The election results in Israel were unfortunate in the sense that they didn’t produce a clear winner or a clear mandate. Shimon Peres has passed over Kadima Party leader Tzipi Livni and granted Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu the first chance to form a government. Netanyahu has six weeks to form a majority coalition, but his options are terrible. At least for now, both the Kadima Party and the Labor Party are refusing to join the government. If Netanyahu cannot change their minds, he’ll have no choice but to form a government of the hard right, including hard-line religious parties and Avigdor Lieberman’s racist Yisrael Beiteinu Party, which seeks to require loyalty oaths on Israel’s Arab citizenry as a condition of continued enfranchisement.
With Livni out, Netanyahu might have little choice but to forge a coalition with nationalist and religious parties opposed to peacemaking with the Palestinians and Israel’s other Arab neighbors.
This could set Israel on a collision course with the U.S., the Jewish state’s top international patron, and its new president, who has vowed to make Mideast peace a top priority. And Netanyahu’s hold on power would be more tenuous in a narrow coalition of rightists, where his allies could bring down the government in the face of any concession for peace.
What does Barack Obama think about Israel’s hard-right (and Likud, in particular)? Here’s what he had to say about them in February 2008.
“I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt a unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you’re anti-Israel and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel,” the Illinois senator and contender for the Democratic presidential nominee told a group of Jewish leaders in Cleveland on Sunday. “If we cannot have an honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we’re not going to make progress.”
Everyone in Israel is well aware that America’s new president is unsympathetic to the Likud Party and to Israel’s opponents of concessions for peace. Netanyahu is aware of it, as well. And, as disastrous as Bibi’s previous reign as prime minister was for the peace process, he is well aware of mistakes he made, including in the political narrowness of his coalition. He does not want to form a right-wing government both because he believes that doing so undermined his last turn at power and because he wants to be free to maneuver and negotiate on terms acceptable to the new administration in Washington. Yet, he may have no alternative if the Kadima Party holds firm in refusing to join the coalition.
If Netanyahu does form a coalition that exludes Kadima and Labor, the whole world will react with revulsion and that government will fall the moment Bibi makes any concessions. Under these circumstances, it may be that the prime ministership is a job not worth having. One solution is for Likud and Kadima to form a power sharing arrangement where Livni and Netanyahu each serve two years of the four-year term. Both sides are talking in uncompromising terms at the moment, but that is at least partially a matter of staking out negotiating turf.
It should be the quiet policy of the Obama administration to bring all its influence to bear to persuade Netanyahu to accept a power-sharing arrangement. I think Bibi can be convinced that half a turn at prime minister is better than a full-term under constant threat of a no-confidence vote and an inability to pursue policies he sees as prudent and necessary.
I wish the Israelis luck. But, more than that, I wish them wisdom.
As an Israeli, I would want to live under the Likud. But as far as peace goes, being the dovish party limits their ability to deliver peace even as it strengthens their ability to demand it.
Because of political parity (and quite counter-intuitively), if Israel is going to make a move to the Left policy-wise , it will have to be a Right winger doing it.
The Left is already waiting ‘there’, but a Right Wing leader lending his credibility to the effort will mitigate the Right’s knee-jerk against such moves..
Bibi may not be the guy, but that’s the only way to peace in such an evenly politically divided Israel: through the conversion of the center-right leadership.
That’s a lot to hope for, but it is just the thing a thoughtful, diplomatic approach can yield, even (or perhaps especially) with Bibi in office.
As always, a right and just future for Israel and it’s neighbors is unlikely, but a real possibility.
Steve Clemons used similar reasoning to make a different argument that led to a similar place. I see his point but I would prefer Kadima to take control.
What Left could you conceivably be talking about? The Right Wing dominates in terms of seats, and Lieberman has already sided with Likud. It is a lost cause, and the only hope for peace in the Middle East is through outside forces. Does Obama have that ability?
“as disastrous as Bibi’s previous reign as prime minister was for the peace process…????”
It was not Bibi who wrecked the promises of peace in the 90s. It was Bill Clinton, who permitted Israel without any advise or consent, to double the rate and number of settlers in the Palestinian territories. Bill Clinton, apparently as an AIPAC Likud man of the hour, was the major impediment to peace during that era.
To simplify the point (and it’s really only about this ‘moment’):
Peace has it’s supporters in Israel, but not enough, so in the current and predictable future, if peace is to come about , it will be necessarily due to some miraculous conversion of the leadership of a center-right party. Longterm, an organic regrowth and ascent of the Israeli Left would be great (back to the Kibutzim!), but patience isn’t necessarily the best path considering the unstable, violent situation and resulting humanitarian problems.
Who can such perform miracles? I don’t know.. but as bad as things get over there we can remember that miracles were practically invented there.
Hey, just trying to find hope..
NY Times coverage.
There’s a whole lot of breathing room between Obama’s rejection of a litmus test for being considered a friend of Israel and being unsympathetic towards Likud. One could easily replace Likud with Kadima or Labor and it would ring equally true from Obama. He may well think little of Likud, but I would be wary of reading that sentiment into this statement – that wasn’t his intent there and you don’t want to set yourself up for disappontment.
Well, I think ‘Likud’ there was shorthand for the Right in general.
What you are essentially saying is: whether Likud or Kadima or Labor, the end result will be the same. Well, that was sort of proven in the 90s and by the Camp David hoax, when Ehud Barak, claiming to continue the peace works of Rabin, played the role of a diplomat “without a (peace) partner.”
Even then, the Knesset was so right wing that there was no chance of a peace based on dividing the land. Barak said as much in his Jan 25 interview with Charlie Rose: no even his own party, Labor, the so-called left wing party, would have voted to remove a single settlement in the territories.
How can there be a Palestinian state if it is bifurcated, cutup, and dislocated as it was by that time in 2000?
Israel has never supported a two state solution and quite probably it never will. And Bill Clinton knew that in his bones. The ability of human beings to pretend seems unlimited.
Um, no.
I’m trying to clarify what I believe President Obama to have said, specifically that friendship with Israel is not dependent upon loyalty to one Israeli faction over another. The details of those factions are irrelevant – a friend of Israel (or England or Germany or Belgium or Egypt) is a friend to all of Israel. You don’t have to pledge fealty to the Tories to be a friend of England, you don’t have to prove your allegiance to the Social Democrats to be a friend of Germany, and you don’t have to be loyal to Likud (or Kadima or Labor or Shas or…or…or…) to be a friend of Israel.
That’s all.
Well then allow me another chance.
What I am essentially saying is: whether Likud or Kadima or Labor, the end result will be the same.
Read Hurria down below for some substance about it.
Oslo was also a hoax. It was little more than a way to buy time for Israel to step up its colonization, confiscate more land, keep working on what Jeff Halper calls the “matrix of control” that increasingly limits Palestinians’ freedom of movement and the contiguity of the land, and squeeze the Palestinians into smaller and smaller more and more isolated enclaves. In other words, slow ethnic cleansing.
A hoax given credibility by Clinton, who was then host to an even bigger hoax: the generous offer.
Indeed! Clinton was a great enabler for Israel every step of the way.
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It would have been a refreshing change from the usual confirmation minuet if instead of humbly apologizing, Holder had tartly instructed the buffoonish Specter, his fellow senators, the press, and the public about the actual circumstances of the Rich affair. He might have started with the fact that continuous lobbying on Rich’s behalf from the highest Israeli leaders and their American friends — among whom Specter no doubt counts himself — became even more intense in the days before Clinton left office. He could have noted that such pressures coincided with Clinton’s efforts to conclude a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. And he could have explained to Specter that Rich’s deals in Iran and Iraq were often related to his other role — as an asset of the Mossad who gathered intelligence and helped to rescue endangered Jews from those regimes.
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During hearings after Rich’s pardon, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who had represented Rich from 1985 until the spring of 2000, denied that Rich had violated the tax laws but criticized him for trading with Iran at a time when that country was holding U.S. hostages
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."It was little more than a way to buy time for Israel to step up its colonization
So is the sham of Netanyahu reaching out to Syria.
During the run up to the French Revolution, French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau in his book titled “The Social Contract and The Discourses” wrote an analytical essay on Democracy the following observations. “If we take the term in the strict sense, there never has been a real democracy, and there never will be. It is against the natural order for the many to govern and the few to be governed. It is unimaginable that the people should remain continually assembled to devote their time to public affairs, and it is clear that they cannot set up commissions for that purpose without the form of administration being changed.”
Rousseau’s words ring particularly true when considering the past election by the Palestinians which brought Hammas to power irrespective of the dire consequences that this held in terms of relations between Israel and the Palestinians. Now we have another election, this time in Israel, producing a choice that also will have a pernicious effect on future relations between the Palestinians and Israel.
What we have are two culturally distinct people attempting to create a strong government that will provide security while meeting their everyday needs. Though the people involved have very ancient histories, their attempts at creating a government that will effectively guide their domestic and international interests while respecting their physical and cultural needs have proven to be embryonic and immature at best.
Likewise in the west, from the oldest countries to the youngest countries, all are struggling to save their modern governmental structures in these turbulent times. From this perspective, imagine the pressures on the two major actors in the middle east as they struggle to find a workable modern government in the midst of war time destruction and deprivation.
It has become almost a knee jerk reflex in the west to view the answer to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the complete bilateral adoption of the “two (democratic) state solution”. I write this as a reminder that here in America, we too struggle to balance the evolution of our form of government between the Utopian ideals of a democracy and the politically fragile stability of a business driven republic.
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I find the views expressed by Steve Clemons far from reality, a better essay is written by Johann Hari.
(The Independent) – Israel is missing opportunities for peace. Even much of Hamas – an Islamist party I passionately oppose – is amenable to a long ceasefire along the 1967 borders. That isn’t my opinion; it is the view of Yuval Diskin, the current head of the Israeli security service Shin Bet. He told the Israeli Cabinet before the bombing of Gaza that Hamas would restore the ceasefire if Israel would only end the blockade of the Strip and declare a ceasefire on the West Bank. Instead, they bombed, and the offer died.
The former head of Mossad, Ephraim Halevy, says that Hamas, “will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original goals” if only Israel will begin the path of compromise. This would drain support for rejectionists such as Osama Bin Laden and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and make it easier to build international coalitions.
Instead, too many Israelis – imprisoned by their history – seem determined to choose the opposite path: of Netanyahu and Lieberman and ramming an endless alienating boot on to the throat of the Palestinians. It doesn’t have to be like this. We can only say to them with Amos Oz, as urgently as we can: Adolf Hitler is not hiding in Gaza City, or Beit Hanoun, or Hebron. Adolf Hitler is dead.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Adolf isn’t hiding in Iran either.
Netanyahu is now telling us that we have to take them on.
Netanyahu is a survivor, not in the literal sense, but in the figurative sense. His people will try to rally the AIPAC-beholden, but if and when (almost certainly when) it doesn’t work, he will bend to whatever wind Obama blows. He doesn’t have any choice. Israel doesn’t have any friends.