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The next day, the paper’s editorial cartoon echoed this suggestion. It showed Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch telling Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz, as a clerk brought in files on the various investigations against Olmert, “let’s have another look at those files.”
Both column and cartoon sent the same message: A major Israeli paper sees nothing implausible – or disturbing – in the idea of our “apolitical” legal professionals abusing their control of the criminal justice system to oust a politician whose policies they oppose.
That same week, Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit revealed that mainstream politicians find this idea equally plausible – though certainly not undisturbing. Shavit reported that 12 hours before the kiss that led to his conviction on indecency charges, then justice minister Haim Ramon told guests at a private dinner that “something was liable to happen to him, because something has happened to every justice minister who intended to shake up the legal system… something that ultimately prevented the minister from filling this post.”
And Ramon was brimming with proposed reforms, including many opposed by the legal establishment.
Shavit also reported a private conversation with a “senior minister” whose “lifelong dream” was to become justice minister, but decided not to seek the post for fear that if he did, “he would shortly find himself questioned under caution in a police investigation.” The minister, wrote Shavit, was convinced that no critic of the legal establishment could serve as justice minister without said establishment “finding a way to remove him… on some criminal pretext or another.” That such suspicions have become so widespread – not only among the system’s critics, but even among ardent defenders such as Haaretz – is a damning indictment of the legal establishment’s behavior. And indeed, the establishment has provided fertile ground for such suspicions.
IN LAST week’s column, I discussed several outrageous elements of the case against Ramon. But Ramon at least did something that could conceivably (though hardly necessarily) justify an indictment. Others have been ousted with far less justification – such as Rafael Eitan, who was denied the then Police Ministry by an indictment, but completely cleared in court.
A particularly egregious example was that of former justice minister Yaakov Neeman. Upon his appointment in 1996, full of plans for reforming the system, a journalist petitioned the High Court and alleged that in 1992 then attorney Neeman tried to suborn a witness. The police and prosecution had known of this allegation for four years, but never bothered investigating it, because there was no case: It rested on a single policeman’s claim that the witness had told him so, which the witness (and Neeman) denied. But with Neeman having become justice minister, then attorney-general Michael Ben-Yair suddenly decided that there was “no choice” but to investigate.
The probe, predictably, produced no evidence of subornation. But instead, then state prosecutor Edna Arbel (Ben-Yair having meanwhile recused himself) indicted Neeman for perjury and obstruction of justice, thereby forcing him to resign.
The charges stemmed from minor errors in Neeman’s submissions to the court and the police – such as a certain date being given as July 22, 1992 rather than July 22, 1991 – which Neeman himself discovered, disclosed and corrected. As the trial court wrote in a blistering verdict nine months later, not only was such an indictment utterly baseless, but if allowed to stand, it would undermine future investigations by making people fear to correct honest errors lest they face perjury charges. By then, however, someone else was already firmly ensconced in the Justice Ministry.
And what of Arbel, who successfully ousted Neeman by concocting this baseless indictment? She was rewarded with a Supreme Court appointment – thereby conferring the legal system’s ultimate seal of approval on her abuse of power and encouraging her successors to follow suit.
WHEN SUCH dubious criminal proceedings are used to oust ministers whose policies are opposed by the legal establishment, this is essentially a putsch against the elected government by unelected policemen, prosecutors and judges. It also severely undermines public faith in the legal system: If policemen, prosecutors and judges use their positions to pursue their own political agendas, why should investigations, indictments and verdicts have more credibility with the public than any other political document?
Faith in democracy and faith in the legal system are the twin glue that enables fractured societies to live together, because the ballot box and the courts are the only two means of peaceably resolving disputes. Abusing criminal proceedings to alter the outcome of the democratic process destroys both: democratic elections become pointless, because officials whose policies upset the legal system will be ousted before those policies can be enacted; and the courts become worthless, because they are viewed as political actors rather than impartial arbiters.
The legal system’s response to this problem has been to declare that if only people would stop undermining public faith in the system through criticism, none of these negative consequences would arise. But as Abraham Lincoln famously said, you cannot fool all the people all the time. The public is quite capable of observing the system and drawing its own conclusions – and that process is evidently occurring now.
When even longtime defenders of the system view politicization of the legal process as eminently plausible, the problem has become too severe to be papered over with mere rhetoric. What is needed is a genuine change in the system’s behavior, and soon – because before long, there may be no public trust left to salvage.
The indictment itself was justifiable: Cabinet ministers should be deterred from sexually harassing employees. Yet the conduct of the case was unacceptable.
It began with the tactics used to persuade H. to file a police complaint against Ramon for forcibly kissing her: Police Dep.-Cmdr. Miri Golan, then head of the fraud squad, told H. that if she failed to do so, Ramon was liable to sue her for slander.
The twenty-something H. did not know that this was nonsense, and the threat, as she later told the media, scared her. But Golan, a senior police officer, assuredly did know it. In short, she deliberately bullied H. into complaining by threatening her with a ridiculously improbable lawsuit.
While the police obviously should try to persuade crime victims to complain, even the court – which was openly hostile to Ramon – thought that Golan’s intimidation tactics went too far. The lawsuit threat was “illegitimate,” wrote the judges, and it “would have been better had it not been used.”
In reality, however, this “illegitimate” behavior was rewarded: Golan added a high-profile conviction to her record, at the negligible price of a verbal slap on the wrist from the court.
THEN THERE were the police wiretaps of conversations by H., which were concealed from the defense until H. had already finished her court testimony. Indeed, they would never have been revealed had Ramon’s lawyers not been tipped off and queried the prosecution – and then, when the prosecutor lied in court and denied the wiretaps’ existence, pressed the issue via the media until the state owned up.
As the court accurately said, the state’s excuse, “that investigators believed the recordings were irrelevant,” was “astonishing… This was a case of real negligence by the prosecution.” The Justice Ministry has at least pledged to investigate this incident. But so far, the chances of anyone paying a price for it look slim.
Also problematic was the police’s decision to fly two investigators to Costa Rica to question H., rather than awaiting her return to Israel after her vacation. As Ramon correctly noted, such expensive zeal is hard to justify at a time when the police are claiming insufficient funds to deal with far graver crimes. This raises serious questions about the legal system’s priorities.
Then there were the incessant police and prosecution leaks to the media, which continued throughout the case. This has become so commonplace that it tends to be overlooked. Yet such leaks are essentially punishment without trial: They make the defendant’s life a living hell, and can irreversibly damage his reputation even if he is ultimately acquitted.
Moreover, they create the impression that the police and prosecution are interested less in the truth than in destroying their victim’s reputation, regardless of his guilt or innocence. After all, if they merely wanted to secure a conviction, media leaks would be unnecessary: It would suffice to present their evidence in court.
RAMON’S CASE, however, was exceptional even for leak-plagued Israel – because the leaks were augmented with on-the-record attacks by no less a personage than our top legal official, Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz. In an interview with Haaretz while the trial was taking place, Mazuz declared that he considered the charges so grave that even if Ramon were acquitted, he would oppose his return to the Justice Ministry. Mazuz then gave another interview to Yediot Aharonot – after the verdict was issued, but before the sentencing, meaning while the trial was still under way – in which he harshly criticized Ramon’s behavior during the investigation and trial.
These attacks were exacerbated by the court’s response: The verdict lambasted the media for “hitherto unknown” violations of the sub judice rules, but was silent about the legal officials who (along with the defense) supplied this material. It thus espoused a truly bizarre double standard: The police and prosecution, which are supposed to enforce the law, are free to discuss a matter that is still under consideration by a court by talking to the media, but the media may not relay this information to the public – which is their legitimate job.
Granted, the material itself was not always of genuine public interest. But the fact that legal officials were trying to besmirch a defendant through such leaks undoubtedly was.
Thus not only did the legal system not condemn such leaks, but our top legal official, Mazuz, enthusiastically joined in, while the courts shifted the blame to the media. That is hardly calculated to increase public trust in the law-enforcement system.
THE VERDICT was also problematic in another way. Both sides agreed that H. jokingly invited Ramon to accompany her to Costa Rica; was photographed, at her own request, draping herself all over him; and later even gave him her phone number. Since the two were almost complete strangers, this hardly adds up to an invitation to a French kiss. But to assert, as three judges unanimously did, that H. was “not flirtatious”? If that is not flirtation, what is? And this unnecessary whitewash gave an otherwise plausible verdict the taste of a legal lynching.
Nobody pays more lip service to the need for public trust in the legal system than policemen, prosecutors and judges. Scarcely a day passes without some legal official making sanctimonious pronouncements on the subject. Yet too much of the legal system appears to view such pronouncements as a mere tool for suppressing criticism, on the grounds that it “undermines public trust,” rather than as reflecting a genuine aspiration.
In truth, what undermines public faith in the legal system is not criticism, but the behavior that gives rise to this criticism, such as that displayed in the Ramon case. And until the legal system begins seriously combating such behavior, public distrust of the system will continue to grow.
This question epitomizes the problem that has afflicted Israel’s leadership for 15 years now. Contrary to popular belief, however, that problem is not the lack of a white knight. Rather, it is the public’s frantic pursuit of such a savior – specifically, someone who will finally solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The truth is that white knights are rare even in the best-governed countries. Abraham Lincoln, for instance, was a great president. Yet he was merely an interlude between 25 years of undistinguished predecessors and 35 years of equally undistinguished successors. Similarly, Winston Churchill was an interlude between 18 years of unmemorable (or infamous) predecessors and 34 years of unmemorable successors. That is the norm in all democracies: occasional great leaders enlivening long lists of mediocrities who merely mind the store. Some of the latter are better shopkeepers and some worse, but most keep their countries lurching along on a more or less even keel.
Moreover, even genuine white knights seldom provide easy and painless solutions. Lincoln, for instance, preserved the United States and ended slavery, but at the cost of a four-year civil war with almost a million casualties. Similarly, Churchill enabled the Nazis’ defeat, but only by rallying his people to stand firm despite heavy casualties during a year when Britain faced a triumphal Germany alone.
In 1992, however, Israelis lost patience with normality and its largely mediocre leaders and began pursuing a fantasy – not merely a white knight, but one with a magic bullet that would solve the Palestinian problem now. And the results have been far worse than mere mediocrity.
THE VICIOUS cycle began when Yitzhak Shamir, a quintessential shopkeeper, was ousted in favor of Yitzhak Rabin’s grandiose promises of peace and an end to terror. A year later, Rabin signed the Oslo Accords. But not only did terror not disappear, it surged: Within two and a half years after Oslo, Palestinian terrorists killed more Israelis than during the entire preceding decade. And, as a “bonus,” internal hatreds hit new heights, culminating in Rabin’s assassination.
Seeking salvation from Oslo’s carnage, Israelis then elected Binyamin Netanyahu in 1996. And by storekeeping standards, he was reasonably successful: Deaths from terrorism dropped from 211 in 1993-96 to 63 in 1996-99, and his economic policies reined in the rampant deficits inherited from Rabin, laying the groundwork for rapid growth under his successor. But Netanyahu made no attempt to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; he merely managed it. And so, in 1999, Israelis replaced him with a new white knight, Ehud Barak.
Like Rabin, Barak won by promising dramatic moves. And he quickly delivered, withdrawing unilaterally from Lebanon in May 2000 and holding final-status talks with the Palestinians that July.
The results of the former became clear only with last summer’s war, which killed as many Israelis in one month as, on average, six years of pre-withdrawal fighting in Lebanon, with the added “bonus” of Hizbullah rocket fire paralyzing the north and inflicting major economic damage.
The results of Barak’s Palestinian policy, in contrast, were quickly evident: The intifada broke out in September 2000, and over the next six years, Palestinian terror killed more Israelis than during the entire previous half-century, while also sparking a deep recession.
The intifada persuaded Israelis to replace Barak with Ariel Sharon in 2001. And Sharon proved a first-class shopkeeper: His conflict-management strategy reduced Israeli fatalities by about 50 percent a year from mid-2002 on, and that, combined with economic reforms launched by his finance minister, Netanyahu, enabled the rapid growth and falling unemployment of the past two years.
BUT THAT was not enough for Israelis: By autumn 2003, with the decline in terror produced by Sharon’s conflict-management strategy already evident and the immediate danger therefore past, they began seeking another white knight, who would not merely manage the conflict, but solve it. Demands for such a solution proliferated: Yossi Beilin’s Geneva Initiative, a press conference by four former Shin Bet chiefs who slammed Sharon for managing the conflict rather than seeking to end it, a numerically small but high-profile campaign of refusal to serve by IDF reservists. The media hammered him. And his approval ratings plummeted.
Sharon, a master politician, responded by transforming himself into what the public wanted: a white knight with a new plan for solving the conflict, known as unilateral disengagement. And it worked: He became the media’s darling, he was feted internationally and his approval ratings soared. Indeed, his promise of a solution was so enthralling that his successor, Ehud Olmert, won election in 2006 on a pledge to repeat it in the West Bank.
But, like all the previous grand plans, the mid-2005 disengagement soon proved a disaster: Palestinians, viewing it as a terror-induced retreat, responded by electing Hamas and quadrupling rocket launches at southern Israel from evacuated Gaza.
The desperate quest for a white knight had another negative consequence as well: Governmental corruption soared, because the media, and the public, were willing to tolerate venality in any leader who promised that magical solution to the conflict. After Sharon announced the disengagement, for instance, the media suddenly stopped accusing him of corruption and became his staunchest defender. And the public, as his skyrocketing approval ratings showed, followed suit.
Similarly, the multiple police investigations in Olmert’s past (as opposed to the new ones launched since) were well-known during last year’s election campaign. But the public did not care, as long as he offered a plan to solve the conflict.
Thus the last thing Israel needs now is yet another would-be white knight. Instead, it needs a long stretch of competent shopkeepers: people who will keep terror within tolerable bounds, hold the economy on course, perhaps address some long-neglected domestic problems and give us all time to lick our wounds. Over the past 15 years, the quest for a white knight has brought nothing but disaster. By any reasonable criteria, the uninspiring shopkeepers have done much better.
One such effort involves preparing Palestinians for necessary concessions. For 13 years, Israeli leaders have told their public that any agreement will require sweeping territorial concessions, including in Jerusalem. This has radically altered Israeli public opinion: Most Israelis now favor such concessions, whereas 13 years ago most opposed them.
In contrast, even “moderate” Palestinian leaders like Mahmoud Abbas have told their public for 13 years that any agreement will allow refugees and their descendents to “return” to Israel. Consequently, no Palestinian leader can currently sign a deal that does not allow the “right of return”: His public would crucify him. Yet since the “right of return” means liquidating Israel demographically, no Israeli leader could accept it.
Any agreement thus depends on changing Palestinians’ opinions on this point. And that begins with finally telling them the truth.
World leaders have repeatedly detailed the concessions they expect from Israel. But with two exceptions (the Clinton proposal of 2000 and George Bush’s letter of 2004), they have been silent about what they expect from the Palestinians.
For instance, the EU’s official “position on the Middle East peace process” (posted on its Web site) merely proposes “a just, viable, realistic and agreed solution” to the refugee problem. The road map is similarly vague, urging “an agreed, just, fair and realistic solution” for the refugees. The Arab League’s Beirut declaration, which the road map declares a “foundation” for any settlement, demands a “just solution … in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194”; that resolution states that “refugees wishing to return to their homes … should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.”
None of these preclude Palestinian fantasies about what they deem the only “just” solution: the “right of return.” Similarly, while world leaders repeatedly declare their vision of a Palestinian state alongside “Israel,” most refuse to use the term “Jewish state,” for fear of offending “Arab sensibilities.” This, too, encourages Palestinian fantasies of a binational Israel achieved via the “right of return.” And until world leaders disabuse them of these fantasies, Palestinians will continue clinging to them.
ANOTHER CRUCIAL step is creating a Palestinian Authority that serves ordinary Palestinians instead of merely those in power – because until this happens, Palestinian leaders will lack credibility to sell any peace agreement to their public. Yet under both Fatah and Hamas, the health system, for instance, received less than one-third the funding allocated to the security services, which each faction packed with its own loyalists.
The EU, as the PA’s major donor, has considerable leverage in this regard, yet it has largely refused to use it. For years, it simply transferred funds and let the PA do as it pleased. Since last year, it has specifically channeled its money to Abbas, but still without any strings to ensure that it helps ordinary Palestinians, and not merely his Fatah movement. Yet absent such pressure, Palestinian leaders will always prefer placating the men with guns.
Most important of all, however, is action on Palestinian terror. The one benefit that any deal is supposed to give Israel is peace. Yet despite no fewer than five signed agreements in which the Palestinians pledged to end terror, Israeli casualties have soared since the “peace process” began: In the two and a half years following the 1993 Oslo Accord, Palestinian terrorists killed more Israelis than in the entire preceding decade; over the last six years, they killed more Israelis than during the entire preceding half-century. Israel’s mid-2005 evacuation of Gaza resulted in some 1,200 rocket launches at southern Israel from Gaza last year, including dozens since the “cease-fire” began in November; this compares to about 300 at Israel and the Gaza settlements combined in 2004.
Many Israelis are thus reluctant to make further territorial concessions, which would bring their largest cities into Palestinian rocket range, without solid proof that the PA can and will deliver on peace. Yet instead of backing this demand, the international community (Bush occasionally excepted) has consistently pressured Israel to keep making concessions despite the terror. That has convinced the Palestinians that terror is no impediment to statehood.
On its own turf, the EU acts very differently. Just this month, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Zapatero ended a peace process with ETA and publicly apologized for his “clear mistake” in trusting it, after ETA broke a nine-month truce with an attack that killed two people – far fewer than the 1,126 Israelis killed in almost daily Palestinian attacks since 2000.
Similarly, the Northern Ireland peace process was suspended in 2002 even though the IRA had maintained a truce since 1998, merely because it engaged in acts that could be preludes to terror: collecting intelligence on potential targets, raising funds via criminal activity and training recruits in weapons use. The talks resumed only last year, after the IRA verifiably decommissioned its arms.
If the world wants Israel to allow a Palestinian state within shooting range of its largest cities, it must adopt a similar approach toward the Palestinians: Just as Israel proved its willingness and ability to evacuate settlements through the disengagement, the PA must prove its willingness and ability to end anti-Israel terror by maintaining a real truce for an extended period – and until it does, Israel will not be pressured for further concessions. That approach eventually persuaded the IRA to give up its arms, and it might eventually persuade the PA to halt terror. But as long as the world tolerates Palestinian terror, the PA will have no incentive to crack down. And Israel will refuse to endanger its citizens through additional concessions.
The steps outlined above are clearly long-term processes; they will not produce an agreement overnight. However, they might lay the groundwork for an agreement down the road. And that seems preferable to yet more empty talk – which will never produce any agreement at all.
What remains obscure, however, is what these leaders hope to accomplish, given the unpromising reality on the Palestinian side:
• The Palestinian Authority is controlled by Hamas, which openly advocates Israel’s eradication. World leaders suggest circumventing this problem by dealing instead with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah faction lost last year’s elections. That makes about as much sense as having opposition MK Yossi Beilin negotiate a treaty on Israel’s behalf, or opposition MP David Cameron negotiate a treaty on Britain’s behalf. You might (or might not) reach an agreement, but it will be meaningless, because the signatory has no authority to implement it.
• Even the “moderate” Fatah’s self-proclaimed minimum demands are unacceptable to any Israeli government. Just last Thursday, for instance, in a major speech commemorating Fatah’s founding, Abbas declared that Palestinian refugees’ “right of return” to Israel is “nonnegotiable” and rejected “any attempt to resettle the refugees in other countries.” Fatah’s most popular politician, Marwan Barghouti, echoed this on Saturday, saying that “the least” Palestinians can accept is a state in the pre-1967 borders, Jerusalem as its capital, freedom for all prisoners and the refugees’ return to Israel.
Since the “right of return” is a euphemism for eliminating the Jewish state demographically, even the most dovish Israelis reject it. Yet since Palestinian leaders, including “moderates” like Abbas, have told their publics for 13 years that any final-status deal will include it, no Palestinian leader is currently capable of signing an agreement that does not – his public would crucify him.
• Violent Hamas-Fatah infighting has further undermined both factions’ credibility among ordinary Palestinians. And this credibility was already shaky, since both factions, while in power, preferred divvying up the spoils to promoting the general welfare. Under both Fatah and Hamas, for instance, the health system received only 7 percent of the PA’s budget, while the security services, which each faction packed with its own loyalists, received 24.3 percent.
Similarly, after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed to release $100 million to Abbas to alleviate humanitarian distress, Abbas aides told The New York Times that the money would mainly be used “to strengthen his Fatah movement and pay salaries to Fatah loyalists.” This behavior spurred Palestinians to oust Fatah last year and is now damaging Hamas’s popularity. Yet this lack of credibility makes it even less likely that Abbas, or any other Palestinian leader, could sell any agreement acceptable to Israel to his own people.
• Any final-status agreement is supposed to grant Israel one main benefit: peace. Yet in fact, ever since the “peace process” began, Palestinian terror has soared: In the two and a half years following the 1993 Oslo Accords, Palestinian terrorists killed more Israelis than in the entire preceding decade; over the last six years, they killed more Israelis than during the entire preceding half-century.
SIMILARLY, the August 2005 evacuation of the Gaza Strip resulted in some 1,200 rockets being fired at southern Israel from Gaza last year (according to Military Intelligence); this compares to about 300 rocket launches at Israel and the Gaza settlements combined in 2004, the last full year before the pullout. All this occurred despite no fewer than five signed agreements in which the Palestinians pledged to halt terror, plus repeated verbal cease-fire agreements. During the current “cease-fire,” for instance, southern Israel has suffered dozens of rocket strikes.
Nor do even “moderate” Palestinian leaders hesitate to encourage this. In last Thursday’s speech, for example, Abbas told Palestinians that their “rifles should be directed against the [Israeli] occupation.” He has also endorsed the Prisoners’ Document, which explicitly calls for continued terrorism against Israel, and has repeatedly said that he will not use force to stop anti-Israel terror.
Given the record of broken promises, the massive arms smuggling by both Hamas and Fatah and the urgings of both factions’ leaders that these arms be used against Israel, any future agreement could easily produce a similar wave of anti-Israel terror. Thus, absent concrete evidence to the contrary, many Israelis will be reluctant to agree to major territorial concessions, which would put Israel’s largest cities within rocket and even rifle range of the PA, in exchange for yet another unenforceable promise.
Given all this, it is hard to see what “reviving Israeli-Palestinian negotiations” could accomplish. From Israel’s perspective, there is nobody to talk with and nothing to talk about.
In contrast, as The Jerusalem Post noted in Monday’s editorial, Israel – despite broken promises on issues ranging from evacuating outposts to removing checkpoints – has proven that on the big issues, it is ready to deal. Unlike Palestinian leaders’ refusal to prepare their public for conceding the “right of return,” for instance, leaders of every major Israeli party have told their public for 13 years that sweeping territorial concessions, including in Jerusalem, will be necessary; as a result, most Israelis now support such concessions, whereas 13 years ago, a majority opposed them. Similarly, whereas the Palestinians have repeatedly failed to prove their willingness to halt terror, the disengagement conclusively proved Israel’s willingness to evacuate settlements.
Under these circumstances, “reviving negotiations” would be not merely pointless, but detrimental – because by trying to create an illusion of momentum, the international community is not only generating expectations that can only be disappointed, it is also neglecting alternative steps that could genuinely help.
These steps, which I will outline next week, would not produce an instant solution; only the messiah could do that. But they would lay necessary groundwork for a solution down the road. And that seems far more productive than mere talk for talk’s sake.
Yet this popularity is mystifying – because Livni’s record gives every reason to believe that she would be as dismal a premier as her current boss.
As The Jerusalem Post correctly noted in a recent editorial, the very fact that she is conducting an independent foreign policy, diametrically opposed to that of the government in which she serves, is problematic: Israel cannot effectively make its case to the world when senior ministers publicly espouse contradictory positions. But the content of her policies, as outlined in recent speeches and interviews, is even more problematic.
On Syria, for instance, Livni told the Knesset Foreign Affairs Committee last month that Israel must conduct a “sustained evaluation” of Syria’s intentions, and until then, “there is no point in making any declarations for or against” negotiating with Damascus. She thereby publicly undercut the prime minister, who opposes talks with Syria on the grounds that it has demonstrated no real readiness for peace. What was truly astonishing, however, was that her ministry’s political research center had already prepared just such an evaluation, which she herself submitted to the committee – and its conclusions were identical to Ehud Olmert’s.
According to the ministry study, Damascus has shown no signs of willingness to comply with two key Israeli goals in any deal: ending Syrian support for Iran and for Hizbullah in Lebanon. In other words, even Livni’s normally pro-negotiations ministry believes that talks with Syria, based on the available evidence, would relieve international pressure on Damascus without achieving Israel’s strategic goals.
Israel therefore has a clear interest in demanding, as Olmert has, that Syria provide evidence to the contrary before negotiations start. Yet Livni is publicly undermining this position.
BUT IF her handling of Syria is problematic, Livni’s proposals on the Palestinian front are downright disastrous.
According to a report in Haaretz, which Livni has not denied, her plan is as follows: Israel should reach an agreement with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas under which Israel would withdraw from the entire West Bank east of the fence (about 90 percent of the territory), allowing a Palestinian state with temporary borders to be established there and in Gaza. Abbas would then run for election on this plan; should he win, Israel would gradually implement the withdrawal in exchange for Palestinian action on terrorism.
Unfortunately, this proposal has two glaring flaws. One is Livni’s na ve belief that withdrawal, once promised, can be conditioned on Palestinian counterterrorism efforts. The reality, as the Oslo process proved, is that Israel will face overwhelming international pressure to keep its promise even if Abbas does nothing on terrorism. In the two and a half years following the 1993 Oslo Accord, Palestinian terrorists killed more Israelis than during the entire preceding decade. Yet international pressure nevertheless forced Israel to execute four withdrawals over the next six years – each in exchange for the same pledge to fight terror that the Palestinians had so blatantly violated after previous withdrawals.
Given that Abbas has so far demonstrated zero willingness to fight terror, Livni’s proposal would thus almost certainly result in Israel being forced to withdraw to the fence without any abatement in Palestinian terrorism. That, inter alia, would expose Israel’s largest cities to the same rocket bombardments now afflicting Sderot.
Equally disturbing, however, is Livni’s evident failure to consider the next step. Clearly, after withdrawing to the fence, Israel will face enormous pressure to proceed to final-status talks. Equally clearly, it will have to make further concessions during those talks. But under Livni’s plan, Israel would already have conceded everything east of the fence. It would therefore have nothing left to concede but what it currently defines as core interests: the settlement blocs and Jerusalem – i.e. the territory west of the fence – or the “right of return.” In short, Livni’s proposal violates the most basic rule of negotiations: Always keep something in reserve for the next stage.
But Livni’s problem is not merely poor negotiating skills. Rather, she has adopted an ideology that ensures that even if she scrapped this plan, any subsequent proposals would be equally inane – namely, the myth of Palestinian centrality.
As she explained in a Haaretz interview, Livni considers all other issues, such as the double whammy of Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons and its threats to eradicate Israel, strictly secondary. In her words, “the Iranian issue is, of course, a problem. But my main commitment is to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. I think that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is a keg of gunpowder on which we’re sitting and for which we have to find a solution.”
The solution, she added, is a Palestinian state alongside an Israeli one, and “I feel that I have an obligation to make that happen.”
In other words, all the issues that have actually prevented the establishment of such a state – Palestinian terror, the Palestinians’ refusal to abandon their dream of eradicating Israel demographically via the “right of return,” the broader Arab world’s refusal to abandon that same dream – are irrelevant. What matters is the lack of such a state.
Moreover, the Palestinians bear no responsibility for this lack: It is Israel, in the person of its foreign minister, which has the “obligation to make that happen.”
The implications of this worldview are obvious: First, details such as the security threat posed by Palestinian suicide bombers and rocket launchers must give way before the overriding strategic goal of creating a Palestinian state. And second, if such a state fails to arise, it is entirely Israel’s fault – since it is Israel, after all, that has the “obligation to make that happen.”
Thus both the growing international antipathy toward Israel and the growing pressure to forfeit its security concerns for the sake of “progress” are entirely justified.
Israel’s worst enemy could not have put it better.
Former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, for instance, gave an address last month in which he bemoaned the fact that “60 years after the liberation of the Nazi death camps, and 30 years after the Cambodian killing fields, the promise of ‘never again’ is ringing hollow. The tragedy of Darfur has raged for over three years now, and still reports pour in of villages being destroyed by the hundreds and of the brutal treatment of civilians spreading into neighboring countries. How can an international community that claims to uphold human rights allow this horror to continue?”
Similarly, The New York Times ran an editorial last week blasting the international inaction on Darfur. Noting that “the killings and atrocities have spilled across Sudan’s borders” into Chad and the Central African Republic, it wrote: “If Darfur’s grim tally – several hundred thousand dead, two million driven from their homes – can’t persuade the world to act, then perhaps the threat of a regional conflagration will.”
What is remarkable about all this hand-wringing, however, is that it is coming from two of the institutions most responsible for the world’s inaction – namely, the UN and the media.
That might seem counterintuitive, since neither the UN nor the media themselves have the power to take any effective action: that can only be done by national governments, either within or outside the UN framework. But in reality, no government will engage in difficult, unpleasant action that serves no clear national interest unless forced to do so by an overwhelming pressure of public opinion. And that pressure can only be generated by those who control the world’s bully pulpits – first and foremost, the media and the UN secretary general.
Instead, however, both institutions have consistently treated Darfur as much less important than other, far less deadly conflicts. Western publics, and therefore their governments, have consequently followed suit.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for instance, has claimed some 5,400 lives – 4,300 Palestinians and 1,100 Israelis – over the past six years. That compares to an estimated 400,000 people (no precise statistics exist) killed in Darfur over the last three.
Yet an archives search reveals that The New York Times published only 418 articles on Darfur last year, compared to 2,528 on Israel and 1,146 on the Palestinians (the discrepancy between the latter two stems from Israel’s war with Lebanon – which, using the highest estimates, killed some 1,100 Lebanese and 160 Israelis). That makes Darfur’s 400,000 dead, by NYT standards, about one-third as important as 4,300 dead Palestinians.
OTHER LEADING newspapers worldwide acted similarly. The Times of London, for instance, published 142 articles on Darfur last year, compared to 579 on Israel and 248 on the Palestinians. For Le Monde, the figures were 253, 500 and 500; in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, they were 239, 1,898 and 638. The Spanish El Pais was particularly egregious: A mere 120 articles on Darfur, compared to 2,730 on Israel and 2,013 on the Palestinians, giving an Israel:Darfur ratio of 23 to 1.
But even these figures understate the skew, because they ignore the equally important issue of prominence. Take, for instance, a pair of articles that appeared two days apart in the NYT’s wholly-owned European subsidiary, the International Herald Tribune. One described Israel’s accidental shelling of a house in Gaza, killing 18 Palestinians. That merited a four-column headline in large type and 30 column-inches of text. The other reported that over the past week, 220 Chadians had been killed by the same Sudanese militiamen responsible for the Darfur genocide. That merited a mere brief: two inches of text under a small-print, one-column head. If the media considers 18 Palestinian lives to be worth 15 times as much space as 220 slain Chadians, is it surprising that Western governments and publics view the slaughter in Africa as low-priority?
THE UN’S behavior has been similarly warped. The UN Human Rights Council, for instance, finally held its first session on Darfur last month, but declined to condemn the Sudanese government for the slaughter. Yet the council found time to adopt no less than three resolutions condemning Israel this year (even Annan termed this “disproportionate”).
Similarly, the General Assembly devoted three full days in November, as it does every year, to debating and condemning the Israeli “occupation.” If you cannot recall an equivalent session on Darfur, the problem is not your memory. Altogether, the GA’s fall session passed no fewer than 25 resolutions condemning alleged Israeli human rights violations. But it could not be bothered to pass a single resolution condemning the genocide in Darfur.
The UN also has numerous bodies, such as a permanent Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, which are devoted exclusively to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and therefore naturally strive to focus attention on it. Palestinian refugees even have an entire agency, UNRWA, all to themselves, while all other refugees worldwide must compete for attention from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. It is thus hardly surprising that Darfur’s two million refugees are lost in the Palestinians’ shadow.
Finally, there is Annan himself – who declared last November that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the most important in the world, because “no other conflict carries such a powerful symbolic and emotional charge among people far removed from the battlefield.”
If the UN secretary-general considers the “symbolic charge” generated by 4,300 dead Palestinians more important than the actual deaths of some 400,000 Darfur residents, is it surprising that many governments deem the slaughter in Darfur equally trivial?
Like all human beings, those who run governments can only focus on so many issues at one time – and in democratic countries, they usually choose the ones that dominate the public square.
Thus as long as the UN and the media continue to accord the Darfur genocide such low priority, one can confidently predict that global inaction in the face of this genocide will continue.
I have not read the book. But the column alone proves that some of those epithets are justified.
For instance, Carter complains that “an enormous wall snakes through … what is left of the West Bank … obviously designed to acquire more property and protect the Israeli colonies already built.” Aside from the misleading terminology (the barrier is mostly fence, not wall) and the false implication of massive annexation (more than 90 percent of the West Bank remains on the Palestinian side), there is an obvious problem with his “obvious” explanation of the fence’s objective: Not only does Israel claim that its purpose is stopping suicide bombers, but the evidence supports that claim.
First, the fence was only inaugurated two years into the intifada, as Israel’s death toll from terror attacks approached the 500 mark. Carter not only fails to mention this, he disingenuously implies that it has existed for decades by preceding his diatribe with the phrase “for 39 years, Israel has occupied Palestinian land…”
Second, Israeli casualties of Palestinian terror have declined by almost 50 percent a year since construction began in 2002, indicating that the fence is in fact serving its stated defensive purpose.
To obscure this inconvenient fact, Carter offers an astounding alternative explanation: “Hamas declared a unilateral cease-fire in August 2004 … which they claim is the reason for reductions in casualties to Israeli citizens.”
Even overlooking the six-month inaccuracy – Hamas announced the “lull” only in February 2005 – this “explanation” ignores the fact that the drop in casualties began fully two years earlier, following Operation Defensive Shield in spring 2002. Thus by the intifada’s third year, October 2002 through September 2003, the Israeli death toll was already a whopping 47% lower than the second year’s figure.
EVEN MORE astonishing, however, is Carter’s disregard for the fact that Hamas has proudly claimed credit for various deadly attacks even since February 2005 – including the firing of hundreds of rockets at southern Israel and the cross-border raid that kidnapped one soldier and killed two this past June.
Then there is Carter’s claim that “Mahmoud Abbas … has sought to negotiate with Israel for almost six years, without success. Hamas leaders support such negotiations, promising to accept the results if approved by a Palestinian referendum.”
Carter somehow neglects to mention that for four of those six years, the Palestinian Authority’s leader was not Abbas, but Yasser Arafat – who had already rejected an offer of a Palestinian state in some 95% of the territories, including east Jerusalem, in July 2000, and underscored his rejection by launching the intifada, which has thus far claimed over 1,100 Israeli lives. Carter also neglects to mention that a year after Arafat’s death, Palestinian voters ousted Abbas’s party and elected Hamas, which openly advocates Israel’s eradication.
Most astonishing, however, is his falsification of Hamas’s position. Hamas indeed has no problem with letting Abbas negotiate further Israeli withdrawals. But Carter neglects to mention the caveat that Hamas leaders reiterate almost daily: The most they are willing to offer – in exchange for a complete Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines, plus a “right of return” for Palestinian refugees – is a multiyear truce, after which they will resume trying to eradicate Israel.
Consider, for instance, PA Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar’s statement of his party’s position in October: “We will never recognize Israel, and the end of the Zionists will be like the end of the Crusaders, Persians and British… We want all of Palestine, every centimeter, from the sea to the river, from Rosh Hanikra to Rafah. If we can establish a state in the 1967 borders we will do so, but that does not mean we will give up our right to a centimeter of the land of Palestine.”
Carter can hardly be ignorant of these statements, because unlike Arafat – who reserved such comments for the Arabic-language media – Hamas leaders obligingly repeat them for the English-language press. So with the party that controls the PA openly declaring its commitment to Israel’s destruction, just what does Carter think there is to negotiate about?
THEN THERE is Carter’s complaint that “food supplies in Gaza [are] equivalent to those among the poorest families in sub-Sahara Africa,” due to “economic restrictions imposed on [the Palestinians] by Israel and the United States because 42 percent voted for Hamas candidates in this year’s election.”
That “42%” is an ingenious touch, allowing him to omit the fact that Hamas won an absolute parliamentary majority. He also neglects to mention Hamas’s open advocacy of Israel’s destruction, or that the main “economic restriction” imposed by Israel and the US was halting fund transfers to the Hamas government. All this enables him to avoid uncomfortable questions, such as why either Jerusalem or Washington should transfer money to a government that openly seeks Israel’s eradication.
His touching comparison to sub-Sahara Africa also ignores the fact that even after Hamas’s election, Palestinians remain the largest per-capita recipients of international aid in the world. Indeed, the PA’s largest donor, the European Union, increased aid to the Palestinians by 27% this year, to $865 million. The only difference is that instead of going to the Hamas government, this money is being funneled through Abbas and organizations such as UNRWA. If it is not reaching needy Palestinians, that is hardly Israel’s doing.
Finally, there is Carter’s blithe claim that “an overwhelming majority” of Palestinians want peace. Given repeated polls showing that, for instance, 67% of Palestinians support Hamas’s refusal to recognize Israel, 63% support bombarding Israeli cities with rockets, 57% support suicide bombings against Israeli civilians and 75% favor kidnapping Israeli soldiers, it is hard to know on what Carter bases this optimism.
But of course, that question presumes that Carter cares about the facts. His entire column says otherwise.
So if MKs refuse to exercise this responsibility, how can they complain about the court filling the vacuum? MKs typically advance two reasons for their reluctance to act: Curbing the court would be “undemocratic,” because a strong Supreme Court is vital to democracy, and it would undermine “the rule of law,” by demonstrating legislative contempt for the law’s highest arbiter. Both arguments, however, are demonstrably false.
While courts are unarguably vital to democracy, the judiciary is merely one of three branches of government, all of which are supposed to be circumscribed by checks and balances to ensure that no one branch accumulates excessive power. For this reason, almost all democracies impose curbs on their Supreme Court, just as they do on their executive and legislature: Otherwise, the unelected court could easily come to dominate the two elected branches.
Indeed, the complete absence of curbs on Israel’s Supreme Court has no parallel in the democratic world. Thus rectifying this situation, far from being undemocratic, would bolster democracy by restoring a proper balance among the three branches of government.
This would require legislation on some or all of the following issues:
THE SECOND argument advanced against curbing the court is that this would somehow undermine the “rule of law.” Again, this contains a kernel of truth: Respect for the law, and for the courts that enforce it, is indeed vital to any democracy. Yet the justices’ own behavior has already undermined public trust in the court so badly that drastic reforms are essential to salvage it.
According to last month’s Peace Index survey, only 57 percent of Israelis still view the court’s contribution to public life more positively than negatively. Granted, other government institutions scored worse. Nevertheless, this is a steep decline from the court’s 85% approval rating a decade earlier. And this freefall will continue unless the court’s behavior changes.
Former chief justice Aharon Barak declared last month that “attacks on … the Supreme Court are a worthwhile and cheap price to pay for the achievement of the constitutional revolution,” meaning the court’s power to exercise judicial review over anything and everything. “The price of a decline in the Supreme Court’s status … is as nothing compared to [this achievement],” he said.
But Barak could not be more wrong. Faith in the courts is essential – because without it, a key nonviolent outlet for redressing grievances would be lost. Yet by relentlessly intervening in political controversies that should be left to the elected branches, and by doing so on dubious grounds such as “reasonability” or rights of its own invention, the court has made itself just another political actor, which can no more be trusted to judge impartially than any other politician.
Even worse, its frequent overruling of the cabinet and Knesset has left large swathes of the public feeling that democracy itself is pointless – because even if they win an election, the court will thwart their political program. And nothing could be more devastating to either democracy or the rule of law than that.
Therefore, it is precisely those who cherish these values who should be leading the charge to curb the court.
The Right is up in arms over Tamir’s decision that textbook maps of Israel should include the Green Line. Yet on this point, Tamir is obviously correct. Schools are supposed to give children the basic knowledge they need to function as informed citizens, and in Israel that means knowing where the Green Line is. Without that knowledge, it is impossible to form an intelligent opinion on the No. 1 political issue of recent decades: whether Israel should withdraw to the Green Line or its vicinity.
Indeed, the Right should be the first to demand that children receive this information. For years, it has accused the Left of obfuscating the dangers inherent in withdrawal, but it is precisely the widespread ignorance of the Green Line’s location that makes this possible. How can anyone understand how vulnerable withdrawal to the Green Line would leave central Israel if he does not know just how close that would bring Tel Aviv to Palestinian rocket launchers? Or how easily gunmen could hit at Kfar Saba from the Green Line? Or how quickly an army stationed on the Green Line could march to the sea and sever Israel in two? For precisely this reason, a study conducted two years ago by two Hebrew University professors, which was quoted in last week’s Haaretz, found that when university students who identified themselves as rightists were shown maps of the Green Line, their professed willingness to engage in political activism rose sharply. Before seeing the maps, most had pictured the West Bank as much smaller than it is; learning the truth made them realize just how high the stakes really are. (In contrast, the maps had little impact on students who identified themselves as leftists.)
Clearly, it would be wrong for textbooks to show the Green Line as a border, which it is not now and never was: It is the War of Independence armistice line, which neither side accepted as a final border. However, there is no indication that Tamir intends any such thing, and the problem is easily avoidable – for instance, by making borders solid lines and the Green Line a dotted one.
IN CONTRAST to the map issue, what should be arousing outrage – among people of all political persuasions – is the new geography curriculum. This curriculum, which is due to be introduced next year in 10th, 11th and 12th grades, would effectively turn geography classes into political indoctrination sessions.
The new curriculum (which was actually developed under Tamir’s predecessor, Limor Livnat, but is being launched by Tamir) is supposed to make geography more “relevant” by discussing “different approaches for delineating [Israel’s] final borders.”
The students will be presented with the three main options – returning to the Green Line, retaining all the territories, and various proposals for border adjustments and compromises – and will be expected to “recognize and understand” these different approaches.
“The question of borders will become an issue that is debated in the classroom,” Dalia Panig, the Education Ministry’s coordinator for geography studies, told a Hebrew newspaper. “There is a constant debate in Israeli society regarding the different approaches to determining the borders, and there is no reason it shouldn’t take place in the classroom.”
In the ministry’s fantasy, teachers would be strictly neutral, giving equal time and equal backing to each approach. That, however, assumes that teachers are robots rather than human beings.
Virtually every Israeli has an opinion – often a passionate one – on where Israel’s borders should be, and teachers are no exception. And it is beyond the ability of most human beings to serve as fair and neutral moderators in political debates over issues on which they themselves have strong opinions. Inevitably, no matter how hard they try to remain neutral, teachers will end up taking sides: Those with leftist views will challenge rightist students with pointed questions while offering only simplistic and easily shot-down challenges to leftist students, and those with rightist views will do the same thing in reverse.
Moreover, no matter how hard teachers try to encourage debate, students who disagree with their teacher may well be reluctant to espouse their views, for fear of antagonizing the teacher just when they need him most: 10th through 12th grade is when students take their matriculation (bagrut) exams, which determine to what universities and even what departments they can gain admittance. And 50 percent of a student’s final bagrut score comes not from the exam itself, but from his classroom performance, as determined by his teachers. That is a strong incentive to self-censorship, and it is liable to result in classroom debates being even more skewed toward the teacher’s views.
Finally, there is the inevitable effect of peer pressure. In classes where most students are on one side of the debate – a likely outcome in many schools, given that political views in Israel tend to fracture along religious and geographical fault lines – students on the other side will be reluctant to press their case for fear of antagonizing their peers. That will make the debate still more one-sided.
The result is that students who come into class without strong views on the subject are likely to emerge thoroughly indoctrinated by whichever political position is adopted by the teacher and the majority of the other students – both because they will not have heard the other side’s best arguments, and because the combination of teacher and peer pressure is highly unconducive to forming independent views. And that is a gross abuse of the education system’s power.
Schools are supposed to give children the information they need to function as adult citizens, and knowledge of where the Green Line is located is indeed essential for an Israeli citizen today. But when schools cross the line from instilling knowledge to political indoctrination, democrats of every political stripe should rise up in protest.