An Opportunity?

The Arab Peace Initiative, the Palestinian National Unity government, Europe’s readiness to intervene – Don’t they all add up to something?

The war in Lebanon – whether victory or defeat – has created a number of considerable opportunities in the region, opportunities to which, it appears, Israel is not tending to pay much attention. Favorable conditions for Israel have arisen not just on the Lebanese front, but also on the Middle Eastern and International fronts. Three important events have converged lately: the Palestinian National Unity government; the Arab Peace Initiative; and European readiness to commit troops. All three point in the direction of an international convention – a sequel to the 1991 Madrid Convention which began the peace process. And such a convention can serve as a framework for what Prime Minister Ehud Olmert could only dream of before the war: international recognition of permanent borders.

Assuming our government’s entire hard-disk wasn’t deleted during the war, it may still recall that the idea of unilateral withdrawal, the principal on which it was elected, was based on a necessity to replace the missing Palestinian consent for partition with an International recognition of borders. Provided we don’t reject the Arab Peace Initiative, on the grounds of it not accepting all our terms up-front, and in the event of an international convention which would enable it to take shape, such a convention could provide Kadima with all it used to wish for. Furthermore, and beyond all of Prime Minister Olmerts’ expectations, should the international framework include wide Arab consent, it will become a significant step along the road to ending the regional conflict, and not just a base for stable partition.

Within this context we need to take a look at the Palestinian unity government. It would certainly be better if Hamas would explicitly recognize Israel’s right to exist. But it doesn’t seem like it will. But even an indirect recognition such as that on which the national unity government is based, would be enough for moderate Arab states to back a partition agreement, and in so doing – to force the Palestinians into coexistence with Israel. Arab acceptance of new borders, together with a little, even temporary, pragmatism on the part of Hamas will suffice to block all feasible plans to “liberate” the whole of Palestine.

For this reason, Israel must turn it’s attention from the question of what Hamas will or wont declare, to the question of what they can actually achieve. Israel has to focus its demands not on the issue of declared recognition of its right to exist, but on the issue of Arab and International commitment to a peace keeping force on a newly established Israeli-Palestinian border. European readiness to participate in peace-keeping in Lebanon is encouraging in that respect. Taken together with the concern of moderate Arab states to stem the tide of fundamentalism, the interests for pacifying the Israeli-Palestinian front have become considerable and urgent. The ongoing occupation plays into the hands of the Extremist, at the expense of moderates, and so there are enough forces within the Arab world interested in restraining Hamas.

It comes down to this: should such a convention manage to force the Palestinians into an agreement – whether labeled temporary or not – the extremist forces on the Palestinian side will find it hard to gather the external support they need, and one hopes that eventually the internal support will be likewise diminished. Because there is one other fact to which the rise of the national unity government bears witness, and to which recent unrest directed at Hamas by the Palestinian public testifies: the Palestinian public is demanding bread and work, not only dreams of future glory.

One hopes that Israel will be wise enough, and bold enough, to utilize these new circumstances towards partition.

(First Published in Hebrew in the daily Ma’ariv)

A House Divided: Two Zionisms

Outside Israel it is generally assumed that there is a consensus about what Zionism is. On this view the religious settlers are only an extreme version of the same Zionism, since settlers have added a religious ingredient to it. The assumption is, however, fundamentally misguided. Mainstream Zionism and the settlers’ religious Zionism are mutually exclusive, both morally and politically. Read more…

Patriots to the Orange Limit

We heard plenty of ‘I-told-you-so’s from the settlers during this war, and since. We heard a lot about settler patriotism as opposed to the Tel Avivian atrophy. It’s true that the settlers taught their sons and daughters the importance of personal dedication and sacrifice, and the results of this education clearly show. This is laudable. But to call this “patriotism” could be misleading. It’s a qualified patriotism: only insofar as it promotes settlement. The recent din of patriotic calls, has all but erased a whole year of wild incitement, not only against the Left, but also against the State of Israel and the IDF. Even settler Rabbis were alarmed.
Read the full piece…

Avigdor Liberman’s Jingoism

One of the sad results of the atmosphere created by the war, is that right wing Member of Knesset, Avigdor Liberman, head of the Yisrael Beytenu party has picked up in the polls. Unlike the traditional hawkish right, Liberaman does not oppose a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Rather, on his own account, he seeks to follow the national logic of partition further: Israel, he believes, should annex settlements close to the 1949 cease-fire line (known as the Green Line, the acknowledged international border), in return for carving up parts of Israel’s territory, and making them part of Palestine. The parts in question are densely populated with Arab citizens of Israel. So the plan would, Liberman claims, make for greater national integrity on both sides of the border.
On the face of it, there would be no human rights issue here, since the plan does not require any form of uprooting or “transfer.” But things are not so simple, since those Arab citizens of Israel have made it clear that they do not wish to be annexed to Palestine. The plan would thus requires coercing them to give up their citizenship, which is both illegal according to Israel’s law, and immoral in the eyes of most Israelis.
But even on Liberman’s own premises the plan makes little sense. The fear of losing the Jewish majority within Green Line Israel in the foreseeable future is unfounded. Demographic extrapolations suggest that if current trends persist (they are unlikely to, given the steady advance of feminism among Israel’s Arab population) the Arab minority will have grown from about 20% to about 26% by 2050. What is more, according to a recent study conducted by The Floersheimer Institute for Policy Studies, Liberman’s plan of partition would make, at most, some 148,000 of Israel’s Arab citizens, Palestinians. This would reduce the Arab minority by a mere 10%, at the grave price of distorting Israel’s legal structure, violating its Declaration of Independence (which explicitly guarantees legal equality to all citizens) and further alienating the remaining 90% percent of the Israel’s Arab population. Or in plain English, Liberman’s plan is a piece of jingoistic demagoguery, which would achieve nothing.

General Lapidot: The Occupation is Draining Israel’s Resources

Retired General Amos Lapidot, former commander of Israel’s Air Force, asked on Ynet (Hebrew, no translation yet) what the root is of Israel’s current trouble.

“My answer,” he wrote, “is that the heart of the problem is the occupation and the settlement in the territories. The problem of the territories has been draining Israel’s energy for the last forty years: the billions spent there; the [internal] political tensions; the twisting of national priorities; the deterioration of administration and law enforcement; […] The occupation and the reality in the territories cause international hostility towards us, inflame hatred in Arab countries and the Muslim world at large, and increase the number of countries which become our potential enemies. […] This necessitates preparation for war on all fronts, and answers to all possible scenarios. The problem is we don’t have enough resources, because we’re wasting them on the territories…”

All the more depressing since Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu is now leading in the polls. Remember Netanyahu? He’s the former Treasury Minister who privatized everything, and the former Prime Minister who did his best to stop the Oslo Process and perpetuate Israel’s hold on the territories. This should be enough to explain why so many of the protesters calling Olmert to resign are settlers. Elections, anyone?

Here’s one news source that would never disapoint you. The Onion. Best sataire around. Try this for starters:
War-Torn Middle East Seeks Solace In Religion.

View From the Ground

One of the most turbulent public debates in Israel right now is about the lack of military preparedness. The IDF assumed future battlefields would be high-tech affairs, where the principle burden would fall on the Air Force. The conception was proven wrong. Reserve infantry soldiers knew it before the rest of us did, before we knew about actual performance. They discovered how bad things were when they were rushed north to the Lebanese border and realized their ESUs – Emergency Supply Units – lacked basic combat equipment.
Here’s how a young infantry captain, a guy who’s led his reserve unit into battle before, explained to me what soldiers do when they lose their confidence in their High Command. After battles end, they take equipment home with them, back to their civil lives. Night vision instruments, battle vests, helmets, rifle sights, binoculars, boots. It’s not that difficult to do, since battles are chaotic events. When you return from action you can always report the equipment damaged, used, lost. They take it home, to make sure they’ll have it the next time around.
From the point of view of the Civil Penal Code this is called theft. From the point of view of combat soldiers it’s called patriotism. They don’t intend to evade a call for duty next time. They’re just making sure that when we need them, they can do the job.
I don’t know how many actually did, or do, such things. But the logic is clear enough. Small incidents. Big red alarm light.

#1 War Slogan in Israel

If there was one hilarious slogan throughout this whole sad debacle in Lebanon this was it:

SHARON, WAKE UP. OLMERT’S IN A COMA.

I have no idea who deserves copyrights for it. It circulated around.

The Opportunity We’ll All Regret Missing – Europe and the Middle East

The war in Lebanon, like all wars, did not only close doors. It also opened possibilities. This time, had there been enough will on behalf of the international community, it would have been able to untie the knot of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and consolidate the front against terrorism. Unfortunately without Europe all this would not be feasible. And Europe, it seems, is not prepared to take real responsibility. Not even for its own future peace and prosperity. Read the full piece here.

Missiles Aimed at Preventing an End to the Occupation

Many were outraged by Ehud Olmert’s declaration, in the middle of the war, that this war was about his convergence plan. It may not have been pragmatic to say so, but it was nevertheless true. Had Israel won, had it been able to subdue the threat of missiles, we would have been on the way to ending the occupation. The Israeli left should have been the prime supporter of the war effort. Read the full piece here.