Netanyahu: Take Two

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s return to power following the fractious elections in February signals Israel’s sharp shift to the right. The political pendulum’s swing reflects the dramatic contraction of the center-left parties in the 10 years since Netanyahu last held the post.

Fallout from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has had the most significant influence on this political change. The failure of the external pageOslocall_made peace process, followed by the second Palestinian Intifada and the 2006 war against Hizbollah in Lebanon, undermined earlier paradigms that had shaped Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians. Now most Israelis concede that the dream of a 'Greater Israel' (the state of Israel and the occupied territories) is untenable, as it undermines Israel’s ability to remain both a Jewish and a democratic state and maintain its international standing.

At the same time, however, the two-state solution has also been dealt a severe blow with the collapse of the Oslo peace process, Hamas’ victory in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections and the movement’s armed takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007.

This string of setbacks gave rise to the 'unilateralism' paradigm embraced by the Israeli political center. This approach stipulates that in light of the Palestinian’s unwillingness or inability to conclude a peace deal, Israel must unilaterally extricate itself as an occupying power by dismantling the Jewish settlements and withdrawing its armed forces from Gaza and parts of the West Bank. The logic of unilateralism was applied when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided to withdraw troops and settlers from Gaza in August 2005. Sharon’s successor, Ehud Olmert, and his centrist party, Kadima, won the March 2006 elections based on their commitment to further withdraw from the West Bank. However, their election promise never materialized due to Hamas and Islamic Jihad firing hundreds of Qassam rockets from the Gaza Strip and Hizbollah shelling the north of Israel from Lebanon in the summer 2006 war.

These attacks demonstrate that unilateral withdrawals do not yield political gains and, moreover, create grave security risks. Thus, for the foreseeable future, it is unlikely that Israel will use unilateralism to manage the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Paradigmatic problems

With the collapse of Israel’s erstwhile paradigms on all sides, the second Netanyahu government has the task of devising a new policy toward the Palestinians. With the Obama administration appearing keen to promote a political settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the need for Israel to formulate its course of action is particularly acute. Three distinct approaches dominate the thinking of each of the main policymakers - Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman – and will continue to inform Israel’s key decisions for the next few years.

Barak, who also represents the prevailing view of the Israeli security establishment, argues that bilateral negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians will not yield an agreement. In a recent interview with the Israeli daily Haaretz, Barak external pagesaidcall_made that the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians is ridden with suspicion, with the impact of bloodletting on both sides still very visible. The defense minister noted that, in contrast, Israel has peace agreements with countries like Egypt and Jordan and that no discernible obstacles to achieving peace with other Arab countries exist, especially in the Gulf. Thus, he envisions the peace process progressing along two tracks concurrently: small but significant confidence-building measures vis-à-vis Arab states coupled with grand regional projects. This two-pronged strategy, Barak contends, would create the political conditions that could lead to a regional peace agreement, in which the Israeli-Palestinian dispute would also be settled along the lines of the two-state solution.

Netanyahu also has some reservations about the Israeli-Palestinian track. As long as the Palestinians are divided between Fatah and Hamas, with the latter formally unwilling to recognize the state of Israel, Netanyahu does not picture a political settlement. Unlike Barak, who prefers to deal with the Palestinians through a regional framework, Netanyahu proposes a bottom-up approach involving three strands: developing the Palestinian economy; supporting the Palestinian security forces (as long as they are committed to fighting terrorism); and unconditionally resuming negotiations with the Palestinians. Employing this tripartite policy, Netanyahu has stated, could create the conditions for achieving peace with the Palestinians.

Yet this is conditioned on the Palestinians first resolving their current political crisis in a way that will allow all key Palestinian factions - most critically Hamas - to negotiate with Israel on the basis of mutual recognition. In this context, Netanyahu has demanded that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Based on the statements made by the Israeli premier and his defense minister, the second Netanyahu government seems inclined to explore the possibility of achieving peace with the Palestinians through either a regional framework or bilateral negotiations.

Rhetoric or reality?

However, the situation on the ground indicates that some distance exists between the government’s rhetoric and its advancement of the peace process. Three of the six parties comprising Netanyahu’s government, and many members of his own Likud party, would adamantly oppose the concessions that would be required for a future settlement with the Palestinians. Nowhere is this reflected more strongly than in Lieberman’s statements, in which he flatly rejects the external pageAnnapoliscall_made peace framework that Israel, the Palestinians and most of the international community agreed to in November 2007. Thus, should there be significant progress on the Palestinian track, the government in its current form would most probably collapse.

Palestinian politics are equally problematic. Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, has increased its political power at the expense of Fatah, President Mahmoud Abbas’ secular faction. Hamas adamantly refuses to meet the three basic requirements of the Diplomatic Quartet: renounce violence, recognize Israel and respect previously signed agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Hence, even if the political divide with Fatah were to be resolved, it is difficult to see how Hamas could become part of the peace process Netanyahu envisages. A top-down regional framework to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - Barak’s preferred solution - would not unravel anything either; it is unlikely that the Arab states would agree to making any significant advances toward Israel prior to movement on the Israeli-Palestinians front.

The ongoing expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem poses another problem to peace. To date there are just under 400,000 Jewish settlers. The network of highways connecting the large settlement blocs with the center of Israel is expanding and construction of the security wall continues. Threatening irreversible changes to the political geography of the West Bank, the expansion of Jewish settlements severely jeopardizes the viability of a future Palestinian state. Indeed, in this regard the conflict may well be nearing the point of no return; as long as the settlement project expands, Israel’s commitment to a final peace deal is questionable.

Skillful political leadership and statecraft from all parties concerned — Israel, the US, the Arab states and the Palestinians — might help overcome these formidable obstacles. But with Israel focused on stopping Iran’s nuclear program and the world engulfed by the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, it is far from clear that the key players will muster the resolve to end this protracted conflict.