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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is often accused of diplomatic incompetence. And if you think the goal of diplomacy is to be loved, it’s hard to dispute this: Netanyahu is loathed by leaders worldwide.
But if you think the goal of diplomacy is to get other countries to adopt your country’s positions, then Netanyahu has had some surprising successes recently.
In July, France became the first European country to publicly adopt a position every Israeli government has deemed essential for Israeli-Palestinian peace, but which Europe consistently refused to endorse: that any agreement must result in “two nation-states,” including “the nation-state of Israel for the Jewish people.”
And last week, one of the most pro-Palestinian countries in Europe not only followed suit, but broke new ground. Addressing the UN General Assembly on Saturday, Spanish Foreign Minister Trinidad Jimenez first declared Spain’s “commitment” to Israel as “a homeland of the Jewish people” – a position Madrid opposed as recently as July. Then she added something that, again, all Israeli governments have deemed essential for peace, but Europe has never been willing to state openly: Any solution to the Palestinian refugee problem must “be just and agreed,” while also “allowing the preservation of Israel’s current character.” In other words, the Palestinian goal of relocating the refugees to Israel is out.
It’s hard to overstate the significance of this shift. For years, the EU has demanded a host of specific Israeli concessions on final-status issues (borders, Jerusalem, etc.) while adamantly refusing to demand any Palestinian concessions. Hence, every statement it issued reiterated a formula carefully crafted to avoid offending Palestinian sensibilities. It called for two states, Israel and Palestine, with no elaboration on the nature of the former, thus leaving open the possibility of an “Israel” transformed into a binational or Palestinian-majority state by an influx of millions of refugee descendants, as Palestinians want. And it urged “an agreed, just, fair and realistic solution” to the refugee issue, without specifying that the Palestinians’ preferred solution of resettling them all in Israel doesn’t qualify.
This enabled Palestinians to continue fantasizing that the world would keep demanding ever more concessions from Israel without ever demanding anything of them. After all, the West is more supportive of Israel than the rest of the world, so what Europe won’t demand, non-Western countries certainly won’t. Moreover, Europe is the Palestinian Authority’s main financial backer, which gives its positions special importance.
But now that one of Europe’s most pro-Palestinian countries has broken ranks, other EU states could well follow suit. That in turn could change the dynamics of the international Quartet, where the EU has traditionally sided with Russia and the UN against the U.S.
It’s no accident this U-turn happened under the “intransigent” Netanyahu rather than his more conciliatory predecessors: His “intransigence” is precisely what convinced France and Spain that progress will require accommodating Israel’s demands as well, and not only those of the Palestinians. The upshot is that two key European states have now adopted a vital Israeli position.
Not bad for an incompetent diplomat.
Here’s the scariest part of events at the UN during the last week: In its obsession with the Palestinian statehood bid, the world seems quite prepared to let the entire rest of the Middle East implode.
Tunisia, Libya and Egypt all underwent revolutions this year and are struggling to rebuild their countries; revolutions in progress are convulsing Syria and Yemen. Not only is the Israeli-Palestinian arena stable by comparison, but most of these countries, and especially Egypt and Syria, are far more important to the region’s future than the backwater of the West Bank and Gaza. Yet as Lilia Labidi, Tunisia’s new minister of women’s affairs, discovered, nobody at the UN had any attention to spare for their problems:
Her own appeal to the gathering for help in consolidating gains for women in Tunisia elicited little reaction, with [Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton, President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil and various other female heads of state sweeping out of the meeting on empowering women without stopping for even a hello … She found it frustrating that the question she was asked the most by people had little bearing on her projects, like improving girls’ access to elementary school. The question she heard over and over: What effect will the revolution have on Tunisian attitudes toward the Arab-Israeli conflict?
Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations secretary general, conducts a version of political speed-dating during the gathering, holding a 15-minute meeting with each delegation. Virtually every leader has brought up the need to solve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, said a senior aide, while he could not remember any discussions about the Arab revolution.
This inattention also translates into a shortage of much-needed cash. Earlier this month, the G-8 pledged $38 billion in aid to Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco. But while the recipients appreciated the gesture, they pointed out that of the $20 billion the G-8 promised Tunisia and Egypt in May, Tunisia has yet to receive a penny and Egypt has received only $500 million.
By contrast, Palestinians are deluged with Western aid. In 2008 and 2009, for instance, they received $2.6 billion and $3.1 billion, respectively, making the Palestinian Authority the world’s top aid recipient per capita–$725 in 2009, almost triple the $273 the G-8 just pledged the five other states.
The West has a vital interest in ensuring stability in the Arab Spring states. If these states implode, not only will hordes of migrants flood Europe’s shores, but global Islamism – and the terror it spawns – will get a tremendous boost, having “proven” because democracy failed to solve these countries’ problems, Islam must be the answer. In contrast, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict threatens no vital Western interest: The world has lived with it quite successfully for decades, and can easily do so for decades to come. But in its obsession with the unimportant and non-urgent, the West is ignoring a problem that is both important and urgent.
The primary victims of this strategic myopia are obviously the Arab Spring countries themselves. But the West is liable to pay dearly for it down the road.
With President Barack Obama so far saying and doing all the right things at the UN this week, it’s depressing to realize his basic worldview hasn’t changed: He still sees the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the root of all regional troubles. As he said in a conference call with American rabbis yesterday, “The most important thing we can do to stabilize the strategic situation for Israel is if we can actually resolve the Palestinian-Israeli crisis because that’s what feeds so much of the tumult in Egypt … That’s what I think has created the deep tension between Turkey and Israel and Turkey has historically been a friend and ally of Israel’s.”
Let’s start with Turkey. During the last few weeks, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to send warships to the Mediterranean to challenge Cyprus’s plans to drill for undersea gas. He threatened to suspend ties with the European Union if Cyprus takes up the EU’s rotating presidency as scheduled next year. He has repeatedly bombed Kurdish areas of Iraq, and threatened to cooperate with Iran in a larger-scale operation in Iraq’s Qandil mountains. And despite his much-ballyhooed peace initiative with Armenia, he not only still refuses to apologize for the Armenian genocide Turkey perpetrated in the 20th century, but is now demanding Armenia apologize to Turkey.
So are Turkey’s increasingly violent and threatening relations with Cyprus, Iraq, Armenia and the EU also due to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Or is it just possible that the problem – in relations with Israel as well – is Erdogan’s megalomania and short fuse, which are rapidly turning Turkey’s vaunted policy of “zero problems” with its neighbors into one of “problems with all its neighbors”?
As for Egypt, consider one revealing recent report: Cairo has just banned the export of palm fronds – a vital component of the lulav, a ritual object used in the upcoming Jewish holiday of Sukkot – not only to Israel, but to Jewish communities worldwide. In previous years, Egypt has supplied up to 40 percent of the global demand for lulavim.
Egypt’s economic situation is dire. According to a recent report by its central bank, the country had a $9.2 billion balance of payments deficit for the fiscal year ending in June; income from tourism is down almost 50 percent; foreign investors are fleeing; and the Egyptian pound has lost 12 percent against the dollar since the revolution began in January. So you’d think Egypt would welcome a chance to earn some much-needed foreign currency.
Instead, it has banned palm frond exports to Jewish communities worldwide. So is that, too, due to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Or it just possible that the problem – in relations with Israel as well – is the rabid anti-Semitism Egyptian politicians and the media have inculcated in the public for years? (See here and here for some examples.)
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is just one factor among many in the region’s turbulence, and rarely is it the most important one. But it seems no amount of evidence will ever convince your average Western liberal of that.
It’s eminently fitting the woman the Palestinian Authority chose to formally launch its statehood bid is a proud mother of five murderers, of whom one is now dead while the other four are serving life sentences in Israel. After all, a woman who teaches her sons to kill Israelis even at the expense of their own welfare is the perfect emblem of a Palestinian state dedicated to destroying Israel even at the expense of its people’s welfare. And if that accusation seems far-fetched, just consider the shocking interview the PLO’s ambassador to Lebanon, Abdullah Abdullah, gave the Lebanese Daily Star last week:
The ambassador unequivocally says that Palestinian refugees would not become citizens of the sought for U.N.-recognized Palestinian state…
This would not only apply to refugees in countries such as Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and Jordan or the other 132 countries where Abdullah says Palestinians reside. Abdullah said that “even Palestinian refugees who are living in [refugee camps] inside the [Palestinian] state, they are still refugees. They will not be considered citizens.”
Abdullah said that the new Palestinian state would “absolutely not” be issuing Palestinian passports to refugees…
“When we have a state accepted as a member of the United Nations, this is not the end of the conflict. This is not a solution to the conflict. This is only a new framework that will change the rules of the game.”
The Palestinian Liberation Organization would remain responsible for refugees, and Abdullah says that UNRWA would continue its work as usual.
This is simply unbelievable. For years, the world has backed a Palestinian state on the grounds Palestinians are stateless people who deserve a country of their own. And now, a senior Palestinian official has announced once they have received a state, most Palestinians will still be stateless – even those who actually live in “Palestine.”
Moreover, the new state won’t provide these residents with any services: It expects UNRWA – or, more accurately, the American and European taxpayers who provide the bulk of that organization’s funding – to continue providing their schooling, healthcare, welfare allowances, etc.
According to UNRWA, some 689,000 of the West Bank’s 2.4 million Palestinians and 1.1 million of Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinians are refugees. Thus, aside from the 2.9 million Diaspora refugees, a whopping 45 percent of the new state’s residents will also remain stateless, deprived of both citizenship and services by the country the world fondly imagines is being created to serve their needs.
But of course, the PA doesn’t want a state to serve its people’s needs; it wants a state to further its goal of destroying Israel. Hence the refugees can’t be given citizenship; that would undermine its demand to resettle them in Israel, thereby destroying the Jewish state demographically.
And if the price is leaving half its people in stateless squalor for the next several decades or centuries, it’s a perfectly acceptable one to pay for the goal of killing the Jewish state. Just like Latifa Abu Hmeid thinks one son dead and four in jail is an acceptable price to pay for the goal of killing Jews.
Yesterday, I asked why Israel should keep signing agreements with the Palestinians if the world won’t enforce previous ones? This question has an important corollary: Why should Israel keep making concessions if it gets no credit for previous ones?
A recent New York Times editorial demonstrates the problem in microcosm. While various parties share blame for the Israeli-Palestinian impasse, it opined, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “has been the most intractable, building settlements and blaming his inability to be more forthcoming on his conservative coalition.”
In reality, Netanyahu is the only prime minister in Israel’s history to impose a 10-month moratorium on settlement construction, a move even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared “unprecedented.” Indeed, there has been less construction in the West Bank – and East Jerusalem – during his term than under his predecessors. But he gets no credit for this; instead, he’s the premier who obstructs peace by “building settlements.” So what incentive would he have to make further such gestures?
As for being insufficiently “forthcoming,” Netanyahu, like all his predecessors, has repeatedly expressed willingness to cede most of the West Bank; what he’s refused to do is cede the entire territory in advance. By contrast, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas hasn’t yet agreed to cede anything Israel wants (settlement blocs, the “right of return,” recognition as a Jewish state, etc.), but the Times omits him entirely from its list of parties who share the blame. So Netanyahu, who has already ceded most of the West Bank, is “intractable,” but Abbas, who has ceded nothing, is blame-free. Given this, what incentive does Netanyahu have to make further concessions?
The problem, of course, is that on this issue, the Times accurately reflects the international consensus – not merely on Netanyahu, but on Israel as a whole. For the last 18 years, Israel has offered nonstop concessions. It evacuated territory and uprooted settlements; it repeatedly offered a Palestinian state in most of the West Bank, Gaza and parts of East Jerusalem; it even offered to cede Judaism’s holiest site, the Temple Mount. Throughout this period, Palestinians haven’t offered one single reciprocal concession – not the settlement blocs, not the “right of return,” not recognition of a Jewish state; they won’t even acknowledge the Jews’ historical connection to this land. Yet still, the world deems Israel the “intransigent” party, the one that must concede even more. Hence most of the Quartet (comprising the U.S., EU, UN and Russia) thinks the appropriate recipe for restarting talks is to demand yet another new concession of Israel -accepting the 1967 lines upfront – while still demanding nothing of the Palestinians.
The consequence of this behavior is that fully 77 percent of Israeli Jews have concluded “it makes no difference what Israel does and how far it may go on the Palestinian issue; the world will continue to be very critical of it.” And if there’s no quid pro quo for concessions in the form of increased international support, there’s obviously no point in continuing to make them.
The only surprising thing is, the world still seems to find this reaction surprising.
Reading the media over the last week makes one wonder why Israel even bothers maintaining intelligence agencies and a diplomatic corps.
Consider the following report, for instance: “In recent weeks the Foreign Ministry, Military Intelligence, the Shin Bet security service and the Mossad have distributed a number of documents stating that a return to negotiations [with the Palestinians] would tone down [regional] tensions and anger against Israel.”
Well, yes, it might, which is precisely why Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has spent the last two years begging Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to resume talks. He even imposed an unprecedented 10-month freeze on settlement construction – something none of his predecessors ever did – to woo his reluctant interlocutor. There’s only one problem: Abbas repeatedly and consistently refused to negotiate unless Israel effectively conceded all the final-status issues in advance.For instance, he insisted that Israel agree upfront to the 1967 lines, altered only by “mutually agreed” swaps, while making clear that he would only countenance swaps far smaller than even Ehud Olmert considered tenable, and which Netanyahu deems wildly insufficient. He also insisted that Israel cede East Jerusalem in advance: After all, accepting the 1967 lines is tantamount to conceding that East Jerusalem, which lies beyond them, is Palestinian territory. Meanwhile, he repeatedly vowed never to recognize Israel as a Jewish state or to drop his demand to resettle millions of Palestinians in Israel (thereby eradicating the Jewish state demographically). And if Israel were to cede all its territorial bargaining chips in advance, it would have no leverage left with which to exact concessions on these issues, either.
In short, negotiations can only be resumed on terms that no sane government could accept. So what’s the point in recommending “a return to negotiations” when in reality, there’s no way to do so – unless our intelligence analysts and diplomats actually think the government should sacrifice vital long-term strategic interests for the sake of temporarily easing regional tensions, which would be even more worrying?
We pay our analysts and diplomats to produce practical suggestions for how to improve Israel’s tactical and strategic situation. If the best they can come up with is “a number of documents” recommending an unattainable fantasy, what do we need them for? Fantasies we could get from any child for the price of a piece of chocolate, and the millions we now spend on their salaries could be used for more productive purposes.
Then there’s the report (which a Foreign Ministry spokesman confirmed to me) that Israeli diplomats are currently lobbying the world to continue funding the PA despite its bid for UN recognition as a state. Given that Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is one of the government’s most vocal advocates of penalizing the PA for its UN bid, it seems strange that his direct subordinates are busily urging the world not to do so. And if senior ministry officials are using the diplomatic corps to conduct their own foreign policy rather than the government’s, that obviously goes way beyond problematic. But the more likely explanation is that they’re acting on orders from Netanyahu, who on foreign policy issues frequently aligns with Defense Minister Ehud Barak (a proponent of continued funding) rather than Lieberman.
The stated purpose of this policy is to prevent the PA, and especially its security forces, from collapsing, on the theory that such a collapse would make a third intifada more likely. But even if one buys this argument, the chance of donations to the PA drying up following the UN vote is nil.
The PA’s largest donor is Europe, and past experience shows it would take a miracle of Biblical proportions to get Europe to stop funding the PA. If European states, despite their stated opposition to terror, refused to stop the cash flow over the PA’s direct involvement in terror during the second intifada, then they certainly won’t do so over a UN bid which most of them support. Indeed, when Washington halted donations over the intifada, the Europeans actually increased their contributions to compensate, and would doubtless do the same this time around. Nor will Arab states halt donations. And the PA’s biggest revenue source is tax transfers from Israel, which finance up to two-thirds of its budget, so the decision most relevant to the PA’s financial stability will be made in Jerusalem, not overseas.
Thus at best, Israel’s diplomats are wasting precious time and diplomatic capital to ensure an aid flow that is far more vital to the Palestinians than to Israel – meaning Palestinians can and will lobby for it themselves – when it isn’t even at risk to begin with. And they are doing so at the expense of time and effort that could be used to further exclusively Israeli interests, which nobody will pursue if Israel doesn’t.
But at worst, they are actually undermining a vital Israeli interest: the principle that signed agreements can’t be violated with impunity. After all, the Palestinians’ UN bid blatantly violates the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement, which states that “Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations”; UN recognition of a Palestinian state in these territories would clearly change their status radically. Indeed, this fact has been the cornerstone of Israel’s lobbying campaign against the UN gambit. But now our diplomats are telling the world, “yes, of course, the PA shouldn’t violate its signed agreements, but under no circumstances should you penalize them if they do.” In other words, Israel is encouraging the PA to violate its agreements by ensuring that it won’t suffer any penalty for doing so.
So at best, our diplomats are wasting their time, and at worst, they’re undermining a vital Israeli interest in the process. If that’s the best way we can think of to use our diplomatic corps, then really, what do we need one for?
The writer is a journalist and commentator.
The run-up to the Palestinians’ UN bid has produced many surreal moments, but it would be hard to top this one: The U.S. and Europe are pressuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to penalize the Palestinian Authority following the UN vote. In other words, the “international community” is urging the PA be allowed to violate its previous signed agreements with total impunity. And then, in the same breath, it’s urging Israel to sign a final-status agreement entailing much greater concessions in exchange for “international guarantees” it’s just proven it won’t enforce.
A brief reminder: The UN gambit blatantly violates the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement, which states that “Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.” Clearly, recognizing these territories as a state would change their status drastically. The U.S. and EU both signed this agreement as witnesses, as did Russia, Egypt, Jordan and Norway.
Now, most of these witnesses plan to vote in favor when the PA asks the UN to effectively tear up this agreement later this month, and even those who plan to
vote against are demanding the PA suffer no penalties for its bad faith. Yet if the Palestinians can tear up this agreement with impunity, why should Israel believe they won’t be allowed to tear up a final-status agreement with equal impunity? And in that case, why should it risk the drastic concessions a final-status agreement would entail?
Another brief reminder: UN Security Council Resolution 242, which has been the foundational document of the peace process since 1967 and is referenced in
every Israeli-Palestinian agreement, was explicitly worded to ensure Israel would not have to return to the 1967 lines (as I explained here). That was the international guarantee every Israeli government relied on in negotiations with the Palestinians. Even Gilead Sher, a dove who served as one of Israel’s chief negotiators in final-status talks with the Palestinians in 2000-2001, stressed recently this assurance remains critical to Israel: While the final border may well end up being the “1967 lines plus land swaps,” he wrote, using this as the starting point “puts the onus on Israel and constrains the range of negotiation” over this issue, making it harder for Israel to secure border adjustments it deems vital.
But most of the same countries that approved this resolution in 1967 now plan to recognize a Palestinian state in the 1967 lines later this month, effectively
tearing up the guarantee they gave Israel 44 years ago. So why should Israel trust the international community to uphold whatever guarantees it might give as part of a final-status agreement?
If the world seriously wants Israel to have the confidence to make far-reaching concessions for a final-status agreement, it ought to be strictly honoring its own commitments to Israel while severely punishing the Palestinians for violating theirs. Instead, it’s doing the exact opposite. And then it wonders why most Israelis are reluctant to keep making such concessions.
As Western diplomats scramble to avert what one termed “a potential train wreck” — the Palestinians’ bid for UN recognition as a state, whose possible consequences, diplomats say, include a collapse of the Palestinian Authority, a Hamas takeover and renewed Israeli-Palestinian violence – two columns published today offer useful reminders: This particular train wreck was made in Europe. And it was made in violation of an agreement that Europe itself had signed.
Writing in Haaretz, Ari Shavit correctly recalls that “the Palestinian September was conceived by two European statesmen – Bernard Kouchner and Javier Solana.”
Solana, then the European Union’s top foreign policy official, announced in July 2009 that the West should set a deadline, and if an Israeli-Palestinian agreement had not been reached by then, the UN Security Council should simply dictate its own solution to all final-status issues and recognize a Palestinian state within those parameters. Fifteen months later, Kouchner, who was then France’s foreign minister, confirmed that Europe didn’t rule out “the Security Council option.”
The PA’s economy depends on donations, and Europe is the PA’s largest donor. Moreover, it is irreplaceable: Arab states routinely default on their pledges. Thus, the PA would never have considered a UN bid without assurance that European aid would continue. But with two such high-level European officials openly voicing support for the UN option, the PA knew it had nothing to fear.
Granted, Washington’s response didn’t help. The Obama administration started publicly opposing the UN option only recently; back in 2009, it didn’t even deny media reports that Solana’s “trial balloon” was launched with its approval. Obama’s statement at the UN last September, that he hoped to welcome a Palestinian state by this September, also encouraged Palestinians to think he would support their bid. Nevertheless, Europe was the instigator.
But worse than the fact Europe created this “train wreck” is the fact that, as Nicole Horrelt notes in today’s Jerusalem Post, it did so in violation of an agreement the EU itself had signed as a witness: the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement, a cornerstone of the Oslo process, which states explicitly that “Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.” Needless to say, UN recognition of a Palestinian state in those territories would be a radical change in their status.
Basically, here’s what happened: The EU simply wanted Israel to capitulate. Like the Palestinians, it thinks Israel should withdraw to the 1967 lines and cede East Jerusalem; like the Palestinians, it opposes Israel’s demands for defensible borders and recognition as a Jewish state. But Israel saw the Oslo process as a negotiation that required both sides to compromise, and it has thus far refused to capitulate completely on these issues. So, like any spoiled child, when Europe saw that its Oslo toy wasn’t working the way it wanted, it decided to smash it.
And now, Israelis and Palestinians alike are going to pay the price for Europe’s petulance.
It’s now been two months since the UN officially declared a famine in Somalia; last week, it said the famine had spread to a sixth region of the country, and without aid, as many as 750,000 people are facing “imminent” death. Strangely, there have been no reports of humanitarian aid flotillas mobilizing to answer the call. Yet just two months ago, 10 boats from all over the world mobilized to try to relieve the “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, where the UN has never declared a famine or warned that anyone risks dying of hunger; indeed, on key measures of humanitarian wellbeing like life expectancy and infant mortality, Gazans surpass even some OECD countries, not to mention much of the developing world.
It’s also now been one week since Syria’s opposition begged human rights activists to come to the country to monitor the government’s attacks on civilians, and thereby hopefully deter them. In Syria, unlike in Gaza, soldiers slaughter civilians on a daily basis; this week, the UN estimated that some 2,600 Syrian civilians have been killed since March. During this same period, Israeli forces killed 72 Gazans, according to B’Tselem; of these, 28 were civilians. In short, Syria’s civilian death toll is almost 100 times higher. But there have been no reports of any humanitarian flotillas organizing to help Syria either.
If anyone needed proof that “humanitarian concerns” are not what motivate the Gaza flotillas, this ought to provide it. But it also attests to something else: the relative safety of the ventures in question.
For all their talk about “the brutal Israelis” and their willingness “to die for their cause,” flotilla activists know perfectly well sailing to Gaza poses no risk as long as they themselves refrain from violence. With the sole exception of last year’s Turkish-sponsored flotilla, every “aid” ship to Gaza has docked unharmed in either Israel or Egypt, and even in last year’s convoy, five of the six ships reached shore unscathed. It was only when passengers on the sixth ship brutally attacked Israeli soldiers that casualties ensued.
In contrast, sailing to Syria or Somalia definitely isn’t safe. Somalia is so unsafe even many real aid organizations – the kind that succor conflict zones worldwide – have been driven out, and that’s without even mentioning the risk of interception by Somali pirates. As for Syria, which has barred all foreign journalists and aid workers from the country ever since its uprising began, would a regime that shoots its own citizens without compunction truly hesitate to do the same to “humanitarian activists” openly seeking to break this blockade? The very fact no one has tried amply shows everyone knows the answer.
Somalia and Syria both prove the utter falsity of all the spin about “humanitarian activists” challenging “brutal Israelis.” Unfortunately, as Mark Twain once wrote, “One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.”
Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Shaul Mofaz is outraged: For the second time in a week, the prime and defense ministers forbade senior defense officials to testify at a subcommittee hearing about last month’s terror attacks near Eilat. This, Mofaz declared, violates the law, which authorizes the Knesset to receive whatever information it needs to perform its role of supervising the government.
I’m also outraged at the ministers’ behavior. But I’m far more outraged at Mofaz and his fellow Knesset members, who seem to feel that their job as MKs begins and ends with issuing press statements. The Knesset, not the cabinet, is Israel’s highest sovereign authority, and if it sees a problem, it has the power to enact legislation to solve it.
Instead, here’s what various MKs have done to date: After the first incident, Mofaz asked Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin to discuss the issue with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and Rivlin did so. After the second incident, Mofaz sent a letter of complaint to Netanyahu. And after both incidents, Mofaz and several other MKs complained to the media.Granted, it’s reasonable to try to resolve the dispute amicably first, but there has to be a Plan B in case the ministers continue their noncompliance. In this case, no Plan B has been announced even though it seems clear one is needed: A mere week after Mofaz’s first complaint, Netanyahu and Barak thumbed their noses at him by once again barring officials from testifying.
And it’s not as if the Knesset could ever lack tools to force compliance: If existing law doesn’t provide any, it can always pass legislation to create them. In this case, for instance, it could pass a law imposing sanctions on ministers who bar subordinates from testifying to Knesset committees. But neither Mofaz nor any other MK has suggested any such thing. It seems they would rather just keep complaining about the situation.
Nor is this the only example. Just last month, for instance, Rivlin was upset over media reports that Barak planned to let Egypt substantially increase its troop presence in Sinai, in violation of the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement. So he announced he would consult the Knesset legal advisor about whether Barak was authorized to amend the treaty in this fashion without the Knesset’s consent.
Again, this might be a reasonable first step, but there was no Plan B. Rivlin did not, for instance, vow to submit legislation requiring the government to obtain Knesset approval for any substantive change in a peace treaty, even though the stakes couldn’t be higher: Barak’s proposal would gut the peace treaty’s main achievement, the demilitarization of Sinai. And in this case, a Plan B was indisputably needed, because in contrast to Mofaz’s complaint – where existing legislation already requires the government to provide the requested information, so the problem is merely one of enforcing compliance – Rivlin’s complaint stems from a glaring legal lacuna.
Existing law doesn’t even require Knesset approval of most peace treaties when they are first signed, much less of subsequent amendments. And it’s hard to see how any legal advisor could extract a requirement for Knesset approval out of legislation that doesn’t exist. The sole exception to this legislative vacuum, enacted last year, applies only to treaties that cede sovereign Israeli territory. But since Israel never formally annexed Sinai, this law wouldn’t have applied to the Egyptian-Israeli treaty even had it existed at the time.
Then there’s the perennial Knesset complaint about judicial intervention in issues that are properly the purview of the executive and legislative branches. As I’ve written elsewhere (here, for instance), I consider these complaints eminently justified. Yet this, too, is something the Knesset could change by passing legislation – either comprehensive legislation regulating the court’s powers, or narrower legislation enabling it to override the court’s decisions under certain circumstances, which it could then use it to reinstate specific laws or policies overturned by the court if it deemed these rulings an unwarranted usurpation of the government’s right to set policy. But it seems our MKs would just rather keep complaining about judicial overreach.
In theory, the Knesset is the strongest of Israel’s three branches of government: It is considered the sovereign authority, and is thus superior to the executive and judicial branches. In practice, however, the Knesset is the weakest of the three: Whereas neither the executive nor the judiciary is shy about exercising power, the Knesset generally defers to the other two. It may complain, but it rarely uses its legislative authority to constrain either the cabinet or Supreme Court. The result is that many of Israel’s most crucial decisions are made by a mere handful of people, of whom some (the cabinet) are only indirectly elected and others (Supreme Court justices) aren’t elected at all, with no input from the country’s most representative body: the legislature.
And that’s precisely why polls have generally found the public’s faith in the Knesset to be lower than its faith in either the prime minister or the Supreme Court: The latter two, however little one may like what they do, at least do something, but MKs seem to do little other than talk. And through this passivity, they betray the public’s trust, leaving the people they purport to represent powerless before the other branches of government.
Since taking office, Rivlin has talked a lot about the need to restore public faith in the Knesset. But that will never happen until MKs stop whining about the other two branches of government and instead start using the enormous power their status as legislators gives them. This isn’t rocket science; it’s basic human nature: Nobody in the history of the universe ever respected a whiner.
The writer is a journalist and commentator.