barnea:
We couldn’t understand why it bothered him [Mahmoud Abbas] so much. For us, the Americans, the Jewish identity of Israel is obvious. …The more Israel hardened its demands, the more the Palestinian refusal deepened. Israel made this into a huge deal — a position that wouldn’t change under any circumstances. The Palestinians came to the conclusion that Israel was pulling a nasty trick on them. They suspected there was an effort to get from them approval of the Zionist narrative.
Seeing this in print truly shocked me. There were three objections to this idea from the Palestinians. Those where there all along, yet the U.S. speakers seem aware of only one of them: the validation of the Zionist narrative over the Palestinian narrative. The other two objections were that such recognition (unprecedented in international relations, one hastens to add, and something that Israel demands only from the Palestinians and no one else) would necessarily give a Palestinian stamp of approval to discrimination against non-Jews in Israel, most of whom are Palestinian; and that it would, by definition, preclude the question of the return of Palestinian refugees, a matter Abbas may be resigned to, but which he wants to deal with in negotiations in the hope that some redress for the refugees can be settled upon.
For these reasons, the recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state” is a major red line for Abbas. It was so when the issue was first mentioned by Ehud Olmert years ago, and has been true for all the time Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been talking about it. This is no secret, everyone on all sides knows what the issue is and why it is controversial. Everyone, that is, except the U.S. team assigned to mediating these talks.
The U.S. reveals a level of incompetence here that is staggering. It’s true that many cynics like myself have long claimed that U.S. diplomats cannot be helpful in Israel-Palestine because they are much more concerned about keeping Israel happy than pressing for the politically difficult choices that must be made for any agreement, and/or they just don’t understand what’s going on. But even for us, this interview adds a new dimension: the U.S. team is not only way out of their depth in dealing with Israel, they apparently have no idea that this is even the case. That combination of ignorance, enormous hubris and basic incompetence is the only explanation for the way these people are speaking about the collapse of the peace talks, which went exactly as most observers, across the spectrum, said they would go.
Ultimately, this picture forces the question: just what do we expect the Israeli government to do? Even if the Israeli leadership was more moderate, do we expect them to take huge political risks simply out of the goodness of their hearts, or because of threats that remain theoretical?
Why, I wonder, do we expect Israel to behave differently than any other government? There is a serious imbalance of power between Israel, a stable country with functioning political systems, a relatively well-to-do economy, and by far the strongest military in the Middle East, and the Palestinians, who have no infrastructure, no government, an economy barely sustained by international aid and no means of self-defense.
That means that Israel, like any other powerful entity, yields nothing without a demand. And that demand cannot merely be spoken, nor can it be based on abstract notions of justice and peace. Those principles move people to create the pressure that leads to change, but values like peace and justice do not cause governments to change their policies in and of themselves.
The Netanyahu government is the most stable leadership Israel has had in decades. Netanyahu himself has spent more time in the prime minister’s office than any Israeli leader except for David Ben-Gurion. He’s not there because he is a peacenik. Do we expect him to act in direct violation of the wishes of his constituency, especially when most Israelis, while supportive of a two-state solution in the abstract, have repeatedly demonstrated, in polls and at the voting booth, that they are not willing to risk or sacrifice much for that peace?
Do we truly expect Netanyahu or any other Israeli leader to take steps that most Israelis believe, rightly or not, will put lives at risk, and that will, inevitably, create unprecedented political turmoil in the country? Do we expect Netanyahu, just out of a sense of morality, to take a step that will mean the loss of some significant water supplies for Israel and that, given the shifting nature of the Arab world today, may or may not really lead to regional peace? One can fathom Israel taking that risk, but only if there is a compelling reason. There isn’t one right now.
Israel does not fear that its ongoing occupation will brand it as an “apartheid state”; in many people’s eyes, it already is one. And international opprobrium may have manifested in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, but to date, that campaign has not done any harm to the Israeli economy. Maybe one day it will, but right now, BDS is not pressuring Israel to change. While international anger over Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians has caused a few financial institutions to pull away, capital is still flowing in on the whole. And most of Europe joins with the United States in maintaining strong business ties to Israel. All of these conditions might change, and when/if they do, that might constitute real incentive for Israel to change its approach. That is surely the hope of the BDS movemet. But right now, Israel is not feeling that pressure and does not expect to feel it in the near term. Its sometimes hysterical reaction to BDS is carried out on the level of a propaganda war, not as a strategic political issue.
However, Israel is concerned about the Palestinians dragging their leaders to the International Criminal Court (ICC). So they are preparing their defenses, and they will respond to the Palestinians with harsh measures if they try. Again, at this point, all this is potential, and not actual pressure. If the ICC actually attempts to try Israeli leaders for war crimes, this may change Israel’s thinking, but that is a long way off, and still depends on the Palestinians actually deciding to go that route, though recent developments do make it seem more likely that the Palestinians will do so.
What about this possibility, raised by one of Barnea’s contacts?
There’s great potential for deterioration here, which could end with the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority. Israeli soldiers will have to administer the lives of 2.5 million Palestinians, to their mothers’ chagrin. The donating countries will stop paying up, and the bill of $3 billion a year will have to be paid by your Finance Ministry.
That’s a possibility, but here’s another one: the PA collapses, Israel is forced to assume control and the cost, and Netanyahu, or his successor, appeals to Capitol Hill to help defray the costs by restarting the program of economic aid to Israel that was discontinued in 2008, and even expanding it significantly, as would be necessary, since economic aid to Israel was always much smaller than military. The argument will be couched in supporting our good friend, Israel, and also that paying Israel is the only way to maintain stability without having to put U.S. boots on the ground. There are various ways the U.S. could help defray these costs, and, again, Israel does not fear the Palestinians turning their cause into one for civil rights within Israel. They believe — again rightly or not – that there is enough support around the world for a Jewish state and that, when push comes to shove, this will supersede concern for Palestinian rights.
These factors come together to eliminate any perceived pressure on Israel to compromise. This, more than anything else, is what the United States fails to understand. Ultimately, the U.S. got almost everything wrong in this latest effort, to such an extent as it made their predecessors seem well-informed. But what is most important is this: if you’re not prepared to create the pressure that is required for Israel to make concessions and deal with the fights, in Jerusalem and in Washington, that this will involve, then don’t bother even starting such a process.
Obama seemed to understand this at the beginning of his first term. He tried to pressure Israel into a settlement freeze. But he underestimated the forces that would oppose him, and when he failed, he essentially pulled back. But then he let Secretary of State John Kerry convince him that his personal rapport with the Israelis would make a difference. He was as wrong as you could be. And the result is a politically emboldened Netanyahu and great despair in the Occupied Territories.
And if Israeli policy is so entrenched, U.S. policy seems all the more so in light of Kerry’s humble but dogged effort to make a change in the U.S. approach. The United States has been embarrassed here, and this was one of the most costly episodes, in terms of U.S. credibility, in this conflict where U.S. support for Israel while pretending to be an “honest broker” has been draining U.S. credibility for decades.
Yet despite that, no one expects anything to change in Washington. One last quote from Barnea’s interlocutors: “The boycott and the Palestinian application to international organizations are medium-range problems. America will help, but there’s no guarantee its support will be enough.”
So, if we had any doubt about what comes next, that little tidbit dispels them. Yes, Obama is fed up with Israel, and Kerry is frustrated. Both men are well aware that Netanyahu has repeatedly made the U.S. looked foolish. Kerry has been personally and directly insulted by several Israeli officials just in recent months. But the U.S. will still shield Israel as much as it possibly can.
So when Obama says he’s taking a time out, many have read that as him throwing up his hands and saying “Fine, Israel and the Palestinians can just fight this out themselves.” But that’s not what will happen. Diplomacy may stop, but the $3 billion a year of military aid will continue. So will diplomatic support at the United Nations, where the U.S. will continue to veto every significant UN Security Council resolution that tries to promote an end to occupation. And the U.S. will continue to act as Israel’s advocate in the UN General Assembly, with the Europeans, with Arab states…with the world. In the end, stepping back from this shuttle diplomacy is just another way for the U.S. to make matters worse.
Maybe out of the ashes of this embarrassment something better will rise. But that will only happen if the United States and every other outside player finally learns the lesson of why all these efforts keep failing. The initial indication, as Barnea kindly informs us, is not promising.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
On May 2 Israel’s most widely read newspaper, Yediot Ahoronot, published an article that blows the lid off the failure of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s attempt to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict. Nahum Barnea, one of Israel’s best-known reporters, got several U.S. officials who were involved with [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
On May 2 Israel’s most widely read newspaper, Yediot Ahoronot, published an article that blows the lid off the failure of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s attempt to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict. Nahum Barnea, one of Israel’s best-known reporters, got several U.S. officials who were involved with the talks to open up to him, anonymously, about what happened.
Barnea says that the version the U.S. officials present “… is fundamentally different to (sic) the one presented by Israeli officials.” The implication from Barnea, and the way most will read the U.S. revelations, is that Israel was the main party at fault. But a more sober and critical reading of what these officials say paints a different picture than the ones that the Israeli government, Barnea, or most of the initial reactions do.
In fact, what comes out is that Israel was not the primary culprit here. As has long been the case, the main reason for the failure of talks was — and is — the United States.
Combining amazing ignorance not only of the Palestinians but also of Israel and its politics, with a hint of anti-Semitism and a contemptuous attitude toward the Palestinians, tossing in some willful blindness to the realities on the ground and in the offices of politicians, the United States initiated a process that put the final nail in the two-state solution as it has been understood for years. Some, myself included, might consider that a good thing, as it enables the re-thinking of all the options, including other ways to conceive of two states (which I favor), as well as one state ideas. But the way this event has evolved has strengthened hard-liners in Israel, made the U.S. Congress even more myopic in its blind support for Israel and made it less likely that there will ever be a negotiated, rather than a violent, resolution to this conflict. In any case, this latest episode has likely kicked any resolution even farther into the future than it already was.
The U.S. failure goes well beyond the usual absurdity of the global superpower pretending to act as an honest broker in a conflict that involves an ally whose relationship with the U.S. is routinely described as “unshakeable” and is a regional superpower involved in a forty-seven year occupation of a completely powerless people. The U.S. culpability for this failure comes through in almost every response the anonymous diplomats make to Barnea’s questions. An examination of those responses and their implications is warranted.
The very first statement, in response to Barnea asking if the talks were doomed from the outset, would be shocking in its implication of incompetence if this wasn’t par for the U.S. course for the past twenty years. One of the anonymous diplomats says: “We didn’t realize Netanyahu was using the announcements of tenders for settlement construction as a way to ensure the survival of his own government. We didn’t realize continuing construction allowed ministers in his government to very effectively sabotage the success of the talks.”
How could they not realize this? Not for the last time in this article, one thinks they must be lying about their ignorance, but then, if they were going to lie, why would they make themselves look so stupid? You’d be hard-pressed to find a thoughtful analysis of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies that doesn’t touch on this issue. Certainly one cannot read the Israeli press, across the political spectrum, and be unaware that settlement expansion was a key demand from much of Netanyahu’s coalition, including his own party. The idea that the U.S. negotiating team had such a paucity of knowledge, much less understanding, of their ally renders any U.S. involvement moot at best and destructive at worst, given its role as superpower patron and ostensible broker of negotiations. In the best of circumstances, a mediator cannot have a positive effect if she is this ignorant of either party to a dispute, let alone one they are so close to.
It gets better. The diplomats go on to say: “Only now, after talks blew up, did we learn that (settlement expansion) is also about expropriating land on a large scale. That does not reconcile with the agreement.” One is tempted to think the diplomat is lying here. It isn’t possible that they could have been unaware of the many statements made by Israeli leaders from Likud, HaBayit HaYehudi and other parties about annexing pieces of land. It is equally hard to believe that the U.S. has been deaf for years to the many cases brought up by oppositional Israeli groups regarding land appropriation.
Many of those groups, such as Peace Now and the human rights group, B’Tselem have a presence in Washington and regularly meet with State Department officials, as I can attest from first-hand experience. There has been no shortage of Israelis telling the U.S. that this was about land expropriation, whether through reports from the peace camp or pronouncements from the right-wing. But then one stops and again, has to ask, if they were lying, why would they make up a lie that shows the U.S. to be this incompetent and ignorant?
When asked why they pushed for these talks, one of the diplomats said, “Kerry thought of the future — he believed, and still does, that if the two sides can’t reach an accord, Israel is going to be in a lot worse shape than it is today.”
Now, granted, this was an interview with an Israeli reporter, but this sort of remark is still indicative of the U.S. bias. All this time the Palestinians have been living under occupation, without civil rights, seeing homes demolished, water taken, enduring settler attacks, and all the other inevitable hardships of military occupation. While one can understand the political necessity of doing this “for Israel,” the real imperative here is that millions of people under Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip live without the basic rights most of us in the West take for granted. If remedying that, whether Israel likes it or not, doesn’t underlie your efforts, at least behind closed doors, you will inevitably fail. When there is no credible military threat in the region — and there has not been for many years despite Netanyahu’s frequent histrionics — the incentive for Israel to reach an agreement simply can’t be as great as it is for the Palestinians.
I mentioned above that the anonymous diplomats hinted at some anti-Semitism as well as contempt for Palestinians. The contempt for Palestinians has been evident throughout the process. The United States has long ignored the very significant concessions Palestinians have made over the years, and President Barack Obama and Kerry have been no different. On top of acknowledging that Israel would have control of 78% of what had been Palestine under the British Mandate before 1948 and repeatedly recognizing Israel without any reciprocal recognition by Israel (in Oslo, Israel merely recognized the PLO as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people), one of the interviewees noted:
[The Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Mahmoud Abbas] agreed to a demilitarized state; he agreed to the border outline so 80 percent of settlers would continue living in Israeli territory; he agreed for Israel to keep security sensitive areas for five years, and then the United States would take over. He also agreed that the Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem would remain under Israeli sovereignty, and agreed that the return of Palestinians to Israel would depend on Israeli willingness. ‘Israel won’t be flooded with refugees,’ he promised. He told us: ‘Tell me if there’s another Arab leader that would have agreed to what I agreed to.’
And then there’s the attitude the U.S. officials anonymously express toward Jews: “The Jewish people are supposed to be smart; it is true that they’re also considered a stubborn nation. You’re supposed to know how to read the map: In the 21st century, the world will not keep tolerating the Israeli occupation. The occupation threatens Israel’s status in the world and threatens Israel as a Jewish state.”
I see! We Jews are smart and stubborn. So Israel has acted this way because it has a Jewish-majority population and is run almost entirely by Jews and, well, we Jews just can’t help ourselves because the stubbornness of ours stomps outdoes our superior intelligence. With this sort of thinking, is it any wonder the U.S. can’t grasp the basics of Israeli or Palestinian politics let alone their intricacies?
There’s also a scary bit of ignorance evident in the statement that “The Oslo Accords were Netanyahu’s creation.” Whatever else might be said about how Netanyahu gamed the Oslo Accords, he certainly didn’t create them. Indeed, he was so vocal in his opposition to them that many still hold him partially responsible for inciting the murder of Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister who did, actually, sign the Accords.
But ignorance of history is not nearly as bad as complete cluelessness about the present. Barnea asked his interlocutors about Abbas’ stance in the latter stages of the process, and they said he had named three conditions absolutely required for continuing talks: Israel must agree to the outlining of borders as the first topic of discussion within a three-month deadline; Israel must agree to establish a timeline for evacuation of whatever settlers need to be evacuated; and East Jerusalem, whatever its borders, must be the capital of Palestine. All of those are necessary pieces of a framework for talks, but Israel flatly refused all of them.
When Barnea pointed out that agreeing to any of these would have meant the collapse of the Netanyahu government, here is how the U.S. officials responded: “We couldn’t confront the two sides with the painful solutions that were required of them. The Israelis didn’t have to face the possibility of splitting Jerusalem into two capitals; they didn’t have to deal with the meaning of a full withdrawal and the end of the occupation.” So then, can someone explain just what this was all about? If the U.S. is too timid to even broach with Israel the topics of sharing Jerusalem and ending the occupation, what is there to talk about?
More to the point, writers in newspapers all around the world, including many who clearly sided with Israel, have speculated on the inevitability of Netanyahu’s government falling if he reached an agreement with the Palestinians. Indeed, since 2011, both leaders of the Labor Party, the Israeli opposition’s largest party, Shelly Yachimovich and Isaac Herzog, have openly declared that they would join Netanyahu’s government to save his premiership for the sake of a peace agreement, as has the Meretz Party. One can speculate about whether that would have sufficed to save Bibi, or discuss how uninterested Netanyahu has always seemed to be in such an option. But, apparently, the U.S. delegation was not even aware of these considerations. It never occurred to Barnea’s interlocutors to discuss what could have kept a peace deal afloat and Netanyahu in office, even though such thinking appeared in countless media pieces in Israel, the U.S. and Europe. The only reasonable conclusion is that this entire line of thought never came up in State Department planning. If so, how could these talks have possibly succeeded, without some plan to save Netanyahu if they could get him to sign on the dotted line?
All of this begins to build the case that it is Israel that is acting according to its own interests as perceived by its leaders, while the U.S. is screwing up what diplomacy can possibly take hold here through its fecklessness, ignorance and simple incompetence. In part two of this piece, I will sum up this case and explain why Obama’s “time out” will not change the situation or exonerate the United States.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
The collapse of the U.S.-led talks between Israel and the Palestinians is now complete. In the wake of the latest deal between the Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, Israel has terminated the talks. The United States, true to its form, is backing the Israeli position. In so doing, [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
The collapse of the U.S.-led talks between Israel and the Palestinians is now complete. In the wake of the latest deal between the Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, Israel has terminated the talks. The United States, true to its form, is backing the Israeli position. In so doing, we see yet another demonstration of why the so-called peace process, as it has been constructed for two decades, cannot possibly lead to a resolution of this long and vexing conflict.
U.S. angered and confused
As far as the U.S. position goes, one need look no further than the statement made by State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki. “It is hard to see how Israel will negotiate with a government that does not recognize its right to exist,” said Psaki yesterday. “The Palestinian reconciliation deal raises concerns and could complicate the efforts to extend peace talks.”
Well, as it turns out, it led to the suspension, at least for now, of the U.S. effort to extend the talks, an effort that any U.S. citizen, whatever their politics, should find embarrassing. But let’s examine that statement. Why, one wonders, would Psaki find it so “hard to see” how an Israeli government could negotiate with an unified Palestinian one? It is not Hamas Israel would be negotiating with, for a start, but a representative Palestinian Authority (PA). Indeed, one of Israel’s chief complaints has long been that even if they struck a deal with PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, it might not hold since he does not represent all of the Palestinian body politic as does Benjamin Netanyahu for the Israeli one.
More to the point, even if this deal represented a new and unified Palestinian government (which it does not, as I shall explain below), why must the parties involved in it all recognize Israel’s right to exist? After all, the current Israeli majority coalition includes two major parties — Likud and HaBayit HaYehudi — that explicitly reject the creation of a Palestinian state. In fact, unlike the Palestinians who would continue to be represented by Abbas, the Israeli Prime Minister belongs to one of those parties. Why does Psaki find it so easy to see how a Palestinian leadership could negotiate with such an Israeli government while finding it so hard to see how Israel could negotiate with a far milder version of the Palestinian side?
Beyond this, the real issue for the United States, from what I’ve been told, is that the Palestinians took the U.S. by surprise with this move. They seem to understand that this hasn’t really changed Abbas’ approach to talks, but they also know that it will complicate any further efforts at diplomacy because Congress has already made it clear, through years of legislation, that any government that includes Hamas will not be welcome.
Have the Palestinians finally moved away from dependence on the U.S.?
The deal that Hamas and Fatah signed may actually be different from the previous reconciliation deals, but the test of that will be in the one area the other two failed in: implementation. This deal is mostly an agreement to implement the previous agreements. There has never been any movement on those previous deals, so is there reason to expect there will be now?
Maybe there is. The previous deals were struck with Hamas leaders in exile, not the ones running what there is for them to run in the Gaza Strip. That always presented a serious impediment to implementation. This one was agreed to in Gaza itself, with the Gaza leadership. That might make a difference, but only if there is a genuine desire on both sides to implement it. Even then, Israel can certainly act to block any meaningful elections, which the agreement foresees in six months.
The timing of the agreement is certainly intentional. It is a response to Netanyahu’s ultimatum to the Palestinians to choose between more talks with Israel and reconciliation with Hamas. It is also a message to the United States. What that message is depends on where Abbas goes from here. If he moves to set up a technocrat, caretaker government pending elections, then he is probably planning to shift away from dependence on the United States. If, on the other hand, the agreement flounders like the prior ones, then Abbas is hoping that this move will, in relatively short order, prod the Obama administration to press Netanyahu for a settlement freeze. If that is the case, it is both a desperate and vain maneuver.
Israel’s reaction
The Netanyahu government reacted as one would expect, by cancelling the talks between Israel and the Palestinians. This means little, as the deadline for these talks was a mere six days away. Notably, however, Netanyahu’s attempt to frame the incident as Abbas choosing the “terrorist Hamas” over peace talks with Israel hasn’t been very successful yet. Despite U.S. fecklessness, its rebuke of Abbas fell well short of what Bibi wanted while the European Union openly welcomed the possibility of Palestinian reconciliation and urged the resumption of talks.
Netanyahu won’t change his tune, and, although the U.S. Congress has not yet chimed in, it is a sure bet that there will, in due course, be a bipartisan parade of congressional lawmakers supporting Netanyahu’s position that the Palestinians cannot be both unified and a party to negotiations. This, unsurprisingly, stands in contrast to much of the Israeli opposition. That the left-wing Meretz party condemned Netanyahu’s termination of talks was unsurprising, but the more confrontational tone of the centrist Labor Party was not certain until it happened.
Labor’s stance means there will be at least some pressure within Israel to re-engage in talks. Yet, in reality, little has changed. These talks were dead in the water anyway. The United States is irritated with Netanyahu’s brazen disinterest in any progress, and now they’re even more irritated with the Palestinians for trying to stir up the pot and make something happen. But, as always, it is only the Palestinian side that faces any substantive consequences from Washington.
And on the Palestinian side? Well, there is some potential for change here, but it will be a while before we know whether Abbas plans to take advantage of it. If he is not sincere about following through with this agreement, Hamas will never be party to such talks again until Abbas is out of power. At 79 years of age, Abbas may not be in power much longer in any case. And if he doesn’t follow through, aid from the West will continue unabated, the talks will remain in limbo and the status quo, including settlement expansion, will hold until something else breaks it.
But if Abbas does pursue implementation of this agreement, there will be some tough times ahead. Congress will cut off funds to the PA and Abbas will have to count on more revenue from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. EU funding is likely to continue, but to whom will the money go? Israel will probably hold the taxes that it is required to hand over to the Palestinians, but only until the PA appears on the brink of collapse, at which point they will release it. But the disruption will add to the economic decline the West Bank is experiencing, which will get worse if they have to depend on Saudi outlays rather than U.S. ones. The Saudis have a well-earned reputation among Palestinians for pledging a lot more aid than they deliver.
The PA may well collapse under this weight. Whether it does, or does not, if Abbas pursues reconciliation with Hamas, he will have to also bring his case for Palestinian freedom to the United Nations with all the tools at his disposal and forget the lost hope he placed in the United States. In the short-term, this will mean even more hardship for Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza as Israel will certainly take reprisal actions. But in the long run, it is their last, best hope for ending the occupation.
]]>After a lovefest in Israel with French President Francois Hollande from Sunday to Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took a shower, packed his suitcase and headed for Moscow, ostensibly to lobby against Russian support for a deal with Iran. He met with Vladimir Putin, held a joint [...]]]>
After a lovefest in Israel with French President Francois Hollande from Sunday to Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took a shower, packed his suitcase and headed for Moscow, ostensibly to lobby against Russian support for a deal with Iran. He met with Vladimir Putin, held a joint press conference with the Russian president, and returned home the same day with little to show for his trouble.
Russia has been providing the weapons that support the Assad regime, and that Israel bombed last week to keep them from getting to Hezbollah. Russia has backed Iran’s claims that its nuclear program is peaceful. Did Netanyahu really think he could change two decades of Russian foreign policy on Iran with a few more hours of haranguing?
“Russia and China were the ones that, until now, did not take action to increase sanctions,” complained Justice Minister Tzipi Livni to Israel Radio. “Therefore it is hard for me to see how, suddenly today, they could be the ones to demand that the world be firmer with the Iranians.”
Most interesting–and revealing–about Netanyahu’s trip to Russia is that he himself made it, and not Israel’s Russia-born foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman. Lieberman heads Israel’s Yisrael Beiteinu (“Israel is our home”) party–composed largely of Russian emigrants to Israel. Cleared of corruption charges two weeks ago, Lieberman was reinstated as foreign minister on Nov. 11.
During his tenure as foreign minister before the 10- month hiatus that ended a little over a week ago, Lieberman has publicly contradicted Israel’s stated foreign policy positions. During an official visit to China in March 2012, Lieberman declared in a speech that received no coverage in the U.S. press and hardly any in Israel: “If, God forbid, a war with Iran breaks out, it will be a nightmare. And we will all be in it, including the Persian Gulf countries and Saudi Arabia. No one will remain unscathed.”
Lieberman’s 2009 suggestion that Israel should continue to fight Hamas “just like the United States did with the Japanese in World War II” was widely understood to be an allusion to the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons. Lieberman infuriated Netanyahu, other cabinet ministers and coalition members, as well as opposition leaders, and took the U.S. by surprise,when, in a speech before the UN in 2010, he derided the prospects of a comprehensive peace agreement with the Palestinians as “unrealistic.”
However much he may aggravate Netanyahu, Lieberman is popular because he says aloud what many Israelis feel and many Israeli politicians actually believe. Lieberman’s version of a two-state solution with the Palestinians includes exchanging predominantly Arab towns and villages within “green line” Israel for the major West Bank settlement blocs. Lieberman has called for assassinating the leaders of the Hamas movement in Gaza (something which already has widespread support in theory and practice).
Not surprisingly, Lieberman’s return to the post of Foreign Minister last week was greeted with outrage by the governing coalition’s left-wing opposition and by Arab parties. Meretz chairwoman Zahava Gal-On compared Lieberman’s appointment to head the Foreign Ministry to “planting a bomb in the diplomatic process” that would “further worsen Israel’s poor relations with its allies and its situation in the international community.” Knesset member Jamal Zahalka of the Arab Balad party recommended that Palestinians break off negotiations in response to Lieberman’s reappointment, and MK Ahmed Tibi of the United Arab List-Ta’al opined that Lieberman’s restoration to his post was entirely appropriate for “a government where everyone competes over who will be more fanatic.”
So why did Netanyahu restore Lieberman, whose popularity threatens his own, to such a powerful post? Without Yisrael Beiteinu, which merged with Netanyahu’s Likud party in October 2012 in an effort to revive it, Likud would have been relegated to a relatively minor party in the January 2013 election. Together, the two parties garnered a total of only 31 seats in Israel’s 120-member Knesset (parliament), not the 45-50 seats political pundits had anticipated, and far fewer than they had gotten separately in 2009, when Likud by itself won Knesset 27 seats and Yisrael Beiteinu 15. Votes were diverted to two “young guns” on Israel’s political scene–the ideologically flexible Yesh Atid (“There is a Future”) party and Habayit Heyudai (Jewish Home), an ultra-hawkish right-wing religious nationalist party. Both are demanding more power within the government coalition in keeping with their relative representation in the Knesset.
Without Lieberman, Netanyahu would not have a governing coalition and might be forced to call new elections. As it is, Yisrael Beiteinu is scheduled to meet and discuss the possibility of a divorce from Likud on Nov. 24. There is considerable speculation that Lieberman aspires to the premiership in the not too distant future.
It could be a real game changer for members of both House of the U.S. Congress, Democrats and Republicans, who are deferential, even obsequious toward Netanyahu were the silver-haired, silver-tongued Likud leader to be replaced with a former night-club bouncer with a thick Russian accent who says Israel doesn’t need the U.S. and can find allies elsewhere. In a speech on Nov. 20, Lieberman downplayed the role of the U.S. as Israel’s foremost sponsor: “For many years Israel’s foreign policy was one directional towards Washington, but my policy has many more directions.”
Not European countries, whose foreign policies he would expect to lean against Israel on account of their relatively small Jewish minorities and relatively large Muslim populations. Nor the Gulf Arabs. Instead, according to Lieberman, it would be “countries that don’t need financial assistance and aren’t beholden to the Arab world,” countries that would support Israel out of their own cold and pragmatic interests in gaining access to Israeli high tech innovations, not out of altruism. The most likely candidates for Israel’s New Best Friends: China and Russia.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu, in Russia, not only demonstrated that Israel doesn’t need the U.S. just as well as Avigdor Lieberman could have, but he did it on Lieberman’s native turf. Netanyahu’s Russia visit can be viewed as a pre-emptive strike–not against Iran, but rather against Netanyahu’s frenemy within: the once and future kingmaker, and perhaps even prime minister, Avigdor Lieberman.
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by Jim Lobe
Anyone who has followed the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) knows it’s a neoconservative organization whose central purpose since its founding in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 has less to do with democracy than with promoting the views of Israel as defined, in particular, by [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
Anyone who has followed the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) knows it’s a neoconservative organization whose central purpose since its founding in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 has less to do with democracy than with promoting the views of Israel as defined, in particular, by Bibi Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party. It is no wonder that Sheldon Adelson, who casually called this week for the nuking of Tehran if Iran doesn’t abandon its nuclear program, provided the group with more than $1.5 million in donations between 2008 and 2011, as we reported yesterday.
Now, it just so happened that was in the news this week on another front: Jofi Joseph, the White House staffer who worked on the proliferation file on the National Security Council and who was outed as the tweeter known as @NatSecWonk, served as a fellow at FDD in 2011. Here’s how the New York Times first reported his association and characterized FDD:
According to Mr. Joseph’s biography on the Web site of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a neoconservative group where he was a fellow for 2011, “between his stints on Capitol Hill, Jofi was a senior consultant with a professional services firm, facilitating strategic planning and policy analysis for the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts on critical infrastructure protection.” (Emphasis added.)
The succeeding paragraph named FDD associates, including John Hannah, former national security adviser to Dick Cheney, House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (whose SuperPac, incidentally, received at least $5 million from Adelson in the last election cycle), Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, and Gary Bauer, the Christian Zionist leader who serves on the boards of the Christians United for Israel and the Emergency Committee for Israel — all neoconservatives.
One day later, the Times published a follow-up article on Joseph, but this time, the characterization of FDD changed rather remarkably. Here’s the new paragraph:
In 2011, Mr. Joseph also held a national security fellowship with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, which has a generally conservative bent. “Clearly, he had risen up through the Democratic ranks,” said Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of the foundation, where fellowships are designed for “young and upcoming national security people in D.C.” of all views, Mr. Dubowitz said.
Well, all one can say is that the Times nailed it on the first go-round, but really blew it the second time. What does “a generally conservative bent” mean when attached to an organization whose principal purpose is the advocacy of the Likud Party’s foreign-policy views in the U.S.? I understand “generally conservative” as meaning someone like Brent Scowcroft or Robert Gates. Moreover, “neoconservative” as a description of FDD is not only accurate, it’s also very concise in contrast to “has a generally conservative bent,” which is quite vague and verbose in a way that newspapers try to avoid.
We can, of course, speculate as to why the change occurred. It could have been the decision of a copy editor who may have felt uncomfortable with “neoconservative” and thought that “generally conservative” sounded better. Or it could’ve been that Dubowitz strongly objected to the word “neoconservative” attached to his organization because it has taken on a rather pejorative meaning in popular parlance due to the critical role the neoconservatives played in promoting the Iraq war (which FDD actively promoted from the “get-go” after 9/11, running a TV ad produced by a former Israeli Embassy press official, for example, that suggested that Yasser Arafat, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were all part of the same threat.)
Indeed, I suspect that’s one very good reason why some readily identifiable neoconservatives who featured so prominently in promoting the Iraq war — people like Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, and Doug Feith — have been keeping such a low profile on Iran over the past year. They’re the ones who gave neocons a bad name, while Dubowitz wasn’t even on the scene back then.
]]>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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