Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Bracing ourselves for Netanyahu, Palestine won't be compromised by terror
Make no mistake, Tzipi Livni and Kadima won yesterday's election, but Binyamin Netanyahu and his Likud party are favourites to form the next government and take power. A month after Obama took charge it is time to feel gloomy again. Many think this will be the end of the two-state solution and the final strangulation of Palestine. So will Obama have the will and resources to keep this maniac in check? And how can the international community win Israel's voters back?
Just like one of those slide puzzle games, the picture of international politics undoes itself as quickly as it takes better shape. In 2007, after years of putting up with the belligerent John Howard, Australia got a respectable government, so New Zealand, after years of having acted like its sensible cousin, got rid of its authentic Labour government less than a year later. Now that the White House is no longer staffed by the sort of clowns so hellish that even Stephen King would be too scared to write about them, Israel lurches even further to the right. Whatever Netanyahu (or Livni, skating to work across a Hell that has frozen over) does while in power, this is a sad fact to deal with: A significant number of Israelis now support parties seeing the Arab population as potential traitors and who would gladly rob more territory than make a lasting peace. Years of projectiles flying over borders into people's homes has given both Israel and the Palestinians worse administrations than they deserve and populations who both seem genuinely afraid of each other.
Back in March 2006, when Lebanon was still pretty much in one piece, it looked like we could breathe a small sigh of relief, with Likud suffering a crushing defeat in the legislative elections and even political experts like The Zutons believing Netanyahu was gone forever. Anyone who thought Bill Clinton or Tony Blair were decent, moral men could well have enjoyed the victory for Kadima, basically an all-star team of fanatical moderates and moderate fanatics, the sort that would at least put on a grave face after incinerating a residential area. It seems many that fear Likud are going to miss these days. It could be because they have become accustomed to complacency in the face of a horrific status quo. Or it could be because Likud are really, really dreadful.
Kadima: "Like we told you the other 1,000 times this happened: it was an ACCIDENT"
Likud: Mmm, could be flatter...
Likud has been the deadliest force the Palestinians (and for that matter the people of Lebanon) have known, for while the so-called Labour party would let settlements expand and kill Arabs with ease, Likud could always be counted on to go further, with war criminals like Yitzhak Shamir, Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon established in their hall of fame. Furthermore, they seem much less cautious about pissing the peace camp off. Many of their number, for example, criticised the recent Operation Cast Lead, which killed some 1,300, mostly civilian Palestinians...because it didn't go far enough. There are even worse, more racist and intolerant parties that one can vote for in Israel to be sure, but what made Likud so dangerous was that they were still considered respectable enough by Washington elites that they could go across the Atlantic and lecture Americans on why Israel needed more arms to kick these pitiful Arabs around inside their cage. These men were the optimum level of bad; generally murderous without being too embarrassing for their regular arms supplier and guardian at the UN Security Council to give them more than some slaps on the wrist or the occasional suspension of aid.
Left: Netanyahu and his supporters would compare heavy rain to the Nazis, so it was no surprise when pictures like this, of political rival Yitzhak Rabin dressed in SS uniform, appeared at Netanyahu's rallies in 1995. He wasn't invited to the funeral.
More than the other Likudniks, Binyamin Netanyahu possesses a quality often underestimated when one considers why the USA seems so beholden to Israel. He reminds Americans that many Israelis are culturally just like them in a way people from its Muslim enemies will never be. And linguistically alike too - he can address a US audience even better than most Americans, with perfect English littered liberally with stateside idioms. Hell, I sometimes think the guy is an American. On behalf of Israel's settlers and militant rejectionists he speaks the language of the War on Terror and can keep a straight face tying Palestinian guerrillas to al Qaeda in the same way he tied them to the USSR during the Cold War. Whatever is in the master's interests. His propaganda, all the more effective when CNN and Fox News are the gatekeepers of information, legitimises the seemingly lunatic amounts of money lavished on the Israeli Defence Forces and the carnage its weapons cause, often by exploiting anti-semitism and making Israel out to be defenceless. I cannot imagine American audiences would see Israel as defenceless and fluffy if third-placed Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman was addressing them; he would come across more like a Soviet apparatchik than an American diplomat, despite having much the same opinions as Netanyahu.
The positive side of the international political slide-puzzle was that in his feeble two-year stint as Prime Minister his keeper was Bill Clinton, not George W Bush or any of the so-called Neo-Conservatives, with whom he has spent many a twisted geo-political love-in fantasising about bombing Iran and Syria, and grabbing more Palestinian land. Clinton's presence meant that several of Netanyahu's madder acts made Washington panic and forcefully urge restraint, thinking of its relationship with other regional allies. The story of the poisoning of Khaled Meshaal comes to mind. Relatively moderate men in the White House have made pragmatists out of several Likud fanatics. Jimmy Carter got Begin to sign seized Egyptian territory back to its owners and George H W Bush's men reined in Yitzhak Shamir and led him, of all people, to the Madrid Peace Conference where Palestinians actually represented themselves in talks over their own land.
You can't always get what you want: These two reportedly didn't get on that well, particularly when the fellow on the left was in
one of his poisoning moods
Now the slide puzzle has gifted us another relative moderate in Obama, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record, he is realistically going to be a Bill Clinton figure, a performance the people of Afghanistan will probably not thank him for. But we must be grateful now that we didn't wind up with John McCain, for we have almost certainly avoided some kind of American-Israeli attempt to topple the government of Iran by military force. Netanyahu has been gunning for such a strike, but under Obama will almost certainly not get it. And Netanyahu's recent positive reception of suggested discriminatory policies against Israeli Arabs will not go down to well with former civil rights activist Obama either. I can see considerable pressure from Obama and hopefuly puniative measures like cuts in military supplies.
Here's what you could have won: The pairing that would have left a big hole where the Middle East used to be
Where there will no doubt be a problem is over getting this Palestinian state formed any time soon. People wanting a state sooner rather than later would have wanted Labour or Kadima to win (After all, it had been going so well under the 'moderates' of Kadima, hadn't it?) or possibly Lieberman, simply because he is so offensively nuts and unlikeable that Washington might have been forced to reassess its relationship with Israel. Any vision Obama has of creating two states side by side will be doubly hard under Netanyahu, not just because of his clear opposition, but also because the campaigning and pressure that had been put on Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni to move the process along will have to start again. It doesn't seem realistic that the situation will improve for the Palestinians under Netanyahu, so the focus will have to be on keeping him on a tight leash so he does no further harm. If Obama is serious then through all his diplomatic efforts he will have one pivotal task: to make sure that settlements in the West Bank do not expand and make it harder for future Israeli leaders who are serious about a just peace.
We are moving into difficult territory here. If Likud do get a governing coalition together we can make some reasonable predictions: yet more Palestinians will die, there will be little or no progress towards an independent Palestine, settlements will expand and solidify, Gaza will remain locked, Israelis will not feel safe and mutal intolerance will continue to grow. Hardly different than the Kadima era we have probably just passed through and which I have little but disgust for. With Israel, just as with other global or regional powers, it can be easy to slip into an acceptance of a tolerable level of badness (the reason why so many apologists seem capable of praising the effect of the surge in Iraq, despite continuing high casualties and violence). Analysts fear what Netanyahu wants but will he realistically get much of it? As someone who believes that it is America, rather than Israel, that calls most of the shots in this relationship I'm not so sure, especially if broader geo-strategic concerns are at stake for Washington. With a sober Democrat in the White House I doubt he will reach the have the apocalyptic effect his detractors claim. But he will be at least as terrible as his predecessors. The onus will be on Obama to be as good as his supporters claim.
Just like one of those slide puzzle games, the picture of international politics undoes itself as quickly as it takes better shape. In 2007, after years of putting up with the belligerent John Howard, Australia got a respectable government, so New Zealand, after years of having acted like its sensible cousin, got rid of its authentic Labour government less than a year later. Now that the White House is no longer staffed by the sort of clowns so hellish that even Stephen King would be too scared to write about them, Israel lurches even further to the right. Whatever Netanyahu (or Livni, skating to work across a Hell that has frozen over) does while in power, this is a sad fact to deal with: A significant number of Israelis now support parties seeing the Arab population as potential traitors and who would gladly rob more territory than make a lasting peace. Years of projectiles flying over borders into people's homes has given both Israel and the Palestinians worse administrations than they deserve and populations who both seem genuinely afraid of each other.
Back in March 2006, when Lebanon was still pretty much in one piece, it looked like we could breathe a small sigh of relief, with Likud suffering a crushing defeat in the legislative elections and even political experts like The Zutons believing Netanyahu was gone forever. Anyone who thought Bill Clinton or Tony Blair were decent, moral men could well have enjoyed the victory for Kadima, basically an all-star team of fanatical moderates and moderate fanatics, the sort that would at least put on a grave face after incinerating a residential area. It seems many that fear Likud are going to miss these days. It could be because they have become accustomed to complacency in the face of a horrific status quo. Or it could be because Likud are really, really dreadful.
Kadima: "Like we told you the other 1,000 times this happened: it was an ACCIDENT"
Likud: Mmm, could be flatter...
Likud has been the deadliest force the Palestinians (and for that matter the people of Lebanon) have known, for while the so-called Labour party would let settlements expand and kill Arabs with ease, Likud could always be counted on to go further, with war criminals like Yitzhak Shamir, Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon established in their hall of fame. Furthermore, they seem much less cautious about pissing the peace camp off. Many of their number, for example, criticised the recent Operation Cast Lead, which killed some 1,300, mostly civilian Palestinians...because it didn't go far enough. There are even worse, more racist and intolerant parties that one can vote for in Israel to be sure, but what made Likud so dangerous was that they were still considered respectable enough by Washington elites that they could go across the Atlantic and lecture Americans on why Israel needed more arms to kick these pitiful Arabs around inside their cage. These men were the optimum level of bad; generally murderous without being too embarrassing for their regular arms supplier and guardian at the UN Security Council to give them more than some slaps on the wrist or the occasional suspension of aid.
Left: Netanyahu and his supporters would compare heavy rain to the Nazis, so it was no surprise when pictures like this, of political rival Yitzhak Rabin dressed in SS uniform, appeared at Netanyahu's rallies in 1995. He wasn't invited to the funeral.
More than the other Likudniks, Binyamin Netanyahu possesses a quality often underestimated when one considers why the USA seems so beholden to Israel. He reminds Americans that many Israelis are culturally just like them in a way people from its Muslim enemies will never be. And linguistically alike too - he can address a US audience even better than most Americans, with perfect English littered liberally with stateside idioms. Hell, I sometimes think the guy is an American. On behalf of Israel's settlers and militant rejectionists he speaks the language of the War on Terror and can keep a straight face tying Palestinian guerrillas to al Qaeda in the same way he tied them to the USSR during the Cold War. Whatever is in the master's interests. His propaganda, all the more effective when CNN and Fox News are the gatekeepers of information, legitimises the seemingly lunatic amounts of money lavished on the Israeli Defence Forces and the carnage its weapons cause, often by exploiting anti-semitism and making Israel out to be defenceless. I cannot imagine American audiences would see Israel as defenceless and fluffy if third-placed Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman was addressing them; he would come across more like a Soviet apparatchik than an American diplomat, despite having much the same opinions as Netanyahu.
The positive side of the international political slide-puzzle was that in his feeble two-year stint as Prime Minister his keeper was Bill Clinton, not George W Bush or any of the so-called Neo-Conservatives, with whom he has spent many a twisted geo-political love-in fantasising about bombing Iran and Syria, and grabbing more Palestinian land. Clinton's presence meant that several of Netanyahu's madder acts made Washington panic and forcefully urge restraint, thinking of its relationship with other regional allies. The story of the poisoning of Khaled Meshaal comes to mind. Relatively moderate men in the White House have made pragmatists out of several Likud fanatics. Jimmy Carter got Begin to sign seized Egyptian territory back to its owners and George H W Bush's men reined in Yitzhak Shamir and led him, of all people, to the Madrid Peace Conference where Palestinians actually represented themselves in talks over their own land.
You can't always get what you want: These two reportedly didn't get on that well, particularly when the fellow on the left was in
one of his poisoning moods
Now the slide puzzle has gifted us another relative moderate in Obama, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record, he is realistically going to be a Bill Clinton figure, a performance the people of Afghanistan will probably not thank him for. But we must be grateful now that we didn't wind up with John McCain, for we have almost certainly avoided some kind of American-Israeli attempt to topple the government of Iran by military force. Netanyahu has been gunning for such a strike, but under Obama will almost certainly not get it. And Netanyahu's recent positive reception of suggested discriminatory policies against Israeli Arabs will not go down to well with former civil rights activist Obama either. I can see considerable pressure from Obama and hopefuly puniative measures like cuts in military supplies.
Here's what you could have won: The pairing that would have left a big hole where the Middle East used to be
Where there will no doubt be a problem is over getting this Palestinian state formed any time soon. People wanting a state sooner rather than later would have wanted Labour or Kadima to win (After all, it had been going so well under the 'moderates' of Kadima, hadn't it?) or possibly Lieberman, simply because he is so offensively nuts and unlikeable that Washington might have been forced to reassess its relationship with Israel. Any vision Obama has of creating two states side by side will be doubly hard under Netanyahu, not just because of his clear opposition, but also because the campaigning and pressure that had been put on Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni to move the process along will have to start again. It doesn't seem realistic that the situation will improve for the Palestinians under Netanyahu, so the focus will have to be on keeping him on a tight leash so he does no further harm. If Obama is serious then through all his diplomatic efforts he will have one pivotal task: to make sure that settlements in the West Bank do not expand and make it harder for future Israeli leaders who are serious about a just peace.
We are moving into difficult territory here. If Likud do get a governing coalition together we can make some reasonable predictions: yet more Palestinians will die, there will be little or no progress towards an independent Palestine, settlements will expand and solidify, Gaza will remain locked, Israelis will not feel safe and mutal intolerance will continue to grow. Hardly different than the Kadima era we have probably just passed through and which I have little but disgust for. With Israel, just as with other global or regional powers, it can be easy to slip into an acceptance of a tolerable level of badness (the reason why so many apologists seem capable of praising the effect of the surge in Iraq, despite continuing high casualties and violence). Analysts fear what Netanyahu wants but will he realistically get much of it? As someone who believes that it is America, rather than Israel, that calls most of the shots in this relationship I'm not so sure, especially if broader geo-strategic concerns are at stake for Washington. With a sober Democrat in the White House I doubt he will reach the have the apocalyptic effect his detractors claim. But he will be at least as terrible as his predecessors. The onus will be on Obama to be as good as his supporters claim.
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