Netanyahu’s New Stand on Settlements May Not Be Sustainable

In his speech to the Knesset on May 16 and in Congress on the 24th Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu made a significant departure from his previous statements:  He indicated that he might be willing to give up the great majority of the West Bank in a peace agreement, involving the dismantling of settlements where almost 100,000 Israelis now live.  Some who have advocated this position for a long time are pleased that Netanyahu has seen the light.  They claim that by embracing this new stance Netanyahu has created a new Israeli consensus.  Their enthusiasm is premature.  It is far from clear that Netanyahu’s new position enjoys a consensus and even less clear that Netanyahu can sustain it in the future. 

Netanyahu’s address to Congress was a bold move intended to outflank President Obama.  So far Netanyahu has succeeded.  He made clear that Israel will not accept the basis on which Obama wants to conduct negotiations—a return to the 1967 lines, without appropriate security arrangements.  Obama tried to ambush Netanyahu by including mention of the 1967 lines in his own speech on the Middle East, only for Netanyahu to brush him aside and win applause on both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill.  It’s probably impossible now for Obama to apply real pressure to Israel to accept his position.  In the context of this signal victory, Netanyahu’s concession on settlements seems like a sweetener to moderates thrown in to increase support for his defiance of Obama.

Nonetheless, it’s hard to point to any real advantage Netanyahu gained by placing the homes of 100,000 of his fellow-citizens on the line.  His concession won’t satisfy any of his critics in Washington, Brussels or Ramallah, all of whom want much more.  And it’s hard to make a significant list of people who applauded him in Washington and who might have not done so if he’d simply not mentioned abandoning settlements.

The greatest weakness of Mr. Netanyahu’s new position on settlements is that it is predicated on the existence of negotiations.  It is not about to be implemented, and nobody can now foresee a time when it will be possible to implement it.  Israel and the Palestinian leadership are moving farther apart, not closer together.  A policy that remains only a theory is bound to lose relevance and such public support as it now enjoys with every passing month.

Mr. Netanyahu’s problem is compounded by Israeli public opinion trends.  Putting it bluntly, Netanyahu’s claim that his new position on settlements reflects the Israeli consensus is a stretch.  Insofar as public opinion polls can tell us anything, the Second Lebanon War of 2006 turned Israelis skeptical about almost every aspect of the peace process, and this skepticism has not abated.  One aspect of this skepticism is the sense that territorial withdrawals only whet the appetites of Israel’s adversaries for more—whether accompanied by formal agreements or not.  The Palestinian Authority’s reach for a unilateral declaration of independence, in violation of the Oslo accords, and the Fatah-Hamas rapprochement, do nothing to disarm this skepticism.

It is true that if the Israeli public were presented with a peace treaty on Netanyahu’s terms, all wrapped up and ready for ratification, the public might go for it.  The Israeli public has never yet rejected a proffered peace treaty.  But they would be uneasy.  Indeed, the Olmert government claimed to be negotiating something like the deal Netanyahu has in mind—the broader public has only the vaguest notion, if at all, of the ways in which Olmert’s position and Netanyahu’s new position differ.  Netanyahu himself was elected in 2009 to put a stop to those negotiations.

This does not mean that Israelis want to run the Palestinians’ lives.  There is a genuine consensus in Israel that Palestinians should run Palestinians’ lives—which they pretty much do right now.  What is absent is any real expectation that the parameters can be established by negotiations.  In its place there is growing support for the idea that Palestinian unilateralism should be matched with Israeli unilateralism: A de-facto partition of the West Bank.  On the Israeli right, this means providing the Palestinians with functional contiguity (not necessarily genuine territorial contiguity) while segregating and annexing areas Israel wishes to retain—not just so-called settlement blocs but all or most settlements and 40-60% of the territory.  This is the position of Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party, Netanyahu’s biggest coalition partner, and is advocated by two Likud cabinet ministers, Yuli Edelstein and Moshe Kahlon.  The unilateral partition idea also has supporters on the left—Ehud Barak has expressed similar ideas in the past, though he would draw the partition line elsewhere.

Within Israel, therefore, as within the Palestinian Authority, Netanyahu’s and President Obama’s preferred solution, a negotiated settlement, is on shaky ground.  Insistence that nothing change unless it be in the context of a negotiated solution, when no negotiations are in prospect, means that neither side can take practical steps to achieve genuine and important, though of course diametrically opposed interests.  It practically defies nature to expect that matters can continue in this state of suspended animation for long.  Indeed, the Palestinians have told the President what he can do with his preferred solution.   Palestinian unilateralism will increase pressure within Israel for Israeli unilateralism. 

Netanyahu’s new position is thus not one on which he can construct a new national consensus.  Opposition within Netanyahu’s government to Netanyahu’s new policy began to appear the morning after his Knesset speech.  Former Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon, a member of Netanyahu’s security cabinet, stated that the Jordan Valley must remain under Israeli sovereignty and that no Israeli security presence there is sustainable in the long run unless it is backed up by a permanent civilian presence.  Yaalon’s is probably the most senior and authoritative voice that could be raised against Netanyahu’s policy.  It remains to be seen whether other prominent figures within Netanyahu’s party will join him in the weeks to come, but forces within the Likud are already working to ensure that they do.

Kadima Contemplates the Abyss

The Fatah-Hamas reconciliation is likely to be bad news—especially for those unfortunates now likely to be targeted by Palestinian terror.  The first victim of the Fatah-Hamas rapprochement, however, is Israel’s largest opposition party—Kadima.  Its raison d’etre has just disappeared.

After the 2009 elections, a majority of the Knesset nominated Binyamin Netanyahu to the post of Prime Minister.  Netanyahu offered to take Kadima into his coalition and make Livni his #2.  Livni refused.  She took Kadima into opposition, where she has since argued that she can make peace with the Palestinians where Binyamin Netanyahu cannot.

Kadima’s peacemaking policy was founded upon the Hamas-Fatah rift.  Negotiations with Abu Mazen were possible even in theory only because Hamas, which insists on Israel’s destruction, mounted a coup d’etat against Fatah in Gaza in 2007 and was kicked out of the Palestinian coalition government.  With the reunion of Hamas and Fatah, Kadima is left without a policy.  80% of the Israel’s Jewish public probably agrees with Binyamin Netanyahu that it's impossible to negotiate with a Palestinian government, half of which wants Israel dead.  Almost everybody in Kadima also agrees with Netanyahu.  There hasn’t been a word from anyone in the party about the possibility of negotiation since the Hamas-Fatah deal was announced.  For Kadima, that means political oblivion beckons at the next election. 

Instead, the deal Livni refused two years ago has started to look pretty good.  In a revealing op-ed in the Jerusalem Post, Tzahi Hanegbi, a one-time Kadima MK convicted of graft who expects to run in the next elections, had the effrontery to suggest a text for “Bibi’s speech,” to be given in front of Congress in a few weeks’ time.  Scheduled before the fatah-Hamas reconciliation, this speech was supposed to include some grand new diplomatic initiative.  Those expectations have since diminished considerably.

Hanegbi, in fact, has nothing whatsoever to suggest regarding a diplomatic initiative toward the Palestinians.  Everything he has Netanyahu saying about them in his draft is nothing more than Netanyahu is already saying today:  No deal is possible.  Instead, Hanegbi’s proposed new “diplomatic initiative” involves an offer by Netanyahu to Kadima:  To prove to the world he is serious about peace, Netanyahu should offer to make Livni his foreign minister, to be in charge of negotiations with the Palestinians when and if they becoming possible.  Livni will prove to the world that Netanyahu is serious about peace, even though both Netanyahu and Livni now agree that peace negotiations are impossible.

Yeah, that sounds a little forced to me, too.

What’s really happening is that Kadima thinks it will be a lot easier to get someone, anyone, to vote for the party if the party’s bigwigs come to the next elections ensconced in ministerial office.  That will allow them to talk about how they’ve built roads, or absorbed immigrants, or—well, anything but that hopeless peace business.  They hope to save their political skins by riding on the Likud’s political coattails.

To support this analysis, let me mention that I was told this week by a reliable source on the Israeli right that Shlomo Mula, Kadima’s Ethiopian MK, told her that he hopes Netanyahu will now take Kadima into his government.  Mula is clearly hoping to stir up public support for the idea (my source isn’t even in the Likud).

Of course, Likud needs Kadima right now like a hole in the head.  Likud’s best move right now is probably to conduct a vigorous, aggressive PR campaign about how Israel has to gird itself for a situation in which peace has become impossible—and go to elections on the issue within six months.  That will probably give the Likud the dominant political position it sought and failed to achieve last time around.  For Kadima, it means that most of the party’s MKs will have to apply themselves to an unfamiliar and unwelcome activity—looking for work.

"Bibitours"

So the latest is that the Netanyahu couple are going to be investigated by the State Comptroller for taking airline flights and staying at hotels at the expense of organizations, like Israel Bonds or the Likud that invited Bibi to speak at their fundraisers abroad.  Those who broke this “scandal” are indignant that a public servant should accept first-class travel and downtown hotel suites from those who invite him to promote their causes

???

Netanyahu is one of the most well-known and popular Israelis.  It’s no surprise that his face sells bonds.  He’s also head of the Likud party.  Raising money for Likud campaigns is part of his job description.  An organization that invites a blockbuster like Bibi to its event makes what his flight and hotel cost many times over.  There’s no impropriety in his conduct.  If he has to spend all that time on the move in order to do his job, there’s no justification to inflicting Spartan conditions on him while he does.

It’s also the fact that Everybody Does It.  To his credit, the State Comptroller, at the urging of the Likud, said he would investigate the travel behavior of other ministers and prime ministers, past and present. Just recently several members of the opposition Kadima party flew to J Street’s annual conference.  What are the odds that they flew tourist and stayed at airport hotels?

I find it extremely curious that this alleged scandal broke just as the Knesset approved the “Sheshinski Law,” which changed the rate at which Israel’s considerable gas reserves are taxed.  I’ve been observing Israeli politics too long to believe in coincidence.  The law was a great blow to several Israeli tycoons, who will no longer be near the top of Forbes 500 list—they will have to content themselves with becoming ordinary common or garden billionaires.  They lobbied and threatened Netanyahu and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz with lawsuits—perhaps worse.  The two elected officials did their job and saw the legislation through the Knesset.

If this “scandal” did indeed break in retaliation for Netanyahu’s devotion to the public interest and public purse regarding gas royalties, the Knesset should consider voting him and his family lifetime free tickets on El Al as an act of gratitude.  The rate of commission will be considerably less than 0.1%.      

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Everyone’s talking about Richard Goldstone’s recantation, so a few words about that (He’s only worth a few words).  Goldstone’s original report pilloried Israel that’s what he was paid to do.  He’s been a UN investigating judge for years.  He investigated Serbia before turning to Israel.  That’s the source of his money and his ongoing international prestige.  He was hired to trash Israel and he knew that if he didn’t deliver the goods he’d never be employed by the UN again.  So he delivered the goods he’d been paid for.

Since then the money has been spent and the prestige turned out to be less than advertised, since the entire Jewish world now ostracizes him.  Goldstone recanted because the moral indignation aroused by his collusion with Israel’s delegitimizers made him miserable.  It’s not like he learned anything new that he didn’t know when he wrote his blood libel.  His attitude, then and now, is purely mercenary—and cowardly to boot.

Not Really Interested in Reform

Israel’s State Prosecution is a mess.  For years it has been incapable of keeping up with its workload; a few years ago the organization shredded over 30,000 files of cases it acknowledged it would never get around to investigating.  Its work is often sloppy, prompting harsh criticism from judges and violating the  due-process rights of defendants.  Its workers are demoralized, as reflected by a lengthy strike last year over pay rates.  It is infected with political bias.  A special unit, the “Office of the Deputy Attorney General for Special Affairs,” focuses on prosecuting people for what they write and say, as well as for demonstrating.  There are laws in Israel that can be interpreted in a way that prohibits these fundamental democratic activities, and the “Office” applies these laws selectively, generally against right-wing and religious political activists.

Widespread complaints against the State Prosecution have led to calls for some kind of oversight body with the power to redress the Prosecution’s violation of citizens’ civil and due-process rights.  Pressure for this reform grew to the point where the current Attorney General, Yehoshua Weinstein, admitted that something would probably have to be done.

Weinstein finally announced the establishment of a committee to consider how such an oversight body should be designed.  The composition of the committee is not encouraging.  All eight members are senior employees of the Justice Department.  They include Mike Blass, a deputy Attorney General with notorious left-wing views, and Raz Nizri, a senior aide to Weinstein (Nizri served the previous Attorney General, Menahem Mazuz, in the same capacity).  

The point is not so much the political bias of the committee—Nizri is simply a lapdog for whoever holds the office of Attorney General—as the fact that these are all insiders whose first concern is to protect the institutional interests of the State Prosecution.  Don’t look to them for any fundamental reforms. 

Weinstein’s decision represents a pattern.  A generation ago complaints about police violence led to the establishment of a special unit within the Ministry of Justice to investigate errant policemen.  A study by the State Ombudsman seven years ago found that this body was chiefly staffed by . . . policemen, seconded to the unit for a number of years before returning to the police.  Many had themselves long records of complaints filed against them by citizens who alleged their rights had been violated.  Needless to say this body, the Police Investigation Department, is not considered very effective.

In 2006, rising complaints against judges prompted the Knesset to pass legislation to create an ombudsman for the court system.  The judges fought tooth and nail and lobbied the Knesset to change the legislation to provide that the ombudsman be a retired judge, appointed by the Chief Justice.  So lobbied, so provided.

So in Israel, “oversight” of the legal and law-enforcement system means oversight by  the system:  Judges by a judge, policemen by policemen, and now if Weinstein has his way, prosecutors by prosecutors.  Which is to say, no effective oversight after all.

What really needs to be done is to establish a completely separate unit within the State Ombudsman’s office, charged with overseeing the protection of citizens’ civil rights.  This unit should have the authority to investigate complaints against judges, prosecutors and policemen, to launch disciplinary actions against them and if necessary to indict them for violations of the law.

Weinstein’s announcement produced protests by members of the Knesset Committee on State Oversight, which had scheduled a session on the issue.  The MKs insisted that the committee Weinstein established to prepare proposals for oversight of the State Prosecution include representatives from academia and the private sector.  Stay tuned.

Time to Decide

The Netanyahu government’s decision to approve construction of 500 housing units in Judaea and Samaria in response to the slaughter of the Fogel family in Itamar cannot please anyone. If building in the settlements is right, then it’s right whether or not Palestinian terrorists kill innocent people.

The decision underscores the fact that Netanyahu’s current non-policy on Judaea and Samaria is unsustainable. That policy is to approve no new building in Judaea, Samaria and Jerusalem, while waiting for the Palestinians to come around and resume negotiations. By not approving new building, Netanyahu hoped to reduce foreign pressure on Israel. The policy has failed.

The Europeans and the Obama administration are applying immense pressure to Netanyahu to “do something to facilitate negotiations.” This is pure cynicism. Everyone knows the Palestinians are not going to come back to the negotiating table. The foreign pressure is meant to force Israel to agree unilaterally to withdraw the IDF from almost all of Judaea and Samaria and destroy Israeli settlements there.

This is what the Olmert government was prepared to do. According to "Palileaks," the Olmert government had given up just about all Israeli settlements; only Ariel, Maale Adumim and Har Homa in Jerusalem remained to be negotiated about. Olmert himself confirms that he agreed to withdraw the IDF entirely from Judaea and Samaria, leaving the Americans to guard the Jordan front.

Subsequent events show how fortunate Israel was that the cavalier and shallow Olmert was thrown out of office before he could cut a deal. Without Israel’s military presence, Hamas’ takeover of Judaea and Samaria is only a matter of time. This is even clearer today, in the aftermath of the Egyptian uprising. An American presence in Judaea and Samaria won’t last long in the face of a Hamas terror offensive, just as terrorism is chasing the United States out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel cannot allow Judaea and Samaria to turn into another Gaza, where a murderous terror regime enjoys effective sanctuary from the IDF under the protection of hypocritical Europeans.

Obama and the Europeans consider Israel’s presence in Judaea and Samaria absolutely unacceptable, no matter what the consequences of withdrawal to Israel. Sooner rather than later, the Europe is going to announce it recognizes a Palestinian state in all of Judaea and Samaria. The Obama administration is going to agree—after all, it already agrees in practice if not in form.

Meanwhile, the Netanyahu government is doing nothing as the inevitable approaches. Netanyahu is preparing another Bar-Ilan-type speech, in which he will try to find some middle ground between Israel’s irreducable vital interests and the West’s nonnegotiable demands.

He may as well spare his breath. Israel and the West are on a collision course over Judaea and Samaria and Israel has nothing to gain by pretending otherwise. Israel is just going to have to tell the West, “We are not going to do what you want us to do, and we are all going to have to live with that fact.”

Israel needs to move unilaterally to create a situation in Judaea and Samaria conducive to its interests. This includes three elements:

• Move quickly to separate from the Palestinians. Start working on roads and fences to join Palestinian inhabited areas together and isolate them from areas Israel seeks to control.
• Lay claim to the rest of Judaea and Samaria, about 50-60% of the whole. From a security perspective Israel needs to control this area and especially to be able to intervene quickly in Palestinian-inhabited areas when needed. Its right to do so cannot be founded on security considerations however. It needs to assert that it is in Judaea and Samaria by legal right—which is only the truth—and the IDF’s presence needs to be backed up by a continued and growing civilian presence.
• By no means should Israel agree to recognize a Palestinian state unilaterally, in any borders whatsoever. If the Palestinians agree to recognize Israel as the Jewish state, then there’ll be something to talk about.

Netanyahu needs to move vigorously to assert Israel's rights and interests in Judaea and Samaria.  Procrastination isn't gaining Israel anything.  Israel should be building now—whether or not its own citizens are being slaughtered. For now, it can argue that building is a response to Palestinian diplomatic provocations. That is the only policy that might, at the last minute, cause the Palestinians and the Europeans to pause. But that’s unlikely. Israel has to make clear that it will place its own stamp on Judaea and Samaria whether it suits the West or no, because it has no choice. Better sooner rather than later.

Time for New Elections?

Netanyahu’s coalition with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, chairman of the Labor party, is unravelling. The two joined forces after the last election on the basis of the new consensus in Israeli politics: Dismantling settlements and unilateral retreat ends in disaster, the Palestinian Authority cannot be trusted to make a durable peace agreement, so Israel must retain effective security control of Judaea and Samaria. Now Barak is welching on the deal. Barak fears the Americans and wants to give in to American pressure. He also suffers from delusions of grandeur, imagining himself leading Netanyahu’s government down the path of unilateral concessions, taking credit for a peace treaty and reconciling himself with his party’s mainstream, now dominated by the loony left.

What the country may need is a snap election before Rosh Hashana. Netanyahu needs to shore up his ability to pursue a policy at variance with the Obama administration. Polls show that since Obama started pressuring Netanyahu, Netanyahu’s Likud and parties to Netanyahu’s right have become even more popular than when elected in 2009. They regularly get 70 Knesset seats or more in the polls. That won’t be the case anymore if Netanyahu lets the pair of Baracks (the American and the Israeli versions) force him to abandon the policy he was elected to pursue.

Of course an election needs to be prepared. Netanyahu needs to spend about a month campaigning hard, reiterating that his government’s policies reflect the national consensus. He should say that the issue of the campaign is the position laid forth in his Bar-Ilan speech a year ago: Yes to negotiations, no to a precommitment to retreat, dismantling settlements or abandon Israel’s security concerns in Judaea and Samaria. He should make Barak take responsibility for messing up the Mavi Marmara affair. Only then should the coalition introduce a bill to hold snap elections. Passing it should take 72 hours (at the start of which Barak should be fired), with elections taking place three weeks later. The heart of an American electoral campaign is the best time for Israel to hold its own elections; it will reduce Obama’s ability to interfere.

The opposing forces in the election will be very clear. On the one side will be Labor, Kadima, the press establishment, the academic establishment, the business establishment, and all the loonies who haven’t learned a thing in the past twenty years and think that safety lies in unilateral concessions and American smiles. On the other side will be the common sense of the great majority of Israelis, who actually have learned a thing or two in that time. Let’s see who prevails.

After the election, if all goes well, Netanyahu will no longer be dependent on Barak for political survival. He can even take Barak back into his new government if he wants, as head of a truncated Labor party or even on his own (though why Netanyahu needs a serial political loser like Barak at his side isn’t clear). Barak will hardly be in a position to say no. Then Netanyahu can then use Barak as he desires, without Barak holding the key to the government’s survival.

Barak Goes Off the Reservation

Ehud Barak is the odd man out in Israel’s government. Netanyahu brought him in as Defense Minister to create a stable coalition. Since then Barak has been destroying Jewish homes in Judaea and Samaria, built during the “freeze,” with a dedication worthy of a better cause. Recently he made a fiasco of Israel’s takeover of the Mavi Marmara.


Barak joined Netanyahu’s government last year because he shared the opinion of Netanyahu and 70% of Jewish Israelis: The Palestinians are not interested in peace but in destroying Israel, unilateral withdrawals (Barak was responsible for one, from Lebanon ten years ago) merely encourage terrorist radicals, so all the talk about a negotiated peace between Israel and the Palestinians is just for show. Unfortunately, Barak is just about the only person in his party who’s wised up about the true prospects for “peace.” He’s under a lot of pressure to promote an “active policy,” which means giving up something for nothing—e.g. dismantling Israeli settlements—in order to entice the Palestinians to make peace.

Barak now appears to be going off the Netanyahu reservation. He’s calling for “an assertive diplomacy,” a code word for unilateral Israeli action. Barak’s faith in unilateral actions, of the dismantle-settlements-and-retreat kind, has been restored. He now wants Israel to make unilateral concessions, but not because that will promote peace with the Palestinians. He knows it only whets their appetite for more. He wants to do it because Barack Obama wants Israel to do it, and keeping the United States happy is vital to Israel’s security.

The United States is certainly vital to Israel’s security but that doesn’t mean that Barak’s new policy is a good idea. It isn’t. It’s hard to tell with Obama. He may want Israel to make unilateral concessions because that conforms to his abstract ideals of peace and justice in the Middle East. He’s swallowed the Palestian narrative, hook, line and sinker. Or he may want it because he wants to make the Arabs happy, and squeezing Israel is the way to do it. In practice, he’s acting as the Arabs’ tool.

Israel cannot, for its life, do what Obama wants. To do so is to prove to the Palestinians and the broader Arab world that they can get Israel to make unilateral concessions simply by getting the Americans to demand them. And that way lies the road to Israel’s demise. Barak may talk about “assertive” policies, but the real word for his policy is “appeasement.”