Uncategorized
While only a minority of settlers supports this tactic, the number is growing, and defense officials believe the violence will only escalate.
This is something no society can tolerate, and better law enforcement is clearly part of the necessary response. Yet law enforcement alone cannot solve the underlying problem – which is that growing numbers of settlers have justifiably concluded that democratic action is pointless, leaving violence as the only rational option.
IF THAT sounds outrageous, consider the following:
In 1993, the Knesset approved the Oslo Accords, even though Yitzhak Rabin won election promising no negotiations with the PLO. But the ensuing surge in terror disillusioned many Oslo supporters, thus rightists saw a real chance of defeating Oslo 2 in 1995. So they did exactly what good democrats are supposed to do: They lobbied Shas and Labor MKs, and succeeded in garnering enough votes for victory – until Rabin, thumbing his nose at the rules, openly bought two MKs elected on a far-right slate, thereby securing a 61-59 majority. And since the offered bribe (a ministry and deputy ministry, with all attendant financial benefits) was illegal at the time, he then used his newly purchased majority to amend the law so he could pay up.
Worse, this perversion of democracy enjoyed monolithic support from journalists, leftist MKs, academics and other self-proclaimed champions of the rule of law. The lesson was obvious: Playing by the democratic rules is pointless, because the other side has no qualms about scrapping them whenever they prove inconvenient.
It is no accident that the worst incident of political violence in Israel’s history, Rabin’s assassination, occurred a mere month later. If democratic alternatives are blocked, violence becomes the only recourse. And someone will inevitably take it.
FAST FORWARD to the 2003 election, when Labor championed a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and the Likud’s Ariel Sharon campaigned against this idea. Again, rightists did what good democrats are supposed to do: They threw themselves into electing Sharon. And they succeeded: The Likud won by a landslide. Yet 11 months later, Sharon U-turned and adopted Labor’s platform.
Nevertheless, he offered a democratic escape route: an internal party referendum. So rightists again did what good democrats are supposed to do: They canvassed door-to-door among Likud members.
And they won again: Though polls predicted an easy victory for Sharon, his plan lost by a 60-40 margin.
But Sharon ignored his party’s verdict, despite having pledged to honor it. He also refused to submit his plan to any broader democratic test – new elections or a national referendum. And of course, these decisions were cheered by the left’s self-proclaimed champions of democracy.
Thus the right won two democratic victories, the 2003 election and the Likud referendum, only to see both prove worthless.
Once again, the lesson was clear: Playing by the democratic rules is pointless.
After Sharon junked the referendum results, rightists protested by blocking roads around the country. That, while illegal, is a time-honored Israeli tradition. The Histadrut, for instance, blocked roads nationwide for months to protest the emergency economic program in 2003; disabled activists demanding increased funding once paralyzed the entire capital by blocking major roads. Yet neither union activists nor the disabled were ever arrested.
Anti-disengagement protesters, however, were arrested in droves, and routinely jailed for lengthy periods. Here, too, the lesson was clear: Rightists will be jailed for using tactics that other protesters can use with impunity. In short, democracy is not a level field, so playing on it is pointless.
LEFTISTS FREQUENTLY charge that even if all the democratic rules were honored, settlers would not accept an adverse outcome. That may be true for a tiny minority, but certainly not for the vast majority – as was proven during Ehud Barak’s premiership.
Barak won election in 1999 by promising a unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon and final-status negotiations with the Palestinians. He duly quit Lebanon in May 2000; two months later, he offered sweeping concessions to the Palestinians at Camp David.
Clearly, he had a democratic mandate for both withdrawal and negotiations. Moreover, the Knesset for once did its democratic job properly. By forcing him to call new elections, it enabled the public to approve or reject the specific concessions he made at Camp David, and later at Washington and Taba.
And, miracle of miracles, there was virtually no violence, though rightists opposed both withdrawal and negotiations.
Faced with a true democratic mandate and a true democratic ratification process, settlers honored the rules of the democratic game.
Unfortunately, Barak’s term was the exception. And while Rabin’s term could have been a one-time aberration, Sharon’s term proved that it was not.
Thus growing numbers of settlers, especially the young, no longer believe in the democratic process – and with cause. What is the point of winning elections or referenda if the results will simply be ignored? What is the point of lobbying Knesset members if any successes can be overturned by vote-buying?
It is probably too late to change the minds of those fomenting the current violence. But if we do not want their ranks to keep swelling, we must restore the younger generation’s faith in democracy.
Legislation – such as a bill now heading for final reading that mandates a referendum, elections or a two-thirds Knesset majority before ceding sovereign territory – is vital to this effort. But changing the country’s political culture is equally vital. And that will only happen if all the journalists, academics, jurists and MKs who so loudly proclaim their devotion to democracy stop whitewashing its perversion in the name of “peace” and instead demand that the rules be respected, even if that results in setbacks for their side.
Otherwise, we are liable to witness an ever-expanding circle of violence that no amount of law enforcement will be able to suppress.
While only a minority of settlers supports this tactic, the number is growing, and defense officials believe the violence will only escalate.
This is something no society can tolerate, and better law enforcement is clearly part of the necessary response. Yet law enforcement alone cannot solve the underlying problem ¬ which is that growing numbers of settlers have justifiably concluded that democratic action is pointless, leaving violence as the only rational option.
IF THAT sounds outrageous, consider the following:
In 1993, the Knesset approved the Oslo Accords, even though Yitzhak Rabin won election promising no negotiations with the PLO. But the ensuing surge in terror disillusioned many Oslo supporters, thus rightists saw a real chance of defeating Oslo 2 in 1995. So they did exactly what good democrats are supposed to do: They lobbied Shas and Labor MKs, and succeeded in garnering enough votes for victory – until Rabin, thumbing his nose at the rules, openly bought two MKs elected on a far-right slate, thereby securing a 61-59 majority. And since the offered bribe (a ministry and deputy ministry, with all attendant financial benefits) was illegal at the time, he then used his newly purchased majority to amend the law so he could pay up.
Worse, this perversion of democracy enjoyed monolithic support from journalists, leftist MKs, academics and other self-proclaimed champions of the rule of law. The lesson was obvious: Playing by the democratic rules is pointless, because the other side has no qualms about scrapping them whenever they prove inconvenient.
It is no accident that the worst incident of political violence in Israel’s history, Rabin’s assassination, occurred a mere month later. If democratic alternatives are blocked, violence becomes the only recourse. And someone will inevitably take it.
FAST FORWARD to the 2003 election, when Labor championed a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and the Likud’s Ariel Sharon campaigned against this idea. Again, rightists did what good democrats are supposed to do: They threw themselves into electing Sharon. And they succeeded: The Likud won by a landslide. Yet 11 months later, Sharon U-turned and adopted Labor’s platform.
Nevertheless, he offered a democratic escape route: an internal party referendum. So rightists again did what good democrats are supposed to do: They canvassed door-to-door among Likud members.
And they won again: Though polls predicted an easy victory for Sharon, his plan lost by a 60-40 margin.
But Sharon ignored his party’s verdict, despite having pledged to honor it. He also refused to submit his plan to any broader democratic test ¬new elections or a national referendum. And of course, these decisions were cheered by the left’s self-proclaimed champions of democracy.
Thus the right won two democratic victories, the 2003 election and the Likud referendum, only to see both prove worthless.
Once again, the lesson was clear: Playing by the democratic rules is pointless.
After Sharon junked the referendum results, rightists protested by blocking roads around the country. That, while illegal, is a time-honored Israeli tradition. The Histadrut, for instance, blocked roads nationwide for months to protest the emergency economic program in 2003; disabled activists demanding increased funding once paralyzed the entire capital by blocking major roads. Yet neither union activists nor the disabled were ever arrested.
Anti-disengagement protesters, however, were arrested in droves, and routinely jailed for lengthy periods. Here, too, the lesson was clear: Rightists will be jailed for using tactics that other protesters can use with impunity. In short, democracy is not a level field, so playing on it is pointless.
LEFTISTS FREQUENTLY charge that even if all the democratic rules were honored, settlers would not accept an adverse outcome. That may be true for a tiny minority, but certainly not for the vast majority – as was proven during Ehud Barak’s premiership.
Barak won election in 1999 by promising a unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon and final-status negotiations with the Palestinians. He duly quit Lebanon in May 2000; two months later, he offered sweeping concessions to the Palestinians at Camp David.
Clearly, he had a democratic mandate for both withdrawal and negotiations. Moreover, the Knesset for once did its democratic job properly. By forcing him to call new elections, it enabled the public to approve or reject the specific concessions he made at Camp David, and later at Washington and Taba. And, miracle of miracles, there was virtually no violence, though rightists opposed both withdrawal and negotiations.
Faced with a true democratic mandate and a true democratic ratification process, settlers honored the rules of the democratic game.Unfortunately, Barak’s term was the exception. And while Rabin’s term could have been a one-time aberration, Sharon’s term proved that it was not.
Thus growing numbers of settlers, especially the young, no longer believe in the democratic process – and with cause. What is the point of winning elections or referenda if the results will simply be ignored? What is the point of lobbying Knesset members if any successes can be overturned by vote-buying?
It is probably too late to change the minds of those fomenting the current violence. But if we do not want their ranks to keep swelling, we must restore the younger generation’s faith in democracy.
Legislation such as a bill now heading for final reading that mandates a referendum, elections or a two-thirds Knesset majority before ceding sovereign Israeli territory – is vital to this effort. But changing the country’s political culture is equally vital. And that will only happen if all the journalists, academics, jurists and MKs who so loudly proclaim their devotion to democracy stop whitewashing its perversion in the name of “peace” and instead demand that the rules be respected, even if that results in setbacks for their side.
Otherwise, we are liable to witness an ever-expanding circle of violence that no amount of law enforcement will be able to suppress.
Actually, it is hard to imagine how Russia could be less cooperative on Iran. It has used its Security Council veto both to delay every sanction resolution for months, and then, whenever it sensed that the West might act outside the UN if Russia’s obstructionism continued, to weaken the resolutions to the point where they caused Iran no real pain. Consequently, the sanctions have failed to alter Iran’s behavior.
Russia also undercut whatever impact the watered-down sanctions might have had by signing lucrative trade deals with Iran, and even actively assisted Teheran’s nuclear program by supplying technical aid and nuclear fuel for the reactor in Bushehr. Just last week, it said this reactor’s operation will be “irreversible” by December 31. Moreover, it has reportedly supplied Iran with S-300 anti-aircraft missiles, thereby impeding military action against Iran’s nukes.
And, lest anyone delude himself that this attitude might change, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev scotched that notion at last week’s meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club in Moscow. “The world does not need to tighten its sanctions on Iran at this time,” he declared.
Incredibly, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the Valdai group that this is because Iran is now cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Since the IAEA’s last two reports, in May and this past Monday, both accused Iran explicitly of noncooperation, listing numerous questions Teheran has refused to answer, this bald-faced lie speaks volumes about Russia’s determination to protect Iran’s nuclear program.
IN A trenchant analysis published in The New York Times last week, Ray Takeyh of the US Council on Foreign Relations and Nikolas Gvosdev of the US Naval War College explained why: “Both Iran and Russia are essentially satisfied with existing US-European policy of applying incremental and largely symbolic UN sanctions on Teheran. Moscow feels that as long as the diplomatic process remains in play, America is in no position to launch a military strike that could destabilize the Middle East.”
Moreover, by keeping the sanctions too weak to change Iran’s behavior, Russia perpetuates a situation it deems beneficial: “Not only does it destabilize international oil markets – keeping prices higher than they ought to be – but Iran’s large natural gas reserves are effectively off-limits for European use, reinforcing the continent’s dependency on Moscow.”
In other words, the current policy serves Moscow’s interests perfectly: On one hand, it forestalls military action against Iran; on the other, it enriches Russia by keeping oil prices high, while also enabling it to largely dictate European policy via that continent’s energy dependence on it. Thus Russia has every reason to continue doing just what it has to date: postponing new sanctions as long as possible, then acquiescing whenever necessary to forestall independent Euro-American action while weakening them sufficiently to ensure that they will not change Iran’s behavior.
Hence any attempt to end Iran’s nuclear program through sanctions, thereby obviating the need for military action, must begin with recognizing that far from being part of the solution, Russia is part of the problem.
ONCE THIS recognition exists, effective sanctions become possible: The European Union accounts for fully one-third of Iran’s trade, while Iran accounts for only about 1 percent of the EU’s trade; thus tough, independent EU sanctions could have a major impact on Iran at minimal cost to the EU. In particular, Iran needs European know-how (which experts say Russia and China cannot currently replace) to develop its natural gas fields; moreover, Teheran lacks oil refining capacity, and therefore imports 43 percent of its gasoline consumption. Sanctions in these two areas could thus devastate Iran’s economy.
Clearly, such sanctions would be even more effective if Russia and China participated. More importantly, however, broad-based Security Council action would prevent Europe from becoming the principal target of Iranian (and perhaps broader Muslim) wrath. That is why the EU much prefers working through the UN. And since the US, whose trade with Iran is minuscule, can do little on its own, it must perforce acquiesce.
Therefore, it is the EU that must be persuaded to change its approach. And while the US should be doing more on this front, it is Israel, as Iran’s first potential victim, that must take the lead.
THERE IS certainly room for effective Israeli diplomacy. Germany, France and Italy – Iran’s major European trading partners – all currently have unusually sympathetic governments. And newer EU members from Eastern Europe are potentially strong allies, as they have few illusions about Russia.
Yet instead of making this case, Israeli officials keep proclaiming Russia part of the solution. After meeting Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last month, for instance, President Shimon Peres praised him for asserting that Russia opposes Iran obtaining nuclear arms, instead of pointing out that Russia is Iran’s leading enabler in this quest. Similarly, after Ehud Olmert met then-president Putin in Moscow last fall, his aides publicly praised Russia’s attitude on Iran, saying the premier had emerged “with an understanding that Russia is concerned about Iran having nuclear weapons.”
This is a classic “why be more Catholic than the pope” problem: As long as the state most threatened by Iran insists that Moscow is behaving constructively, the EU has a perfect excuse for maintaining this fiction as well. Thus Israel must stop protecting Russia and start stating the obvious: Moscow is stymieing any possibility of effective diplomatic action against Iran.
Given the narrow window of opportunity for halting Iran’s nukes via diplomacy, this issue is far too urgent to wait for new elections. Unfortunately, however, it may have to, because with all four of Olmert’s would-be replacements from Kadima having been party to the current policy, a new Kadima-led government seems unlikely to effect the necessary change.
Yet in fact, no verbal assault by ethically challenged ministers like Ehud Olmert or Haim Ramon could possibly undermine public regard for the court as much as the hypocritical behavior of the justices and their adherents does. The uproar over Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann’s bill to limit judicial review, which the cabinet approved on Sunday, is a case in point.
The bill would allow the Knesset to reinstate legislation that the Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional, as long as this move was approved by at least 61 MKs, with supporters outnumbering opponents by at least five votes. That is an idea one could certainly oppose on its merits. While I personally support the 61-MK override, one could legitimately either object to legislative overrides in general or argue that they should require a larger Knesset majority.
But it is sheer hypocrisy to charge, as former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak did at the Herzliya Conference in January, that such a move would turn Israel into a “Third World country.” It is also sheer hypocrisy to claim, as Beinisch repeatedly has, that limiting judicial review would “undermine the country’s democratic character.” After all, no one knows better than Barak and Beinisch that restrictions on judicial review exist in many Western democracies.
Even Canada – which, judging from his many laudatory citations of it, boasts Barak’s favorite Western constitution – explicitly permits legislative overrides of Supreme Court decisions. And some democracies curb judicial review far more drastically: Holland, for instance, forbids its Supreme Court to overturn legislation at all, while Switzerland bars its court from overturning all federal legislation.
THE LATEST argument raised by the bill’s opponents, however, makes their hypocrisy even more blatant – because while many Israelis may be unaware of how other Western democracies approach judicial review, they assuredly remember Ehud Barak’s negotiations with the Palestinians at Taba in 2001.
According to this new argument, Sunday’s cabinet vote on the bill was illegitimate because the prime minister has already announced he will resign following next week’s Kadima leadership primary, and a lame-duck government has no right to make far-reaching changes; it must confine itself to strictly necessary business. Israel Bar Association chairman Yori Geiron, for instance, declared that approving this bill would violate Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz’s directive that the government, being on its last legs, must be “cautious” about exercising its powers.
Haaretz published both an editorial declaring it “verboten for the government to vote in favor of such a fundamental, constitutional change… during its last cabinet meeting,” and an op-ed by the paper’s legal commentator, Ze’ev Segal, making the same point.
Adherents of this view cite repeated Supreme Court rulings declaring that a lame-duck government must exercise restraint in making major decisions unless delay is untenable. The problem, as all the experts making this argument know perfectly well, is that the seminal ruling on this matter is the one that upheld Barak’s Taba negotiations. At that point, Barak had already resigned, so the restraint incumbent on lame-duck governments certainly applied. Nevertheless, the court ruled that offering far-reaching diplomatic concessions in no way violated this restraint.
Most Israelis undoubtedly remember what Barak offered the Palestinians at Taba: almost all of the West Bank, plus a “safe passage” slicing through Israel to connect the West Bank and Gaza; much of east Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount and most of the Old City; and the absorption of tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Israel. Needless to say, these concessions would have been completely irreversible had Yasser Arafat actually accepted them, and even after he refused, they became the starting point for Palestinian demands during the inevitable next round of talks, thereby constraining future governments’ options.
In contrast, the cabinet’s approval of Friedmann’s bill has no lasting consequences at all. For starters, all cabinet approval means is that the government has decided to submit the bill to the Knesset. Since the Knesset will not be back in session until the end of October, the new government that will presumably arise following the Kadima primary could easily change its mind and not submit the bill.
Moreover, submitting a bill to the Knesset in no way guarantees that it will pass; the Knesset has rejected bills submitted by the government before. And even if it did pass, any future Knesset could easily repeal the law, with no more than the same ordinary coalition majority need to enact it to begin with.
BUT EVEN if approving Friedmann’s bill were as irrevocable a step as its opponents falsely claim, Olmert’s government would still have far more legitimacy to take it than Barak’s government did to embark on the Taba negotiations, because Barak went to Taba after having already lost his Knesset majority over that very issue – his conduct of the talks with Arafat. Olmert’s government, in contrast, still has a strong and stable Knesset majority.
For anyone who seriously cared about the issue of preventing lame-duck governments from tying their successors’ hands, there would be no possible way to justify the Taba talks. In contrast, even the very strictest interpretation of lame-duck restrictions would not justify preventing the cabinet from approving Friedmann’s bill, since that decision does not bind the next government at all. Yet needless to say, many of the leading opponents of the cabinet’s decision to approve Friedman’s bill – from the Supreme Court itself to Haaretz – are the very same people who vociferously supported Barak’s right to conduct the Taba talks.
That hypocrisy is clear for all to see. And such hypocrisy does more to damage public faith in the court than even the most vicious attacks by politicians or the media ever could.
The London-based Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat quoted a Hamas spokesman last weekend as saying his organization would demand “more than 1,000” prisoners in exchange for Schalit, up from 450 previously. Last Friday’s Haaretz offered a more specific figure: It reported that when Barak visited Egypt earlier that week, Egyptian mediators told him that Hamas is now demanding 1,500 prisoners for Schalit.
Why have Hamas’s demands suddenly ballooned? According to both Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) chief Yuval Diskin and the government’s point man for the negotiations, Ofer Dekel, the truce itself is the main culprit. With a cease-fire in place, they argued at a meeting with senior cabinet ministers last Wednesday, Hamas is no longer under any pressure to conclude an agreement: The IDF no longer threatens its personnel, and Israel has eased its economic blockade of Gaza, thereby alleviating a major source of discontent with Hamas among ordinary Gazans. In short, Hamas has already received everything it most needed from Israel, so it can afford to delay the Schalit deal to extort a higher price.
That, of course, was eminently predictable. The rationale for the truce, essentially, was that if we were nice to Hamas, Hamas would be nice to us – a highly unlikely response from an organization committed to our destruction, which therefore always has an interest in tightening the screws if it can. Indeed, experience shows that Hamas has never made concessions voluntarily; it has done so only in response to intense pressure. For instance, Masab Yousef, whose father Hassan is considered Hamas’s leader in the West Bank, declared in a published interview last month that the assassinations of Hamas leaders during the intifada are what ultimately caused it to curtail its attacks.
Despite this, no cabinet minister voted against the truce initially. And even the new and conclusive evidence of its negative impact on the Schalit talks – coupled with the fact that the new demands explicitly violate the truce, under which Hamas pledged to expedite the negotiations – has not changed any minds. At last Wednesday’s meeting, Dekel and Diskin begged for renewed pressure on Hamas: Dekel, for instance, suggested either halting fuel supplies to Gaza or closing the border crossings. But not only did the ministers refuse, they insisted that what was needed was more flexibility. As Barak put it: “If we demonstrate more willingness [to make concessions], perhaps Hamas will demonstrate more willingness.”
Defense officials also fingered a secondary culprit: July’s deal with Hizbullah, in which the government exchanged child-killer Samir Kuntar and nine other prisoners (in two stages) for two slain soldiers. When one of the most vicious terrorists in our custody was traded for two dead bodies, they explained, that convinced Hamas it could obtain hundreds of such killers for a living soldier. This, too, was predictable. Yet only three ministers opposed the Hizbullah deal.
There is, admittedly, a third factor that is partly beyond the government’s control: the public and media campaign to free Schalit regardless of the price, which has largely drowned out opposing views. As Haaretz‘s Sunday editorial (falsely) put it, virtually no issue “elicits such a broad consensus as the demand for Schalit’s release at almost any price.” Hamas thus believes that whatever price it sets, Israel’s media and public will force the government to pay.
Yet even here, the government is hardly helpless. It could be using its powerful bully pulpit to mobilize those who already realize the dangers of Hamas’s demands and to explain these dangers to the rest.
Many people do understand that trading hundreds of terrorists for Schalit would result in dozens or even hundreds of Israeli deaths. This is not mere speculation, but a certainty. In every previous prisoner release, according to defense establishment estimates, roughly 50 percent of the freed prisoners have resumed terrorist activity, with deadly consequences. Consider, for example, the 400 prisoners traded for drug dealer Elhanan Tannenbaum on January 29, 2004. The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, citing Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Tzahi Hanegbi, says that between then and April 17, 2007, those freed terrorists killed 35 Israelis.
If the Schalit deal were framed in that stark fashion – his freedom on Hamas’s (original) terms would cost 35 lives – most people would reject it. Yet that is the only correct way to frame it. To do otherwise is to blur its actual cost, and thereby prevent people from making an informed decision.
Yet no minister has even tried to make this case. Instead, they proclaim to a man that we must accept Hamas’s demands and release dozens of killers. And since previously approved criteria forbid doing so, the cabinet even established a special ministerial committee to revise these criteria.
The Kadima-led government has been remarkably consistent in making bad decisions the first time around. Even more remarkable, however, is its failure to learn from its mistakes – and this includes all four of the candidates to succeed Ehud Olmert as premier. After air power failed to stop Hizbullah’s rocket attacks from Lebanon, our ministers relied on air power again to stop Hamas’s rocket attacks from Gaza (with equal lack of success). As the European-led force in Lebanon openly sided with Hizbullah against Israel, our ministers continued floating the idea of stationing international troops in the West Bank and/or Gaza. And now that the truce has made Hamas less rather than more flexible over Gilad Schalit, our ministers still refuse to reverse course and resume exerting pressure on Hamas. Instead, they assert that further “gestures” to Hamas are needed.
True, everybody makes mistakes. But people who keep repeating the same mistakes over and over have no business running a country.
Graziano, an Italian general, commands the expanded UNIFIL force stationed in Lebanon under Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War. On August 14, he gave a press conference on the resolution’s implementation. His conclusions were simple: Israel, he said, is in “permanent violation,” whereas Hizbullah is “one of [the] parties that agrees with 1701,” and has cooperated fully.
The next day, outraged Israeli officials met with Graziano to point out the Hizbullah violations he had somehow overlooked. Graziano countered that Israel has provided no intelligence to support its allegations. That is conceivable, since his coziness with Hizbullah undoubtedly deters Israel from sharing sensitive intelligence with him. But since Hizbullah’s most egregious violations have been conducted in full view and reported in major media outlets worldwide, classified intelligence is unnecessary. It is enough not to be blind and deaf.
FOR INSTANCE, 1701 repeatedly cites an earlier resolution, 1559, which demands that all Lebanese militias disarm. Indeed, it begins by “recalling previous resolutions… in particular 425 (1978), 426 (1978), 520 (1982), 1559 (2004)…,” which is UN-speak for “we still want those resolutions implemented.”
Next, operative paragraph three “emphasizes the importance of the extension of the control of the government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory in accordance with the provisions of resolution 1559 (2004)… so that there will be no weapons without the consent of the government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the government of Lebanon.”
Operative paragraph eight calls for a “long-term solution” based on “full implementation… of resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006), that require the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that… there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state.”
Finally, operative paragraph 10 asks the secretary-general to develop “proposals to implement the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, and resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006), including disarmament…”
YET FAR from disarming and accepting the elected government’s authority, Hizbullah not only rearmed, but used its arms to stage a coup against the government in May. The coup involved days of battles against other Lebanese forces, which were extensively reported worldwide, even if Graziano somehow failed to notice them on the ground. But about 10 days after the fighting ended, he and his spokesman, Milos Strugar, gave a joint interview in which Graziano declared Hizbullah in full compliance with 1701, while Strugar termed it a mere “social organization… that runs charitable associations.”
The coup produced a unity government in which Hizbullah has veto power. And a week before Graziano’s August 14 press conference, this government approved the following guidelines: “Lebanon, its army, its people and its resistance [i.e. Hizbullah] have the right to act to liberate lands that remain occupied at Shaba Farms… with all legitimate means possible.” Then, lest anyone think the qualifier “legitimate” precludes violence, President Michel Suleiman announced that “all means,” including military, are “legitimate to this end.”
In short, the government formally authorized Hizbullah to attack Israel whenever it pleases – which flatly contradicts 1701’s demand for “no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state” (not to mention the UN’s 2000 ruling that Shaba is not Lebanese). But Graziano, like the three monkeys, sees and hears no evil.
Finally, 1701 prohibits “sales or supply of arms and related materiel to Lebanon except as authorized by its government” (paragraph eight, and again in more detail in paragraphs 14 and 15). Just this Monday, the UN’s own inspectors reported that smuggling is rife despite this provision. Yet Graziano denies its existence. Does he imagine the government authorized Hizbullah to acquire the arms used in its May coup?
THUS HIZBULLAH has grossly violated numerous key provisions of 1701, while Graziano turned a blind eye. Yet he persistently denounces three Israeli violations: its overflights of Lebanon, its continued presence in Ghajar and its failure to provide maps of unexploded cluster bombs in Lebanon.
The latter is never actually mentioned in 1701; the closest thing is paragraph eight’s prescription for a long-term solution, which includes Israel handing over “all remaining maps of land mines” it possesses. This same paragraph explicitly requires Hizbullah’s disarmament and an end to arms smuggling, yet Graziano deems Hizbullah in compliance. Nevertheless, since unexploded cluster bombs primarily harm civilians, Israel should provide additional maps if it has any.
The overflights and Ghajar, in contrast, undoubtedly violate the resolution’s demands for “full respect” for the international border and a full Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. Yet both are defensive moves necessitated mainly by Graziano’s whitewash of Hizbullah.
The overflights are aimed solely at gathering intelligence on the Hizbullah arms buildup whose existence Graziano denies, and would thus be unnecessary had his force either prevented it or collected and shared accurate intelligence on it. As for Ghajar, the international border runs right through this village. Thus the only way to defend southern Ghajar, meaning Israel, is either to sever the halves completely (which residents oppose) or to have a trustworthy force in northern Ghajar. And a force whose commander so blatantly ignores Hizbullah’s hostile activities hardly qualifies.
By falsely declaring Hizbullah in compliance, Graziano has shielded it from international pressure that might impede its preparations for renewed hostilities. By denouncing Israeli violations, he has simultaneously sought to generate international pressure that would impede Israel’s defensive efforts. And since no country with troops in UNIFIL has protested this double standard, they evidently deem appeasing Hizbullah to be in their interests.
And that is precisely why relying on others for protection is folly: Not only will no country ever consider another state’s defense its top priority, but often, such defense will actively conflict with higher priorities.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has yet to learn this lesson; she still claims that UNIFIL bolsters Israel’s security. One can only hope that other Israelis are better attuned to reality.
One might legitimately ask how this undermined the national interest. After all, Israel desperately needs Russian help on several crucial issues, ranging from Iran’s nuclear program to Hizbullah’s rearmament, and Israel needs Georgian help not at all. Moreover, Russia has made its unhappiness with arms sales to Georgia clear. Thus Kadima seemingly made the correct realpolitik choice.
The problem is that, according to government officials themselves, not only did the country receive no quid pro quo for halting the shipments, but Russia has repeatedly and explicitly declared that it will continue its anti-Israel policies regardless of whether or not Jerusalem sells arms to Georgia. Thus Israel gained nothing by betraying Georgia, while undermining two secondary but still significant interests.
RUSSIA IS currently harming vital Israeli interests in at least four ways. First, it is the main opponent of significant diplomatic sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program. It has used its Security Council veto to ensure that all sanctions approved to date are too toothless to affect Iran’s behavior, thereby bringing Israel ever closer to an unpalatable choice between a nuclear Iran and a military strike of uncertain benefit but certain costs.
Second, Russia has actively facilitated Iran’s nuclear program by building and supplying fuel for the reactor in Bushehr. Third, it is planning to supply advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Iran, which would make any Israeli military strike far more dangerous. And finally, it is already supplying advanced weaponry to Syria, which Damascus is sharing with Hizbullah. Thus anything that could alter Russia’s behavior on any of these four points would clearly be worth Israel’s while.
However, government officials told the local media last week that while Russia has repeatedly complained about arms sales to Georgia in response to Israeli complaints on these issues, it has also refused to make a deal. On the contrary: It has consistently declared its current policies nonnegotiable.
Nevertheless, the government decided to unilaterally halt arms shipments to Georgia in the hopes that, despite Moscow’s repeated declarations to the contrary, it might still change its mind. As one official put it, “The day we want to prevent a future deal with Iran, our hands must be clean.”
In other words, it sacrificed concrete assets on the altar of wishful thinking.
But given that Georgia has nothing Israel really needs, what assets did the country sacrifice? The answer to that is twofold.
First, betraying an ally in its hour of greatest need always entails a price: It deters potential future allies, by showing that allying with Israel does not pay. And the effect is compounded when the betrayal is in favor of a party that, like Vladimir Putin’s Russia, has been consistently hostile to Israel’s interests: This shows that not only does befriending Israel not pay, but working against it does, because it will then seek to appease you.
GRANTED, ISRAEL has already betrayed allies in favor of enemies so many times that one might think one more example could make no difference. Just consider, for example, its abandonment of the South Lebanon Army to Hizbullah; its ongoing budgetary neglect of loyal Druse communities even as it allocates extra funds to Arab communities that reject the Jewish state’s very existence; or its willingness to release hundreds of prisoners to Hizbullah and Hamas while refusing to release a paltry two dozen to our most reliable regional ally, Jordan.
Yet like any bad habit, each repetition only makes the habit harder to kick – and any attempt to kick it has to start somewhere. A decision to stand by Georgia despite Russia’s displeasure might have signaled players closer to home that this country was starting to rethink this destructive pattern of behavior. And precisely because Russia made it clear that it would continue its hostile policies regardless of Israel’s relations with Georgia – meaning that supporting this particular ally entailed no costs – this would have been a uniquely easy place to start.
THE SECOND asset Israel sacrificed is its reputation as a credible arms supplier. After all, who would want to buy arms from a country that will suspend shipments just when you need them most? And given the importance of the local arms industry to national security, this is nontrivial.
Israel originally developed an arms industry because other countries routinely suspended shipments to it when it was most in need. Over the last four decades, it has largely replaced the doctrine of self-sufficiency with dependence on American arms, but it still relies on its own industry both for solutions to problems ignored by American companies – Israel, for instance, began developing specialized urban counterterrorism equipment long before the US did – and for equipment that Washington refuses to sell it.
However, the IDF is not a big enough client to support a sophisticated arms industry on its own. Thus to be financially viable, the industry must export. And that will not be possible if it develops a reputation for cutting off supplies just when the client needs them most.
Had Russia been willing to accommodate Israel on any of its main concerns, one could have argued that the benefits of sacrificing Georgia outweighed the costs. But to incur the costs without gaining anything in exchange, merely in the delusional hope that Russia might then be grateful enough to sacrifice what it views as its own strategic interests for our benefit, is sheer folly.
But then, what else would you expect from a government that has built its foreign policy largely on the hope that throwing steaks to tigers will eventually turn them into vegetarians?
Last week’s column analyzed what Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) chief Yuval Diskin deems the worst blows to the nation’s deterrence over the past three years: the disengagement from Gaza, Hamas’s subsequent takeover of the Strip and the Second Lebanon War. Kadima, of course, deserves “credit” for all three: It comprises all the politicians most responsible for the first (and indeed was formed for that purpose), while the latter two occurred under its rule.
Yet far from learning from these mistakes, it proceeded to compound them.
In the South, rocket attacks from Gaza more than tripled following the mid-2005 disengagement, to over 1,000 a year in 2006 and 2007. And the mid-2006 Lebanon war effectively undercut previous excuses for inaction. Not only did it prove that such barrages, if not stopped, destroy morale at home and deterrence abroad (since the enemy concludes that Israel fears to confront it), but it also produced a military consensus on how to counter them: a major ground operation to drive the launchers out of range.
Yet the government refused to order such an operation, instead relying on the same failed tactic it used in Lebanon: aerial assaults. That reinforced Arab belief that the IDF is afraid to confront the far smaller and more poorly equipped Hamas.
Even worse, however, were its nonstop threats that we would “soon” lose patience and invade Gaza. Since that never happened, Israel became the boy who cried wolf. It has lost any ability to make credible threats, as its enemies will consider them mere hot air.
THEN, IN June, the government capitulated completely, accepting a truce on Hamas’s terms – which Diskin termed a “lifesaver” for the organization. Specifically, after having said repeatedly that any cease-fire must bring Gilad Schalit home and prevent weapons smuggling, it accepted a truce without Schalit and with no provisions on smuggling except Egypt’s umpteenth empty promise to combat it. It thereby proved once again that our “red lines” are meaningless.
The Palestinians soon violated this truce: Hamas itself refrained from firing rockets, but declined to stop other organizations from doing so. Yet Israel never responded militarily, and though it did initially close the border crossings it had opened under the truce, it immediately reopened them at Egypt’s request. The lesson was clear: Terrorist organizations can violate deals with impunity since Israel will honor its commitments anyway.
Moreover, Palestinian analysts say the truce bolstered support for Hamas, because it achieved through force what Fatah failed to achieve through negotiations: a cessation of IDF operations in its territory. In short, rather than showing that peace pays better than terror, Kadima showed that terror pays better than peace – thereby encouraging it.
Finally, Hamas has exploited the truce to prepare for future conflict. It is training troops and smuggling in masses of arms (i.e. four tons of explosives). It is stockpiling nonmilitary essentials such as food and fuel, since the truce, with its reopened border crossings, more than tripled the volume of cargo entering Gaza. And it is building bunkers with cement supplied courtesy of the lull. All this will increase IDF casualties in any future Gaza operation, making governments even more reluctant to approve one.
In short, rather than Israel deterring Hamas, Hamas is deterring Israel.
THE PICTURE in the North is identical. The Lebanon war, which followed years in which Hizbullah amassed an arsenal while Israel did nothing, underscored the dangers of letting terrorist organizations arm unimpeded. Yet since the war, Hizbullah has tripled its rocket supply, to about 40,000, and now has virtually all of Israel in range rather than the North alone. And again we did nothing.
Moreover, Hizbullah’s rearmament enabled it to seize control of Lebanon’s government this spring, further increasing its ability to threaten Israel.
But not content with mere inaction, Kadima actively undermined its chances of mustering effective diplomatic pressure against the smuggling via its indirect negotiations with Syrian President Bashar Assad.
For Assad, the benefits were immediate: After years of international isolation, he was welcomed back to the world stage, including a starring role in last month’s Mediterranean Union summit.
Israel, however, got nothing in exchange. Defense officials begged the government to condition talks on a halt to Hizbullah’s arms smuggling from Syria, but the government refused. Now, having belatedly woken up, Kadima wants the world to pressure Syria to stop the smuggling. But as a senior official told Haaretz last week: “The fact that we are conducting negotiations with Syria doesn’t make it easier to [explain] our position to the world.” After all, if the government doesn’t consider this issue important enough to employ its own diplomatic leverage against Syria, why should other countries deem it important enough to employ theirs?
The unconditional talks with Syria also undermined Israel’s deterrence in another way: They proved, as a senior Arab diplomat told Haaretz, that “it’s possible to supply missiles to Hizbullah, be a patron of Hamas and be in Israel’s good graces all at the same time.”
If so, why should any Arab country not support anti-Israel terror?
Even after Assad flatly rejected direct talks last month – meaning that having already given him international legitimacy in exchange for no tangible benefits, Israel was not even getting serious negotiations – the government still refused to end the farce. The message could not be clearer: One can support terror, refuse serious negotiations and still reap all the benefits of peace. No more thorough eradication of Israel’s deterrent is conceivable.
Kadima inherited a country with a weakened but still extant deterrent posture and proceeded to systemically destroy it. Now, rebuilding deterrence must be a top priority. And Kadima cannot be trusted with the job. Its record speaks for itself.
Diskin did not elaborate, but his reasons for citing these events were obvious: All undermined both the physical and the psychological aspect of deterrence.
Physical deterrence relates to the actual balance of forces: The greater the imbalance, the more reluctant the weaker side will be to start hostilities. And while the balance clearly still favors Israel, the gap has shrunk markedly thanks to the events Diskin cited.
UNTIL ISRAEL quit Gaza in 2005, it combated Palestinian arms smuggling with substantial (though never complete) success. But once it withdrew, the floodgates opened. Thus pre-disengagement, most Hamas rockets had ranges of only a few kilometers, and its stockpile never exceeded a few hundred. Today, Israeli intelligence believes the organization has thousands of rockets capable of reaching major cities in southern Israel, on top of thousands of shorter-range rockets. It has also acquired sophisticated anti-tank rockets ÃÂ the weapon responsible for most IDF casualties during the Second Lebanon War ÃÂ and built a network of Hizbullah-style bunkers. Thus should Israel respond to any future Hamas attack, it will risk withering rocket fire on its cities, while any ground operation aimed at stopping the rockets will entail many more casualties than did previous Gaza operations. That knowledge will make any Israeli government more reluctant to respond, which in turn will make Hamas feel freer to strike when it deems the time convenient.
The same goes for Lebanon. The government touted Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Lebanon war, as an achievement, saying its provisions for a beefed-up UN force and the Lebanese Armyùs deployment in south Lebanon would prevent Hizbullahùs rearmament. Instead, 1701 allowed Hizbullah to rearm at breathtaking speed. The organization now has some 40,000 rockets àtriple its arsenal in 2006. Moreover, these include long-range rockets capable of striking anywhere in Israel, whereas in 2006, only the north was in range.
Furthermore, thanks to both its arms-buying spree and the image boost it received from the IDFùs failure to defeat it (a feat no regular Arab army ever matched), Hizbullah now controls the Lebanese government so totally that new government guidelines approved last week formally authorize it to attack Israel whenever it wishes. This governmental approval may well grant it access to Lebanese Army materiel, which includes highly sophisticated American equipment àespecially since Lebanonùs new president and former army chief, Michel Suleiman, announced last Friday that he supports “all means” to regain what he terms occupied Lebanese land.
Thus again, should Israel respond to any future Hizbullah aggression, Hizbullah will be able to exact a far greater price than it did last time. That will make Israel think twice about responding, which in turn will make Hizbullah feel freer to attack.
BUT FOR all the importance of the physical element, deterrence is primarily about psychology: Perceptions of a foe’s strength often matter more than reality in deciding whether to attack. And on the psychological plane, the events Diskin cited were devastating.
According to repeated polls, 70 to 85 percent of Palestinians believe that Israel quit Gaza due to anti-Israel terror. And with reason: In 2000, no Israeli government would have considered withdrawing from Gaza unilaterally. Yet a relatively low casualty level àGaza-based terror accounted for less than 15 percent (some 150 people) of Israelùs intifada-related fatalities over the ensuing five years àsufficed to reverse this stance. Thus, clearly, terror worked.
Sheikh Hassan Yousef, who is widely regarded as Hamasùs leader in the West Bank, explained the thought process in an astonishingly frank interview in last Friday’s Ha’aretz. He himself, the interview implies, was unenthusiastic about suicide bombings. Yet Israel’s own actions proved the tactic so effective that its opponents within the organization were effectively silenced.
“Members of the Israeli ÃÅ’peace camp, those who spoke about ending the occupation and withdrawing, pushed us forward in our decision to continue the suicide attacks,” he said. “The cracks in your steadfastness encouraged us greatly and proved that this method is very effective. Ariel Sharon’s plan for disengagement from the Gaza Strip was also a great achievement that resulted from our activities. For us, one of the best proofs of the rift that suicide attacks had created in Israeli society was the phenomenon of refusal to serve in the army. We thought this rift should be deepened, and use of the suicide bomber weapon became a matter of consensus in our organization.”
In short, many Palestinians concluded that Israel was simply too weak to stand up to terror.
Hamas’s takeover of Gaza two years later compounded the impression of Israeli weakness, because for years, Israel had openly backed Fatah against Hamas ÃÂ both verbally and, to some extent, in deeds. And when your proclaimed ally is ignominiously routed by your enemy, that inevitably reflects on you as well.
But the Second Lebanon War was the ultimate proof: After 33 days, the IDF proved unable to defeat a much smaller and more poorly equipped foe. And precisely because Hizbullah was obviously militarily inferior, the only possible explanation for its achievement lay in Israel’s unwillingness to fight: For fear of taking military casualties, Israel refused to launch the necessary ground operation against Hizbullah, preferring to let a million Israelis cower helplessly under daily rocket barrages. The conclusion is obvious: Israel is afraid to confront Hizbullah head-on. And therefore, Hizbullah need not fear attacking it again.
One might argue that all of the above is water under the bridge: It happened, and Israel is stuck with the consequences. Yet the fact that the government has continued making all the same mistakes in the ensuing years (as next week’s column will show) proves that the lessons remain unlearned. And until they are learned, whatever shreds of Israel’s deterrence remain will continue to evaporate.
The new law, passed last week, amends a 1950s-era law stating that to receive government funding, schools must teach a core curriculum determined by the Education Ministry. For decades, this law was systematically ignored: Haredi high schools never taught core curriculum subjects such as English, math and civics, but received state funding anyway. In 2004, the High Court of Justice finally intervened, ruling (properly) that the government could not simply ignore the law. Yet recognizing that schools could not be stripped of funding overnight, it postponed implementation of its ruling to give them time to either change their curricula or prepare themselves for losing their funding.
The current government’s dependence on Shas made its response a foregone conclusion: last week’s amendment, which requires the state to fund 60 percent of a school’s budget even if it does not teach the core curriculum, while also entitling such schools to seek additional funding from local governments. Yet variations on Tamir’s justification have come up too many times in other debates to be dismissed as merely another capitulation to coalition pressure.
Indeed, her stance is seductive precisely because she is half-right: The haredim will never voluntarily adopt the core curriculum, and it may well be impossible to force them to do so at a price society would find tolerable. For instance, Israel is not going to send in the army, as president Dwight Eisenhower did to enforce integration in American schools; our army has more pressing responsibilities.
That fact, however, in no way obligates the government to finance this lifestyle choice.
Tamir’s concern that halting funding would harm haredi children, who should not be made to suffer for their parents’ choices, is simply nonsense: Haredi parents care for their children no less than do non-haredi parents, and haredi society as a whole probably cares more about education than does general Israeli society, despite its different view of what a proper education constitutes. If it possibly could, the haredi community would find alternative funding for its schools, such as increased overseas donations. And if it could not, parental pressure would grow for curriculum changes that would enable state funding to resume. After all, haredi schools in other countries do comply with local curriculum requirements, so this is clearly not a religious impossibility.
That, obviously, is a major argument in favor of financial sanctions: They often do effect societal change. If faced with a choice between closing their doors for lack of funds and changing their curriculum, many haredi schools might view math and English as the lesser of two evils.
BUT EVEN if funding cuts had no effect, because the haredim succeeded in finding alternative funding, a country still has every right to deny state funds to goals the majority deems inimical to its interests and devote them instead to goals it deems essential to its interests. Democracy requires tolerance for dissident lifestyles. It does not require the state to finance them.
This confusion is not unique to haredi issues. It is equally evident in, for instance, the widely held belief that denying state funding to controversial cultural events (such as the Batsheva dance troupe’s famous striptease to the Passover hymn “Who Knows One”) constitutes “censorship,” and is therefore impermissible. Yet denying government funding in no way deprives artists of the right to paint, sculpt or stage whatever they please; it simply requires them to do so at their own expense rather than the state’s.
But perhaps nowhere is this confusion more pernicious than in the debate over drafting haredi yeshiva students. Typically, this debate vibrates between two poles – those who say that exempting haredim from service is unfair, and therefore they must be drafted, and those who argue that a haredi draft is unenforceable at a price Israeli society would be willing to pay, and therefore they must not be drafted. And in fact, both are correct: The exemption is utterly unfair, but enforcing the draft probably would be impossible at a price society would find tolerable.
YET THERE is a third alternative, which is almost never discussed: leaving the exemption in place, but ceasing to fund it. Specifically, the government could stop paying stipends to most yeshiva students (a limited number of grants to exceptional scholars, like those offered exceptional university students, should remain). Precisely because these stipends are what enable thousands of haredim to survive financially without working, they are also what enable them to afford draft-dodging in a country where army service is usually a prerequisite to working legally.
Here, too, fears that innocent haredi children would suffer poverty if the stipends were canceled without enforcing army service is nonsense. Either haredi society would find other funding sources (i.e. donations), or haredi parents, who care no less about their children than do non-haredi parents, would do what was necessary to keep their children fed – even if that meant leaving yeshiva, joining the army’s special haredi battalion and then getting a job. Since haredim in other countries do work, this, too, is clearly not a religious impossibility.
Eliminating the stipends probably would impact on haredi behavior: Some haredi men would almost certainly feel financially constrained to leave yeshiva. But even if the impact were nil, the majority still has every right not to finance a lifestyle it considers inimical to its interests. That money could and should be devoted instead to purposes that the majority deems more important – for instance, rescuing our ailing university system.
A democratic society must have room for dissident views and lifestyles. But that is not the same as saying that it needs to fund them. And until Israeli policy-makers internalize this difference, too many debates will remain stuck in a sterile rut.