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Politics are not a Panacea

In Israel, the defeat of Bibi Nethanyahu has removed an obstacle to peace. But anyone who thinks that this is the end of the story, and that we shall now all ride off happily into the sunset, will be bitterly disappointed. The Mid-East conflict was not created by one person, or by one side in the dispute. It will not go away in a day.

In 1996 Benjamin Nethanyahu got elected on a platform of doing the impossible: “Peace with ‘security,’” meaning in fact, peace with settlements. This of course was impossible. Bibi was promising to square the circle. It now appears that Israelis have given PM elect Ehud Barak a similar mandate. Results of a recent poll are revealing. Most Israelis want peace they say, and a majority even say that that they believe there will be peace. But most Israelis (nearly 70%) also want a government of National Unity rather than a narrow government that will pursue peace. So it appears that Israelis expect Barak to square the circle, just as they expected Bibi Nethanyahu to square the circle.

Barak has proven to be a very capable politician. It is possible that he can get left wing, Meretz, the Likud, the National Religious Party, the Orthodox parties and anti-Orthodox Joseph (‘Tommy’) Lapid to sit together in the same government. After all, the millenium is almost upon us, so maybe the lion will lie down with the lamb and a little child will lead them. But Barak cannot walk on water. He will never get such a government to make the concessions needed for peace, and it is probable that he will not even try.

Bibi is almost gone, but the settlers and their supporters are still with us, building new settlements, authorized or not and incurring the ire of the Palestinians, with the encouragement of the lame duck outgoing government. A Palestinian ‘Day of Fury’ protesting the settlement activity was carried out ‘without serious incident’ according to Israeli radio. This means that only Palestinians got killed. The ‘Day of Fury’ was also without effect, scarcely impinging on the conscience of the average Israeli citizen. What the Palestinians are learning from this, is that they have no way of making themselves heard except by violence, a dangerous lesson and one that cannot be good for peace.

PM elect Ehud Barak has responded to the settlement expansion issue with a deafening silence, promising the National Religious Party that there would be no freeze on settlements.

The reason is that Barak wants to be Prime Minister of all the people. In so doing, he may be neglecting to be PM of the people who voted for him.

Barak is forming policy by the polls, confident that the left, the secular segment of society and the Arabs will have to vote for him no matter what he does. The polls show, I am told, that only a tiny percentage of the Israeli public care about issues such as settlement expansion and house demolition. That is to be expected, since it is not their houses that are getting demolished, and it is not their land that is being stolen. Of course, if the Israelis thought of Palestinians as friends and neighbors, the reaction might be different. But for the average Israeli, house demolitions in Hebron are something that happens in a far away place to a foreign people. Not even enemies necessarily. This is simply the normal response of ‘realistic’ folks to world affairs, and not much different, most likely, than the views of the majority of Americans with regard to Yugoslavia today, or the thoughts of Englishman about Czechoslovakia when their government was busy betraying that country in 1938.

The PNA is doing their bit to stir things up as well, by insisting that a final settlement must be reached by the end of the year, and refusing to grant Barak’s new government an extension. Like the May 4 deadline for declaration of a state, this is an unrealistic goal that will probably be scrapped when the time comes. It is unlikely that we shall even see an implementation of the Wye accords by the end of the year.

There will be those who persist in believing in politics, insisting that if only the parties of the left: One Israel or Meretz would have gotten a few more votes, all would be well. True, the task of forming a coalition in which both the right wing National Religious Party (NRP-Mafdal) and the left wing Meretz parties participate is not easy. True, the parties of sanity lost two seats in the Knesset (parliament) because Pnina Rosenblum’s party was just a few thousand votes short of qualification, and it is a pity. However, the division of Knesset seats is a symptom - not a cause.

Barak’s formula for victory was not peace and neighborly relations, but ‘To part in peace. We shall be here, and they shall be there.’ So it seems someone has not learned that good fences will never make good neighbors. Both Meretz and One Israel rushed quite eagerly to embrace the NRP and the Likud. It may be that the best we can hope for from the new government is that though they will attempt to achieve the same goals as the old one, they shall do so with a minimum of confrontation.

The real problem is that both sides - the Israeli and the Palestinian, have put other goals ahead of peace, and that each side views peace as an instrument for achieving those goals, rather than as an end to be pursued for its own sake. For the Israelis, “peace” means “We get to keep most of the land, with international recognition and acquiescence, and with no military or terrorist threat.” Of course, is unlikely that the Palestinians will sign over what they consider to be their rights so easily.

For most of the Palestinians, peace means “No more Zionists.” Many Palestinians take the settlers at their word, that they are the real Zionists, and they assume that most Israeli Jews are not Zionists at all. Of course, most Israeli Jews are Zionists, and it is quite unlikely that we will agree to get up and leave in order to accommodate the Palestinians.

Israelis should be happy to be rid of Nethanyahu, and must do everything to ensure that no Bibi ever runs our country again. But that is not to say that the election of Barak or another candidate will bring peace, as long as fundamental attitudes on both sides are unchanged. It is at best a step in the right direction. In some ways, perhaps, the situation has not changed much since 1947, and until it does, there is little real hope. There is much irony in the hopes of those who believe that the solution can be achieved by politicians, since the problem is created and maintained by politicians on both sides, for their own benefit.

Final Election Results

The Bittersweet Taste of Victory - The end of the Bibi era and what it means More

New - The PEACE Deir Yassin Memorial Web site - history of a massacre that some people try to deny - has been updated. The update includes an English translation of the original Red Cross report available for the first time, and reflections on how the issue - and the Web site have been exploited and misunderstood by both sides.

Hebrew: Arafat