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If there’s one myth the recent election should definitively lay to rest (but undoubtedly won’t), it’s that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is “hardline” or “right-wing.”
In truth, his stated positions have long been to the left of those espoused by the Left’s idol, Yitzhak Rabin. For instance, Netanyahu endorses a Palestinian state; Rabin envisioned an “entity which is less than a state.” Netanyahu also imposed Israel’s first-ever freeze on settlement construction in 2009; Rabin vowed “not to hinder building for natural growth” in the settlements.
Simple math similarly refutes the “right-wing” label. Writing in the Times of Israel before the election, Gil Reich aptly compared the world’s distorted view of Israel’s political map to the famous New Yorker’s map of the world, with a huge New York and a tiny rest of the globe (his accompanying graphic makes the point better than words can). In Israel’s case, the “right wing” is deemed to encompass well over half the Jewish public; the remaining minority is then arbitrarily divided into “center” and “center-left” (in the international media’s parlance, there is no Israeli “left wing”).
Yet even after the election’s vaunted “shift to the center,” Netanyahu remains smack in the middle of the Israeli electorate. What the media terms the “right-wing” bloc (comprising Likud Yisrael Beiteinu, Bayit Yehudi, Shas and United Torah Judaism) won 61 of the Knesset’s 120 seats in the last election. Since Netanyahu is generally considered to represent his own slate’s left flank, that puts him exactly in the center of the total electorate – with 59 MKs to his left and 60 to his right – and slightly left of center among the Jewish electorate’s 109 MKs.
Moreover, from 40 to 50 percent of voters for the 19-seat party to his immediate left – Yair Lapid’s “centrist” Yesh Atid – define themselves as leaning right politically. So about nine seats to Netanyahu’s left also consider themselves part of the media’s “right-wing bloc.”
In short, the media has arbitrarily redefined the entire center of Israel’s political map as “right-wing” – with such success that Israelis have even adopted this terminology to define themselves, producing the bizarre spectacle of voters to the left of the electoral midpoint describing themselves as “rightist.” But in real life, the center of the map is still the center. And that’s where Netanyahu is.
Reich correctly noted that the media’s definition is both self-referential and self-serving. It’s self-referential because journalists arbitrarily define “center” not as the actual center of the map, but as where they think the center should be (most likely, he suggested, wherever would make them slightly left of center). It’s self-serving because it’s meant to further their own political goals: Since most voters don’t want to be “right-wing extremists,” this definition could nudge them leftward; additionally, portraying Israeli leaders as right-wing extremists unrepresentative of the “mainstream” (i.e. the left) makes it easier for foreign leaders and pundits to pressure them “while declaring support for the real Israel.”
Ironically, this tactic seems to have backfired on the first front: Instead, it’s made people like Lapid’s eminently centrist voters unashamed to call themselves “rightists,” by convincing them that diplomatic positions they view as sane and mainstream are actually “right-wing.” That’s one reason the “right” keeps winning elections.
But it undoubtedly has worked on the second front: Much of the world – including many Diaspora Jews – really believes Netanyahu is a “hardline right-winger” heading a “hardline right-wing” government.
Indeed, this narrative is so entrenched that the world simply ignored one of the most salient facts about the election – the fact that, for the second election in a row, Netanyahu managed over the course of his campaign to drive several seats worth of voters from Likud to parties on its right. That constitutes the third reason why terming him “right-wing” is ridiculous: Anyone who was actually “right-wing,” or even moderately right of center, wouldn’t be so clueless about how genuine right-of-center voters think and feel.
In the 2009 election, polls taken immediately after the Likud primary showed Likud winning 36 seats. Two months later, on Election Day, it won 27. Almost all the lost seats went to parties on its right. The reason was simple: While the primary generally rewarded opponents of the disengagement from Gaza and punished supporters, Netanyahu, in a disgracefully anti-democratic move, retroactively reordered his slate’s reserved slots to partially reverse these results and make the slate more “centrist.” Right-of-center voters, who applauded the original slate, responded by deserting in droves. As one friend said at the time, “How can I vote for someone who’s made it so clear that he doesn’t want people like me in his party?”
But rather than learning from this mistake, Netanyahu repeated it during the latest campaign. Granted, he refrained from tampering with the slate. But he relentlessly attacked the main party to his right, Bayit Yehudi, as “extremist” and “sexist,” and even threatened to exclude it from his government after party leader Naftali Bennett said that if ordered to evacuate settlers during army reserve duty, he would ask his commander to exempt him.
For right-of-center voters – who generally don’t consider themselves either “extremist” or “sexist,” and believe one should feel anguish over evicting fellow Jews from their homes even if, like me, you oppose disobeying orders (which Bennett never actually advocated; requesting an exemption isn’t the same as disobeying an order) – the message was once again clear: Netanyahu still didn’t want them in his party. And they reacted accordingly: From a height of 39 seats in the polls just after Likud’s primary, Netanyahu’s slate fell to 31 on Election Day. Many of these lost votes went to Bayit Yehudi, which won 12 seats, up from five in the last Knesset (three of its own plus two from the half of National Union that merged with it this election).
In short, Netanyahu isn’t right-wing by any conceivable standard: not in his positions, not in his location on Israel’s political map, and not in his gut instincts. Yet he’s nevertheless maligned worldwide as a “hardline right-winger” – all because the media refuse to let the facts interfere with their self-serving story.
The writer is a journalist and commentator.
In a word, no.
First, though both his own party and the larger bloc he heads lost seats to parties on their left, Netanyahu will remain prime minister. And his views haven’t changed.
Second, he didn’t just win on a technicality. Though voters arguably did repudiate his domestic policies, they actually backed his foreign and defense policies overwhelmingly.
A striking pre-election poll commissioned by the anti-Netanyahu daily Haaretz asked voters which party leader they most trusted to handle various issues. On diplomatic negotiations, an area where many non-Israelis deem him an unmitigated failure, Netanyahu beat his rivals by a margin of more than 2 to 1. On security, his margin of preference was more than 4 to 1 – a tribute to the last four remarkably peaceful years despite the chaos engulfing Israel’s northern and southern neighbors.
As a result, parties that directly opposed Netanyahu’s foreign and defense policies actually fared miserably. Only three even tried to do so: Meretz and Tzipi Livni’s new Hatnuah assailed him for the impasse in Israeli-Palestinian talks, while Kadima challenged him on Iran. Together, they won a mere 14 seats in the 120-seat Knesset.
In contrast, the election’s biggest gainer, Yair Lapid’s new Yesh Atid party, which, with 19 seats, will be the Knesset’s second largest party, campaigned on foreign policy positions virtually indistinguishable from that of Netanyahu. Lapid gave his major foreign-policy address in the settlement of Ariel to emphasize his insistence on retaining West Bank settlement blocs and termed a united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty an “iron rule.”
But precisely because Netanyahu’s reelection was never in doubt – in one pre-election poll, fully 81 percent of respondents said they expected him to be the next premier – Israelis felt free to abandon their traditional preoccupation with foreign and security matters and vote instead on domestic issues. Thus, parties that campaigned mainly on those issues made substantial gains at the expense of parties like Netanyahu’s own Likud, which campaigned mainly on foreign and defense policy.
In part, this was a protest against the neglect of some real domestic problems by Netanyahu’s outgoing government, which devoted most of its energy to foreign affairs and defense. But it was also a tactical vote (as I explain in detail here). Voters opted for parties that would join Netanyahu’s coalition and pressure him from within to enact needed domestic reforms.
So will anything change? Lapid, who is expected to be Netanyahu’s main coalition partner, has said his party will not join a government that does not restart Israeli-Palestinian talks. But the Palestinians still refuse to negotiate unless Israel agrees in advance to base the border on the 1967 lines and freezes all Israeli construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem – preconditions that are not only unacceptable to Netanyahu, but also irreconcilable with Lapid’s campaign pledges. And while Lapid actually expressed more dovish views in the past, Yesh Atid members say he is very aware that 40 percent to 50 percent of his voters define themselves as leaning right diplomatically, and he does not want to alienate them by veering sharply left. Nor does he want to quit the government before accomplishing any of his promised domestic reforms. Therefore, even if Lapid is a major influence in the new government, it is hard to see anything changing on this front unless the Palestinians miraculously drop their preconditions.
The bigger wild card is Iran. The new government will have a huge number of ministers who have never even served in the Knesset before, much less in the cabinet. This includes all Yesh Atid ministers, most of those from Naftali Bennett’s rightist Jewish Home party (the Knesset’s third-largest, with 12 seats, and almost certainly another key coalition partner), and some from Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu, which ran a joint slate with Likud.
Since these new ministers have never seen the classified intelligence on either Iran’s nuclear program or Israel’s military capabilities – both of which are obviously necessary for an informed decision on military action against Iran – they themselves probably do not know how they would vote should such a decision become necessary.
Nor do their general political leanings offer any clues, since Iran is not an issue that divides along traditional Israeli left-right lines: There are diehard leftists on the Palestinian issue who would support attacking Iran, and unabashed rightists who declare the idea moronic.
Most pundits expect the new cabinet to be more dovish on Iran, since Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who led the hawkish line together with Netanyahu, will likely be leaving. But having just explained why all predictions on this issue are highly speculative, I will go out on a limb and predict the opposite. Here is why:
First, the one consistent thread uniting all Iran hawks is the Holocaust: It is invariably cited by proponents of an attack as the ultimate proof that when people say they intend to annihilate the Jews (or in this case, the Jewish state), they sometimes really mean it, and must therefore be prevented at all costs from acquiring the means to carry out their plans. People for whom this lesson remains vivid are much more likely to support attacking Iran if all else fails. And for Lapid, the child of a Holocaust survivor, I suspect it is very vivid.
Second, with Lieberman standing trial and therefore barred from the cabinet, his number two, Yair Shamir, will become the top cabinet minister from Netanyahu’s other main coalition partner, Yisrael Beiteinu. Shamir routinely cites his father, former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, as his role model on foreign and defense policy. And the elder Shamir strongly supported the Begin Doctrine, which held that Israel, for the reason cited above, must always prevent its enemies from acquiring nuclear weapons.
So, while Israel’s election could portend major changes on the domestic front, little is likely to change on foreign and defense policy. After all, elections do have consequences. And on these issues, Israelis voted decisively for continuity.
This weekend, a NATO member threatened to attack one of America’s major non-NATO allies–and nobody in Washington even appears to have noticed. According to the Turkish daily Hurriyet, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu lambasted Israel’s reported airstrike on an arms convoy inside Syria and warned that “Turkey would not stay unresponsive to an Israeli attack against any Muslim country.” He also lambasted Syrian President Bashar Assad for failing to launch retaliatory strikes against Israel himself and charged that Assad must have “made a secret deal with Israel.”
Granted, Turkey isn’t really going to attack Israel, nor is Assad likely to do so in response to Davutoglu’s taunts–which is why most Western media outlets, even had they noticed the story, would have dismissed it as non-newsworthy. But they’d be wrong. The failure to report this constant drumbeat of anti-Israel incitement–not just in Turkey, but also in other countries–may be the biggest single reason why so many Americans, including senior policy-makers, consistently misread the Middle East.
Consider, for instance, what Davutoglu actually told his countrymen via the press briefing quoted in Hurriyet. First, he told them Israel is the kind of criminal state that attacks other Muslim countries for no good reason: He didn’t bother mentioning that the reported target was a convoy ferrying sophisticated weaponry to Hezbollah, a terrorist organization openly dedicated to Israel’s eradication. Second, he told them Israel is the kind of criminal state that makes secret deals with Assad, a leader who has slaughtered over 60,000 of his own citizens. Nor is this unusual: Officials from the ruling AKP party produce a constant stream of anti-Israel (and anti-Jewish) incitement. Indeed, as we know from WikiLeaks, even former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey James Jeffrey concluded that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan “simply hates Israel.”
Ignorance of this incitement has real consequences for U.S. policy. For instance, the Obama administration wasted copious amounts of time, energy and diplomatic capital in trying to effect a Turkish-Israeli reconciliation after Israel’s botched raid on a Turkish-sponsored flotilla to Gaza in May 2010. In reality, Erdogan never wanted a reconciliation; for him, the flotilla was a golden opportunity to downgrade ties with a country he loathed. Hence he rejected every Israel offer of apology and compensation; he also rejected the conclusions of the UN inquiry Washington orchestrated in an attempt to satisfy him. To anyone aware of the nonstop anti-Israel incitement Erdogan and his colleagues had been spouting for years, this outcome would have been predictable. But because American officials weren’t, they wasted valuable diplomatic resources that could have been better spent elsewhere.
Far more important, however, is that many U.S. policymakers still consider Turkey a reliable ally with common interests–and are then dismayed when it doesn’t act accordingly. For instance, Washington recently asked Turkey to intervene on its behalf should Syria use chemical weapons; Turkey agreed to accept the U.S.-donated equipment but refused to actually promise to take action.
Yet in fact, America has very little in common with a country that threatens to attack Cyprus (as well as Israel), extols a leader wanted by the International Criminal Court for genocide, propagates the “Jews control the media” stereotype, and so forth. And most Americans would probably recognize this, if they knew the facts. But they don’t, and never will–because the media has decided that such details aren’t newsworthy.
The UN Human Rights Council yesterday released a predictable report deeming Israeli settlements–including huge Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem–a “war crime” and demanding the evacuation of all their hundreds of thousands of residents, thereby throwing every Israeli-Palestinian peace plan ever proposed out the window: All such plans envision Israel retaining parts of East Jerusalem and the settlement blocs. The report would thus seem unhelpful to the “peace process” that Western governments so ardently support. But it’s arousing far less ire among these governments than Israel’s refusal to cooperate with the HRC’s Universal Periodic Review process, under which every country’s human rights record is supposed to be scrutinized every four years. As U.S. ambassador to the council Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe explained, “The United States is absolutely, fully behind the Universal Periodic Review, and we do not want to see the mechanism in any way harmed.”
Yet as Professor Anne Bayefsky pointed out, it’s immensely hypocritical to insist on universality of obligations without universality of rights. And in two important ways, Israel doesn’t enjoy the same rights at the HRC as every other country does. First, it’s the only country whose alleged human-rights abuses are a permanent agenda item: The council has one agenda item for Israel, and one for all the other 192 UN member states. Second, it’s the only country that isn’t a full member of any regional working group. Bayefsky therefore proposed a simple quid pro quo: Israel should promise to uphold the universality of the review process the moment the council upholds the universality of Israel’s rights as a member state.
If Israel’s leaders had any diplomatic smarts, they would long since have adopted this strategy. But Israel’s stupidity doesn’t excuse the hypocrisy of the Western governments that are pressuring it to comply with the universal review while making no effort to end these other distortions. By insisting that the council’s violations of Israel’s rights produce no corresponding reduction in Israel’s obligations toward the council, they are essentially saying it’s perfectly fine to deny Israel the rights enjoyed by every other UN member: After all, in other spheres of life, these governments do think that denial of rights reduces obligations. Just for example, does anyone remember “no taxation without representation”?
In short, Western governments are implicitly endorsing the council’s anti-Israel bias even as they publicly claim to oppose it. In fact, they even actively collaborate in it: After all, one of these two distortions–full membership in a regional working group–is in their power to rectify; nobody is stopping them from making Israel a full member of the Western working group.
That’s also why the claim that Israel’s refusal could serve as a precedent for egregious rights violators like North Korea or Zimbabwe is so ridiculous: Unlike Israel, none of these countries are denied the universal rights granted all other UN members states; hence they have no grounds for refusing to honor their obligations.
But since the council has agreed to postpone Israel’s review to allow time for a rethink, Western governments still have a chance to do the right thing: insist that the council’s systemic denial of Israel’s rights come to an end. Once that happens, I’m sure they’ll have no trouble getting Israel to comply with its obligations.
I’ve always been deeply suspicious of the fly-by-night parties that spring up periodically, last for one or two Knessets and then disappear. Few have done anything constructive, and some have even done harm.
I’m especially suspicious when these parties are vanity vehicles for some well-known figure who wants to parachute into politics at the top without first learning the ropes. Politics is a profession like any other, with skills that must be mastered; ignorance of these skills is the main reason why most such parachutists have proven dismal failures. So I wasn’t thrilled when last week’s election elevated the head of our latest vanity vehicle to one of the most influential figures in Israeli politics.
But so far, I’ve been pleasantly surprised. If Yair Lapid can manage to continue as he’s begun, he could end up doing the country real good.
The first pleasant surprise was how quickly he quashed the nonsensical idea of a “blocking majority” to keep Binyamin Netanyahu from remaining prime minister. He thereby proved that his stunning electoral success hasn’t intoxicated him to the point of losing touch with reality – unlike, say, Tzipi Livni in 2009, who was still proclaiming herself the rightful premier even as Netanyahu was being sworn in.
Lapid obviously knew the initial 60-60 split (out of 120 Knesset seats) between what the media inaccurately terms the “right” and “center-left” blocs might disappear once the soldiers’ votes were counted (as indeed happened; the final result gave the “right” a 61-59 advantage). But had that been his main concern, he could simply have postponed any announcement until the final count was announced last Thursday. Instead, he called a press conference Wednesday night – when a 60-60 split still seemed possible – and definitively scotched the idea, declaring, “The results of the elections are clear. We have to work with those results.”
In other words, Lapid remembered what Livni forgot in 2009: It doesn’t matter how many votes any individual party received; what matters is whether it can form a 61-seat coalition. And given the party breakdown, the only person who could form a functional coalition was Netanyahu.
Theoretically, a leftist coalition wasn’t impossible: Lapid’s Yesh Atid, Labor, Meretz, Livni’s Hatnuah, Kadima and the two haredi parties could form a stable 66-seat government. But because of its dependence on the haredim, such a government would be incapable of fulfilling Lapid’s main promises to voters: equalizing the burden of military service and enacting economic reforms to benefit the middle class. It would be capable only of pursuing a futile peace process with the Palestinians – something Lapid favors, but not at the expense of other goals – and increasing government handouts.
In contrast, Netanyahu could form a stable 64-seat coalition with Lapid, Kadima and Bayit Yehudi that would be able to enact the kind of reforms Lapid promised: All four parties favor equalizing the service burden, and all support market-oriented economic reforms. Indeed, Netanyahu and Lapid have reportedly already agreed on such a core coalition, though they remain divided over which other parties to include.
In short, Lapid decided that keeping his promises to his voters was more important than pandering to his own ego and the left’s loathing for Netanyahu. And if he sticks to that order of priorities, he just might succeed in effecting real reform.
Equally important, however, was the way he explained his decision: “We won’t build an obstructionist bloc with [Balad MK] Haneen Zoabi,” he asserted, referring to the fact that a “blocking majority” aimed at keeping Netanyahu from power would require cooperating with the three Arab parties.
That was blunt shorthand for a very important statement of principles. Unpacked, it would go something like this:
“Do you really think Netanyahu – a man who, for all my disagreements with him, has spent years serving Israel to the best of his ability – is a greater enemy than Zoabi, an unrepentant Hamas shill? That I have less common ground with him than with the woman who joined a flotilla to break her own country’s legal blockade of Hamas-run Gaza? Or with the other Arab MKs, who oppose the very idea of a Jewish state? Who at best refuse to condemn, and sometimes actively condone, Palestinian terror, and denounce Israeli leaders as ‘murderers’ and ‘fascists’ whenever they order military action in the country’s defense? Have you gone mad?”
In short, Lapid proclaimed himself the champion of a sane center-left – one that understands its political opponents on the right are nevertheless partners in building the Jewish state, not enemies to be destroyed at any cost, whereas Arab MKs who openly side with Israel’s real enemies can’t be partners, however much we wish they were.
To translate this promising beginning into real achievement, however, Lapid will have to surmount two challenges in the coming months. First, of course, he must actually enact the promised reforms. Second, he must keep his head when the “peace process” hits the inevitable wall, rather than adopting the usual leftist dodge of hysterically blaming Netanyahu for Palestinian intransigence.
This won’t be easy, because Lapid’s party has deemed Israeli-Palestinian talks one of its three priorities, a sine qua non for joining the government. But the Palestinians still refuse to talk unless Israel agrees upfront to a border based on the 1967 lines and freezes all Israeli construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. These conditions are clearly unacceptable – not only to Netanyahu, but also to Lapid, if he meant what he said on the campaign trail: He unveiled his foreign policy platform in Ariel to stress his commitment to the settlement blocs, and explicitly nixed the idea of redividing Jerusalem.
Thus eventually, he will have to either admit that Palestinian intransigence has made negotiations impossible and focus on domestic reform, or abandon all his campaign pledges on diplomatic issues, blame Netanyahu for not doing the same and quit the government, thereby also torpedoing any hope of domestic reform.
If he chooses the latter, he will go down in history as just one more fly-by-night party that accomplished nothing. But the loss won’t be his alone: All Israel will be the poorer for it.
The writer is a journalist and commentator.
The PA currently faces the worst financial crisis of its crisis-filled history. According to PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, it’s in “extreme jeopardy,” and on the “verge of being completely incapacitated.” Its 150,000 employees have received only half their November salaries and nothing for December. It “owes local banks more than $1.3 billion and can’t get more loans,” the Associated Press reported. It “also owes hundreds of millions of dollars to private businesses, including suppliers to hospitals, some of whom have stopped doing business with the government.” And it expects the poverty rate to double, to a whopping 50 percent of the total Palestinian population in the territories, if the crisis isn’t resolved soon.
So dire is the situation that a mere month after the vote, Abbas was already threatening to dissolve the PA and return full control of the territory to Israel if things didn’t improve quickly. If the PA can’t even pay salaries, he said, “What’s left for us to do?”
In short, far from augmenting Palestinians’ independence, the UN vote has endangered even the limited autonomy they currently have. For the financial crisis is a direct consequence of that vote – and, even worse, a totally predictable one.
The first source of the crisis is that Israel stopped transferring roughly $100 million a month in taxes it collects on the PA’s behalf. Contrary to Fayyad’s disingenuous charge of Israeli “piracy,” this merely ended an ongoing Palestinian piracy: For years, the PA hadn’t paid its bills to the Israel Electric Corporation, but Israel swallowed the loss, at considerable sacrifice: The IEC’s finances are so precarious that it can’t raise money without government guarantees. Last year, it sought a 30% rate hike from Israeli consumers to stabilize them. Yet Israel’s agreements with the Palestinians entitle the state to cover such debts by withholding money from the monthly transfers. The Israeli government repeatedly warned both the PA and UN member states that if the UN bid went forward, in violation of all Israeli-Palestinian agreements, it would withhold the full NIS 800 million (about $214 million) it was owed to it.
Second, Congress has been withholding some $450 million in U.S. aid – and though the Obama administration wants this money released, Congress hasn’t yet agreed. This, too, was known in advance: Washington repeatedly warned that the UN bid “would have significant negative consequences” for America’s “ability to maintain our significant financial support for the Palestinian Authority.”
Third, though Arab states promised to cover the shortfallemergency donation (which hasn’t yet arrived), but no money is even in the pipeline for the following months. And despite Fayyad’s professed bewilderment at this lapse (“I have no explanation,” he said), it was completely predictable: Arab states have serially defaulted on previous pledges to the PA, so why would they behave differently this time?
Finally, there’s the PA’s own fiscal mismanagement – from the billions of dollars it pours into Hamas-run Gaza, including paying 60,000 former PA employees full-time salaries to sit at home and do nothing, to such grandiose money-wasters as allocating more than $1 million to commemorate the 48th anniversary of Fatah’s first terrorist attack on Israel (even as its own employees go unpaid) or booking first-class tickets and five-star hotels for 22 Arab foreign ministers to attend its UN triumph (though most never showed). This, too, was well-known.
Nevertheless, the PA opted to proceed with the UN bid. In short, it walked into a full-blown fiscal crisis with eyes wide open. And only nine countries opposed this decision.
Or, to put it another way, the PA deliberately chose to subject its own people to severe financial hardship – tens of thousands of breadwinners with unpaid salaries, a skyrocketing poverty rate – for the sake of scoring points against Israel in the international arena. And virtually the entire world knowingly abetted this choice rather than insisting that the PA put its people’s welfare first.
The sorriest part of this story, however, is that it isn’t unusual. The PA has consistently put harming Israel ahead of helping its own people – most notably, as I explained in a previous JINSA column, by refusing repeated Israeli offers of statehood, thereby leaving millions of Palestinian refugees vulnerable to repression and expulsion from other Mideast countries. And Western countries have consistently supported this self-destructive behavior, out of a misguided notion that by supporting the PA’s positions, they “bolster” the PA and thereby help the Palestinian people.
The UN bid was a prime example: Several European countries said they voted yes or abstained because Hamas’s popularity was boosted by its conflict with Israel in November, so they needed to bolster Abbas by giving him a “victory” too – even if, as some European ambassadors admitted, this “victory” might actually “lead to further hardening of positions instead of improving chances of a two-state solution.”
Similarly, the European Union repeatedly and explicitly backs PA demands on final-status issues like borders and Jerusalem while not explicitly demanding any Palestinian concessions. Yet this effort to bolster the PA’s negotiating position merely reinforces the Palestinian delusion that no reciprocal concessions are required, even on obvious deal-breakers like the “right of return.” President Obama sought to bolster the PA by backing its demand for an Israeli settlement freeze, only to have Palestinians dismiss the “unprecedented” freeze he secured as “worse than useless” and refuse even to begin negotiations.
Indeed, after 20 years of Western efforts to “bolster” the PA, not only is there still no Palestinian state, but the PA itself is on the brink of financial collapse. So instead of clinging to the same failed tactics, perhaps Western governments should try something different.
Rather than “bolstering” the PA by acceding to its every whim, however self-destructive, while constantly seeking more Israeli concessions, they should try pressing Palestinians to finally make the concessions needed to seal a deal. It couldn’t possibly fail more miserably. And it just might work better.
As Jonathan noted, Benjamin Netanyahu’s unexpectedly poor electoral showing resulted partly from his abysmal campaign. But it was also a clear vote of no-confidence in his policies. The problem, from the world’s perspective, is that what voters rejected wasn’t his foreign and defense policies. Rather, it was his domestic ones.
The Jerusalem Post‘s Herb Keinon has an excellent analysis of just how dominant domestic considerations were in this election. As he noted, the parties that significantly increased their parliamentary representation–Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid, Shelly Yacimovich’s Labor and Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home–campaigned almost exclusively on domestic issues. Even Bennett, who is unfairly caricatured overseas as representing “the extreme right,” ran mainly on domestic issues, capitalizing on his record as a successful high-tech entrepreneur. In contrast, parties that ran on diplomatic/security issues–Netanyahu’s Likud, Tzipi Livni’s Hatnuah and Shaul Mofaz’s Kadima–did poorly, aside from one exception: Meretz picked up the diehard peacenik votes Labor lost by focusing on domestic issues.
The same conclusion emerged from another Post reporter’s visit to the former Likud stronghold of south Tel Aviv (the city’s poorer neighborhoods): Person after person praised Netanyahu on security issues but panned him on bread-and-butter ones, and cited that as their reason for abandoning his party.
In an article for Commentary following the socioeconomic protests of summer 2011, I detailed the many pressing domestic issues Israel faced and warned that Netanyahu would be judged on whether he exploited the protests’ momentum to address them. As it turns out, he didn’t–and especially not the one most important to Israelis, the high cost of living. That partly explains how Lapid could come from nowhere to win 19 seats by running on pledges such as “Our children will be able to buy apartments” and “We’ll pay less for gasoline and electricity.”
Equally important, however, is that Israeli voters tend to vote tactically. And with Netanyahu seemingly a shoo-in for the next prime minister, they primarily focused on trying to ensure that his next coalition would be both willing and able to carry out the needed domestic reforms.
For this, a party that could replace the ultra-Orthodox in his coalition was essential. It’s not just that the ultra-Orthodox would block any attempt to make them serve in the army–something Israelis care about, but not as top priority. Far more important is that they’d block any other reforms aimed at benefiting the middle class. When the outgoing government proposed an initiative to create affordable middle-class housing, for instance, the ultra-Orthodox parties demanded that the criteria be altered to favor ultra-Orthodox applicants. And since he had no government without them, Netanyahu capitulated.
Yacimovich, having pledged not to join the government, couldn’t fill this role–and in any case, her economic views were too different from Netanyahu’s to make a partnership likely. Livni cared only about the nonexistent peace process, and would cheerfully sacrifice domestic reforms for freedom to pursue that goal (which the ultra-Orthodox would grant). But Lapid repeatedly promised his voters two things: He would join any government if at all possible, but not a government dependent on the ultra-Orthodox and incapable of carrying out reforms.
In short, he promised exactly the tactical solution that domestic-oriented voters were seeking. And in the final days of the campaign, when it became clear there were no better options, voters flocked to his banner.
Here’s a pop quiz: Confronted with complaints that Taglit-Birthright, which brings young Diaspora Jews on free trips to Israel, “glosses over” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, who gave the following response? “The Birthright visit has nothing to do with the conflict. It’s a first meeting with Israel, and naturally what they get in it is the Israeli point of view. They don’t have to go and visit Ramallah on their first trip, too.”
Hint: If you guessed a right-of-center Israeli politician, a pro-Israel activist from overseas, or any other “usual suspect,” you’re wrong.
The actual speaker was Yossi Beilin – former chairman of the far-left Meretz party, indefatigable peace processer, and architect of the Oslo Accords, which I and many other Israelis consider the worst foreign policy disaster in Israel’s history. And also, as it happens, the person who dreamed up Birthright – because he loves Israel and cares about preserving it as a Jewish state, deems it vitally important “that [Diaspora Jews’] children remain Jewish,” and thought sending these kids to Israel would further both goals.
Beilin is a classic example of someone whom many on my side of the political spectrum unfairly demonize as “post-Zionist” or “anti-Jewish,” when in truth, he’s emphatically neither. Indeed, disastrous though he proved on the foreign policy front – where his Oslo experiment not only resulted in thousands of Israelis being killed by Palestinian terror, but also immeasurably worsened Israel’s international standing – he’s been a rousing success on the Jewish front: Studies show that Birthright, his other baby, has been effective in strengthening both Jewish identity and ties to Israel among Diaspora Jews.
But the unwarranted demonization of Beilin is symptomatic of a broader problem: On both sides of the political spectrum, too many people too often forget that however passionately we might disagree about the means, most of us agree about the goal – a thriving Jewish state. Consequently, people on the right are much too quick to accuse left-wing opponents of being “anti-Zionist” or “post-Zionist” or “people who’ve forgotten what it means to be Jewish”; people on the left are far too quick to accuse right-wing opponents of being “religious extremists” or “anti-democratic” or “racist” or even “fascist.”
On this issue, both sides of the political map are equally guilty. I opened with an example from my side; here’s one from the other: the unconscionable charges of “fascist” and “totalitarian” hurled at a plan to have kindergartners open the school week by singing the national anthem. Regardless of its merits or demerits, this proposal would no more make Israel a fascist country than the daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in American schools makes America fascist. Ditto for the equally unconscionable claim that a bill mandating Knesset confirmation of Supreme Court appointments is “anti-democratic”: Whatever the bill’s merits or demerits, something that’s standard practice in almost all Western democracies – political control of Supreme Court appointments – can’t reasonably be termed “anti-democratic.”
Granted, there are times when such harsh terminology is warranted; there really are post-Zionists, racists, religious extremists and so forth roaming around. But the vast majority of Israelis, on both sides of the political spectrum, are none of the above.
This vitriolic discourse does immense harm to Israel’s image overseas: Too many genuinely well-disposed people, including Diaspora Jews, know too little about Israel to discern the truth or lack thereof behind the verbiage, and it’s human nature to think that where there’s smoke, there must be fire. Thus when people hear endless accusations about “religious extremism” or “anti-democratic legislation,” for instance, they start thinking that Israel really is a benighted country. And undermining international support for our tiny country in a hostile neighborhood doesn’t further anyone’s vision of a thriving Jewish state; it only encourages our enemies to think that destroying us is an achievable goal.
Yet the damage this discourse does at home is far worse. For when we demonize our opponents as “post-Zionist” or “anti-democratic” or “religious fanatics,” it becomes all too easy to start thinking of them as genuinely evil – people who must be fought to the bitter end rather than people with whom we could find a way to profitably cooperate in pursuit of a common goal.
I don’t mean to minimize the importance of the tactical disagreements. There’s a vast gulf between someone who considers a Palestinian state essential to Israel’s survival and someone who considers it inimical to Israel’s survival, between someone who believes “swinish capitalism” is destroying our economy and someone who believes the welfare state is doing the same, between someone who believes a healthy Jewish society requires separating religion and state and someone who believes such a society requires more Judaism in the public square.
Nevertheless, these are still disagreements about how to reach a common goal, not about the goal itself. Our political opponents may be misguided, but they aren’t evil: They are striving, in their own way, to achieve the same end we are.
Even in the best of times, Israel’s vitriolic political discourse makes it easy to lose sight of this. But it’s especially easy during an election campaign: With each party seeking to lure votes from its rivals, the focus is naturally on what divides us rather than what unites.
Yet with the campaign ending and a new government installed, we’ll have to go back to the all-important job of building our thriving Jewish state. In other words, we’ll have to live together, and work together, and compromise together – all of which will be much harder if we keep thinking of those who disagree with us as “post-Zionist” or “anti-democratic” or “religious extremists” or “people who’ve forgotten what it means to be Jewish.”
Thus if our newly elected politicians truly want to do something beneficial for Israel, refraining from demonizing each other – and getting their followers to do the same – would be an excellent place to start. Nothing would do more to help both the political class and the broader citizenry work together to build the Jewish state that most of us are united in wanting.
The writer is a journalist and commentator.
The poll cited by Rick Richman earlier, showing that 56 percent of Palestinians oppose the “everyone knows” parameters of a two-state solution, would come as a surprise only to someone who has slept through the last 13 years, during which Palestinian leaders repeatedly rejected Israeli offers along those lines. But what polls can’t answer is whether this opposition is deep-seated and resistant to change, or shallow and easily reversible if only Israel would agree to a settlement freeze, or prisoner releases, or whatever the Palestinian demand du jour for resuming negotiations is.
Last week, however, the Palestinian Authority answered that question decisively: It announced that it would rather leave hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to rot in the hell of war-torn Syria than grant them refuge in the West Bank, because the price of doing so was for those specific refugees to renounce their alleged “right of return” to Israel. In other words, saving thousands or even tens of thousands of Palestinian lives was less important to PA President Mahmoud Abbas than preserving his dream of someday destroying the Jewish state demographically by flooding it with millions of Palestinian refugees.
The issue arose last month, after Syrian forces bombed Yarmouk, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. Dozens were killed, and about half the camp’s 150,000 residents fled, becoming homeless at the height of the worst winter of the past decade. So Abbas, via UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, sought permission from Israel (which controls the borders) to let these refugees enter the PA. Israel did agree, Abbas later admitted to journalists in Cairo. But it imposed one condition:
Abbas said Ban was told Israel “agreed to the return of those refugees to Gaza and the West Bank, but on condition that each refugee … sign a statement that he doesn’t have the right of return (to Israel).”
“So we rejected that and said it’s better they die in Syria than give up their right of return,” Abbas told the group.
Abbas didn’t bother asking the refugees themselves–most of whom have never set foot in Israel, which their parents or grandparents fled 64 years ago–whether they considered their families’ lives and well-being a higher priority than preserving a notional “right of return” to a country they have never seen, which they are highly unlikely ever to be able to realize. He simply decided that letting them die was preferable to giving up the fantasy of someday eradicating Israel by turning it into a Palestinian-majority state. And this is the man dubbed “the most moderate and serious” Palestinian leader ever.
In an astounding editorial two weeks ago, the Washington Post–hardly a bastion of the Israeli right–blasted the West’s “overheated rhetoric on Israeli settlements,” noting that not only is it wrong to claim “settlements are the principal obstacle to a deal,” but it’s counterproductive, because it encourages Abbas to keep “using settlements as an excuse for intransigence.” It was one of the most honest summations of the situation I’ve seen anywhere. But even an editorialist this clear-sighted couldn’t bring himself to say what the “principal obstacle to a deal” was.
Abbas, however, unequivocally answered that question last week: The principal obstacle to a deal is that Palestinians still haven’t given up their goal of destroying the Jewish state. And it’s high time the world began acknowledging that fact. For if “the most moderate and serious” Palestinian leader ever would rather see thousands of his countrymen slaughtered than give up his dream of destroying Israel, the two-state solution doesn’t stand a chance.
Hillel Halkin’s lament in the Forward last week, titled “An Israeli ballot with no good options,” perfectly encapsulated what many voters feel. Indeed, I had trouble disagreeing with his analysis of the various parties’ flaws. Yet I couldn’t disagree more strongly with his conclusion. Granted, I’m politically to his right. But speaking as someone who wants our next government to carry out the same kinds of domestic reforms as he does, I think centrists who want to increase the odds of that happening actually have an excellent voting option.
Here’s Halkin’s analysis in a nutshell: Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu isn’t as bad as he’s often painted; he “performed well on Iran,” isn’t to blame for the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate, and “deserves credit for standing firm on the West Bank and Jerusalem.” But he “missed golden opportunities to carry out the economic reforms he knows are needed, to make Israel a more affordable place for its young people, and to spur the integration of its haredi community into its army and society.” So why should anyone think he’ll do differently next time around? Kadima, Tzipi Livni’s Hatnuah, and Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid are all little more than vanity vehicles, while Naftali Bennett’s Bayit Yehudi obviously isn’t an option for center-leftists. And though Halkin initially liked Labor, party leader Shelly Yacimovich queered that idea by vowing not to join a Netanyahu government, thereby nixing the chance of a centrist coalition that could enact the necessary reforms. Therefore, he concluded, “It looks like I’ll be staying home on January 22.”
Yet Halkin is wrong. A coalition capable of enacting the needed reforms is no less possible now than it was before Yacimovich’s announcement – but only if centrist voters help it along.
In truth, a Likud-Labor coalition was never realistic. Netanyahu and Yacimovich are too far apart on economic issues, and having campaigned entirely on economics, this isn’t something Yacimovich could compromise on.
In contrast, at least four parties could potentially agree on both free-market-oriented economic reforms and measures to integrate the haredim: Likud Yisrael Beiteinu, Hatnuah, Yesh Atid and Habayit Hayehudi. And all polls show these parties winning enough seats to form a coalition. But as things stand now, a combination of diplomatic incompatibility, simple arithmetic and the character of at least two of the party leaders make such a coalition impossible.
Clearly, the chances of Livni and Bennett being able to compromise sufficiently on diplomatic issues to sit in a coalition together are almost nonexistent. But even if they did, there’s the arithmetic problem: Likud Yisrael Beiteinu would have only half the seats in such a coalition and no good options should one of its partners quit. It couldn’t, for instance, neatly substitute Shas for Hatnuah; Lapid won’t sit with Shas. Thus Netanyahu would be utterly at the mercy of his coalition partners.
Since Lapid and Bennett are political newbies, one can’t be sure how they’d behave in such a situation. But Livni is a known quantity: Her ego is monstrous even by the outsized standards of politicians. Last time around, she was actually Netanyahu’s preferred coalition partner, precisely because they agreed so closely on domestic issues. But the negotiations failed because she posed conditions so outrageous that no self-respecting prime minister could accept them. Thus any sane premier would be wary of making his government dependent on her.
And while Netanyahu has his strengths, political courage isn’t one of them. Faced with such a risky alternative, he’d choose the safe option: a coalition based on the two Haredi parties. Such a government won’t enact any reforms, but it will be stable: As long as it refrains from drafting yeshiva students and coughs up the necessary billions for Haredi institutions, the Haredi parties can be trusted not to quit.
Nevertheless, center-left voters can do one thing that would alter the above calculus radically: Get Haim Amsellem’s Am Shalem party into the Knesset. That would significantly increase the chances of a domestic-reform coalition.
Substantively, the party’s raison d’etre is integrating the haredim, and it would likely acquiesce in any other domestic reforms as long as the government does that. Tactically, giving Netanyahu more parties to choose from means that at least, each would have less power to hold him hostage, making the domestic coalition more viable from his perspective.
But the real bonanza is that if current polls hold, a mere three seats for Am Shalem could enable Netanyahu to form a domestic-reform coalition even without Hatnuah. Excluding Livni would make it much easier to reach a modus vivendi on diplomatic issues, since Lapid is both more centrist and far more concerned with domestic issues. And even if she joined, Netanyahu wouldn’t be hostage to her, which would increase his willingness to take the gamble.
For right-of-center voters disappointed with Likud, Bennett is a more attractive option than Amsellem. Bennett would probably support free-market reforms (after all, he’s a successful high-tech entrepreneur), and despite his bizarre remark last week, he would almost certainly back efforts to get haredim into the army and workforce, that being a goal his constituency overwhelmingly supports. But he also has known diplomatic views and is certain to enter the Knesset – whereas Amsellem’s diplomatic positions are uncertain, as is the chance of his winning enough votes to pass the electoral threshold.
But centrist or left-of-center voters have nothing to lose by voting Amsellem: The next government isn’t going to lean left diplomatically anyway, so they may as well vote to encourage domestic reform. And since a domestic-reform government probably won’t happen without him, there’s no fear of wasting their vote; they won’t be any worse off if his party fails to make it into the Knesset.
Thus centrist voters who want a domestic-reform coalition can greatly increase the odds of it happening by voting Am Shalem. At the very least, doing so would support a worthy candidate: How can centrists not respect a Haredi rabbi and former Shas MK willing to stand up publicly and say most haredim should do army service and work? And it might even end up being good for Israel.
The writer is a journalist and commentator.