Category Archives: Israel
“The West Bank is not Occupied” says Levy Committee
The established nature and routine life of the settlements was interesting to me during the 2 1/2 months I recently spent in Israel living and conducting some research in the settlements. The notion that some of these large settlements such as Ariel will ever be moved defies imagination. Construction in the town of Ariel continues along with new additions to the University Center and upgrades of city services. Even though settlements have questionable legal status the state continues to provide necessary infrastructure for the maintenance of the settlements. Inside Israel proper are road signs, mileage markers, and general information facilitating travel as well as the provision of necessary services.
A couple of weeks ago Prime Minister Netanyahu organized a panel about the status of the West Bank. The panel was headed by Justice Levy, and the panel’s primary conclusion was that Israel cannot be seen as “occupying” the West Bank. The original report is available here. The Levy committee concluded that the concept of occupation did not apply on the basis of international law. The main argument is that there was no established sovereign state on what is now called the West Bank and therefore Israel cannot be accused of occupying this land. The report goes on to explain how Israel has a right to the land and this includes the right to transfer populations if necessary. The report continues with a long list of laws that should be annulled in order to encourage settlement in the West Bank, followed by a list of suggestions and procedures that will facilitate Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria.
The “left” in Israel maintains that Judea and Samaria are occupied on the basis of international law ever since they were captured in 1967. But the panel accepted the argument from the “right” by explaining that the idea of “occupation” relates to short periods of time in which one state captures or makes incursions into another until their differences are resolved. Judea and Samaria, according to the argument from the right, has been under Israeli control for a long time and there seems to be no timetable for dispute resolution or expectation that Israel will simply withdraw. Essentially, the report concluded that Israel can treat the West Bank as if it were part of the internationally recognized state of Israel. Take note of a few problems:
If the West Bank and its settlements are part of Israel proper then the people currently living in the West Bank would be Israeli citizens with full political rights – regardless of religion or ethnicity. The slippery slope here is that the Palestinians of the West Bank would overwhelm the Jewish majority democracy and pose almost insurmountable political problems. The presence of the Palestinians in the West Bank, regardless of what one thinks of their political and cultural rights, will be a very difficult problem, a management and political problem, for the Israelis. Israel simply must get out of the business of lording over large numbers of people who are not Israelis. Again political nuances do not even matter much because the reality of managing large numbers of noncitizens is always a loser for the dominant culture.
It should be noted that there is nothing particularly new about this legal argument. Israeli legal scholars have attempted to justify Israel’s presence in the West Bank by arguing that it is not subject to the conditions of international law. Their arguments have not been accepted by most other legal scholars or the international community in general.
Third, trying to do something about occupation on the basis of international law is pretty futile. The Israeli Supreme Court has consistently ruled on the side of security arguments with respect to the West Bank. Those arguments have been tempered, and always subject to conditions, but have remained supportive of Israel’s presence. The court has, for example, allowed settlements but not on privately owned land; it has allowed targeted assassinations but only under specific conditions; it has even allowed Israel to use and sell natural resources in the West Bank.
Attitudes about the green line (see the Michael Freund article on the “articles of interest” tab on the top of this blog page) and the settlements are beginning to change in Israel. There is creeping support and sympathy for settlers. And a more casual and optimistic attitude about ownership of the West Bank is a byproduct of the diminished interest in the two state solution. If there is no genuine two state solution, then Israel might as well appropriate the land. As Israelis grow tired of dealing with the Palestinians their attitude about the West Bank becomes more predatory.
Netanyahu, Leadership, and the Peace Process
After issues in a conflict are explored and analyzed, and after positions are established and defended, a leader needs to step forward and initiate new directions. The matter of leadership is sometimes underappreciated with respect to its role in solving difficult political conflicts. Conflicts require bold leaders who are able to set new directions and initiate solutions before his or her constituency is even sufficiently supportive. Benjamin Netanyahu has been a staunch conservative all of his life but even he has now admitted the possibility of a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is his chance to be a peacemaker; it might be his last chance to truly establish a positive lasting legacy that will accompany him into the future. But it is also possible that violence will soon break out in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza and derail any chance Netanyahu now has to be a peacemaker.
The formation of a unity government that includes Kadima was a brilliant move on Netanyahu’s part that makes it more possible for Netanyahu to pass legislation and, perhaps even more importantly, not be so dependent on the right wing parties. Netanyahu now controls enough seats in the Knesset to pass legislation and control an agenda. But this new coalition will require leadership. If the formation of a unity government merely allows Netanyahu to pass internal legislation and increases his control over his own party and the government then there will be little reason to believe in significant change with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Also, some have suggested that a unity government is designed to increase the justification for an attack on Iran. Perhaps, but Israel is increasingly unconvinced that a preemptive attack on Iran is worthwhile or justifiable. We will see.
There is plenty of apathy and denial in the current peace talk environment. Many Europeans simply do not want to invest politically in the peace process, and many Israelis are “fed up.” Having just returned from 2 1/2 months in Israel, I can attest to the fact that Israelis are increasingly detached from the conflict as a result of many years of false starts, rejections, painful discussions, and the general lack of trust that characterizes the relationship between the two sides.
If Netanyahu simply wants to continue settling in the West Bank on the belief that the Palestinians will one day give up then his leadership legacy is in trouble. But if he uses a unity government as an opportunity to speak with a broader voice and represent a greater variety of people then his leadership will be a lifeline to Abbas and the Palestinians. But as of now, Netanyahu is doing little more than speaking to people without engaging in substantive deliberations or clear movement toward a final status.
The importance of the coming elections in the United States also cannot be underestimated. Israelis have a strong and intimate relationship with United States and they expect their leaders to maintain that relationship. There is one analysis floating around from 1999 when Netanyahu lost to Ehud Barak that a significant number of people voted against him because of his poor relationship with Clinton, mainly because Clinton accused him of another failure of leadership when he undermined the peace process. Given that the relationship between Obama and Netanyahu is even worse – because of Netanyahu’s condescending treatment of Obama – and not very easily fixable, Netanyahu feels it is necessary to broaden his base of support with a unity government.
It is probably true that the reasons for forming a unity government were more oriented toward internal politics than the peace process. Nevertheless, the unity government should have important diplomatic consequences if the leadership decides so. But Netanyahu must signal his interest – he must express his leadership. Otherwise it is pointless to talk about the peace process as long as Netanyahu is Prime Minister.
Finally, it’s important to note that Mofaz the leader of Kadima who joined Netanyahu’s government is associated with a hopeful interim peace plan that a number of people consider viable. This creates a Palestinian state with temporary borders (on the basis of the 2002 roadmap to which both Israelis and Palestinians agreed) and the possibility for a final status agreement. The formation of a unity government was smart on Netanyahu’s part, but if he wants to be really smart he will use the unity government to facilitate the peace process. That’s leadership.
The Question Everyone Asked Me in Israel
I just returned from teaching and collecting data in Israel for 2 1/2 months. I had a fine time working with Israeli students and engaging in various academic projects of my own. Interestingly, every nonacademic Israeli (the average person on the streets or in the bars), after the usual preliminaries, asked me the same question: “Why does the world, they asked, pay so much attention to us and why do they hate us so much?” Most Israelis just don’t understand the animosity directed at them. They don’t understand how places like Syria, Saudi Arabia, or Zimbabwe float by with relatively little attention but Israel, a successful free-market democracy, is the brunt of so much criticism.
I typically began the discussion with lots of explanations including the amount of news that came out of Israel because it was an open democracy and you could file a story easily, the cachet of the holy land, the successful portrayal of the Palestinians as “oppressed,” and a variety of other explanations that are not my main concern at the moment. I also often made reference to the power of anti-Semitism by pointing out ironically that the Jews were hated historically when there are weak, and isn’t it interesting that they are still hated now that they are strong. What does that tell you?
But the question of blame in Israel is particularly interesting. Part of Israel’s current crisis is a “crisis of blame.” The second intifada was blamed on Israel. All Israeli security concerns result in blame as the Palestinians are described as largely defenseless. The controversial book by Peter Beinart is a litany of blame targeting Israel and there are a number of places, as Daniel Gordis has pointed out, where Beinart is simply wrong and does not have his facts straight. What is even more insidious is how politically incorrect it has become to credit Israel. Nobody ever mentions the extraordinary number of cultural and artistic alliances between Jews and Arabs in Israeli society. Nobody mentions Israel’s coordination with the Palestinians with respect to development and medical issues. Israel always seems to be spoken of in cold detached language while Palestinian problems garner tremendous emotion.
So this question of why Israel receives so much international attention and condemnation, why they get so much blame, remains an enigma. Israel has gone from holding the moral high ground while it made the desert bloom to a pariah nation. The answer to the problem of blaming Israel is of course complex but it has one component that is clear. It is the problem of liberalism that rejects any sort of ethnic nationalism and believes it to be a remnant of old world tribalism. Moreover, liberalism has come full circle toward an inability to take a stand on many things – to get in the ring and punch for what it believes in. To paraphrase Barack Obama “the arc of justice is long but it bends toward democracy and freedom.” That is to say, as rigid and authoritarian political polities move to the future they will look more like Israel. Their economies and their individual freedoms will be more pronounced. They will bend toward Israel.
Israelis want one thing. When the day comes that this conflict ends, when all the borders are established and the streets are named, they want there to be standing a Jewish state. A state devoted to Jewish particularity. Not a Torah state, not another Iran, but a state devoted to Jewish history, culture, art, literature, and politics. Israeli bashing seems to be an effort to prevent the establishment of the Jewish state, an effort to thoroughly delegitimize Israel. And this is one reason Netanyahu always demands during peace processes that the PLA recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
Troubling Brotherhood Document Jeopardizes 1979 Peace Treaty
The hope has always been that the Muslim Brotherhood would handle power responsibly. That they would pay attention to economic development and providing a better life for Egyptian citizens rather than to the length of women’s skirts. But there’s this disturbing document reported on the website for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs located here: http://jerusalemcenter.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/the-new-egyptian-parliament-takes-aim-at-the-camp-david-accords/.
The Egyptian Parliament has released a statement that jeopardizes the 1979 peace accords withIsrael. Again, as the Muslim Brotherhood began to take control the hope was that they would have more important things to worry about then taunting Israel. That appears not to be the case. The document is provocative and seriously capable of undermining the cold peace that has characterized the relationship between Israel and Egypt. Below are some of the qualities and themes of the document.
1. The document does not refer to the “State of Israel” but to the “Zionist entity.” This perpetuates the myth of Zionist conspiracies in the Arab world. The use of the word “Zionist” is designed to incite fear and stimulate images of Jewish manipulation and colonizing settlements. It clearly is not the language of any genuine peace process represented by the historic treaty of 1979.
2. Palestinian terror is referred to as “resistance.” In a peaceful relationship betweenEgyptandIsraelboth sides have denounced violence. To justify it as legitimate resistance is to justify violence.
3.Israelis officially defined as an enemy and any possibility of cooperative relations is rejected. This language is slippage into an “us” versus “them” mentality that seems to be the purpose of the document. These categorical group identifications lead to psychological and communicative distortions that exacerbate problems.
4. There is a suggestion of cutting off diplomatic relations. Such relations are important for maintaining a balance of power and the necessary lines of communication to prevent mistakes and misinterpretations. Cutting off diplomatic relations is usually a final insult before resuming violence.
5. There is a call for supporting the armed struggle against Israel including boycotts. Again, violence is justified.
6.Jerusalemis clearly defined as a Muslim holy place and the presence of the Jews is completely denied and ignored. A call to take up the cause of Jerusalem is designed to activate religious passions, especially amongst the lower and middle classes. Jerusalem is a symbol of loss and sometimes humiliation in the Arab world and reference to the city draws attention to this loss.
7. There is a frightening call to explore the possibilities of nuclear Egypt. Even if the Brotherhood is bluffing this is a dangerous game. How the nuclear standoff will play out in Iran remains to be seen.
The document was accepted unanimously by the Arab Affairs Committee and represents a new tone of confrontation and tension.Israelis defined as a major enemy and responsible for Palestinian suffering and instability in the Arab world. There are strong statements of support for Hamas and rejections of any direct negotiation or peace process withIsrael.
The relationship between Egypt and theUnited States remains hopeful. TheUnited States has supportedEgyptboth financially and militarily for a long time and is in a position to apply pressure. Nevertheless, if the Muslim Brotherhood foregrounds its religious convictions over political practicality then the “rational” influences theUnited Stateshas to bring to the table will be diminished. Difficult as it is to imagine, and just as unpleasant, Egypt could slide into becoming the next Iran if it pursues a nuclear scenario that is undergirded by religious convictions rather than political ones.
Settlements and the Two-State Solution
I’ve been living and teaching at Ariel, a large Israeli settlement, and spending time talking to settlers and people who work with them. There’s an interesting gap between how settlers think of themselves and how others do. Much of the Western liberal world considers settlers at the center of the problem and assume their communities will be removed as a result of a peace treaty. People who live in these communities cannot imagine it; at least they do not see themselves as radicals interfering with peace. But the issue of the settlements for many is the most difficult and fundamental problemIsraelfaces. The legal issues and the definitions ofIsraelproper versus settler expansion into contested territory that violates state and international laws are not very resonant for members of these communities. They easily swipe away arguments about legality.
Like so many others I am lamenting the possible demise of the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Perhaps I remain naïve, but it seems to me to be the only sensible answer. Also in my naïveté I do not understand why the Palestinians would not be enthusiastic about the possibility of their own state. Why would they not want to start the process of building institutions, educating their kids in their own schools supported by a sovereign state, creating art and philosophy and watching their society develop? I know, I’m a Westerner in these are Western ideals. But from what I know of the Palestinian population such goals are consistent with their desires. Moreover, two sovereign states independent but working together is the only way thatIsraelremains a democracy committed to Jewish particularity. No solution or lack of solution is going to jeopardize the Jewish nature of the Israeli state. But the “Jewish” nature of the state is a thoroughly different and interesting question.
There is some sort of failure of will and failure of leadership that is choking the life out of the two-state solution. Netanyahu has publicly stated his support for a Palestinian state but seems to do little to bring it into effect. I suppose he’s a talented political animal skilled at swaying with the wind, but his victories are in the realm of security and protection not peace, even accepting the fact that they are related. Netanyahu and Barak ran the country once and now they’re running it again. Unfortunately, political survival seems to be their primary goal.
Even if there were two states there would be a tremendous amount of cooperation between the two required. Transportation and movement, business relations, oversight of holy sites, and any number of governmental and commercial transactions would be shared experiences between the Israelis and the Palestinians. That’s why Herb Kelman in his overview of the solution to the problem in the journal Middle East Policy calls it “two states in one country.”
Here’s one suggestion for saving the two-state solution day: work with the Palestinians and the United Nations on the declaration of a state that is satisfactory to both Palestinians and Israelis, not a unilateral Palestinian declaration. The West Bank andGazawill have to be part of the new Palestinian state with agreements about land exchanges.Israelcannot make demands on a Palestinian state that essentially deny the nature of the state. The Palestinians must be satisfied with the political and geographic conditions. A number of negotiators believe the issue of the status ofJerusalemand refugees can be solved relatively easily. Many of the issues related to these problems have been aired and it’s a matter of bold leadership to make a decision.
I have an Israeli friend who makes the case for a political system that is federal-like or involves independent Palestinian communities without removing settlements. In future posts I will explore the issues around such solutions as well as political arrangements that involve the single state.
The Politics of Naming
A few posts ago, before I was so rudely denied the Internet, I wrote that I was off toIsraelto teach at Ariel University. Actually, I should say Ariel University”Center.” I have been invited to teach an eight week course on deliberation and ethnopolitical conflict. The course deals with group differences and political conflicts in general, but the process of deliberation and conflict resolution in specific. An Israeli friend and colleague promptly wrote me and said you are not teaching at a “University.” My friend wanted me to understand that Ariel Universitywas not an official Israeli University. I did understand that but the name “Ariel University Center” can be pretty deceptive.
The town of Ariel is a settlement in theWest Bank. And the Ariel University Center of Samaria is a large public college located in the town ofAriel. The University center at Ariel was originally associated with Bar Ilan Universitybut now enjoys its own independence. The University has developed since its founding in the 1980s and offers now degrees recognized as quality higher education degrees.
But Ariel and its University have one obstacle to surmount – it’s in theWest Bankand certain segments of Israeli society do not think it should be there. There have been boycotts of the University because of its location and a significant controversy over its status as a “University.” My goal in this post is not to take a political position or to support or condemn anyone but to characterize the problem as an interesting one with respect to the politics of naming and identification Briefly, the controversy goes like this: the Israeli government supported upgrading Ariel to university status but such a vote was considered a political maneuver and met with resistance from many academics mostly because of its location in the West Bank. Moreover, the addition of a new University was by some seen as a threat. The initial vote of support by the government was only a precursor to support by the Council of Higher Education which was ultimately necessary. Later the Council of Higher Education did in fact reject the proposal to grant Ariel University status.
The debate became somewhat of a political football because conservatives wanted “a fact on the ground” in the name of the University, while liberals objected to its location. The institution was once called “the College of Judea and Samaria” but later the name changed to “ArielUniversityCenter.” This name change still upset many people. There were boycotts and letters of opposition. You might be asking yourself how could this institution be calledAriel University Center when such a proposal was rejected by the Israeli Council for Higher Education? It comes down to the politics of naming who has naming rights. It turns out that the Council of Higher Education in Israel proper governs universities inside the green line, but institutions on the other side of the green line are formally subordinate to the Israeli Defense Forces; that is, the army. The Israeli Council of Higher Education has no naming rights, obviously, outside of its official national boundaries. Hence, the Israeli defense minister has the right to name the institution and that he did.
This was mainly a symbolic move to assist the institution with its prestige because no new money was going to come its way. However, increasing enrollments and recognition of the University has improved its budgetary condition. The symbolic manipulation of the name is interesting because there really is no such thing as a “UniversityCenter.” What is that? What makes a “UniversityCenter” different from a “University?” I don’t know. The debate continues with various levels of integration and recognition.
The debate over naming “Ariel University” is a symbolic battle that represents the essence of political conflicts. It also underscores the importance of names, labels, and categories. It is a process critical to the social construction of reality that is so central to ethnopolitical conflicts. At a deeper level, the naming ofArielUniversityis a metaphor for collective experiences. This battle the name is attached to represents the consciousness of settlers, liberals, and conservatives. In other words, the conflict is coded into the argument over the name.
What Is a Settlement?
On Friday, March 9, 2012 I leave for Israel to teach at Ariel University for about two months. Ariel is a settlement and I will be blogging from there. Some thoughts are below from something I’ve been working on related to settlers and their discourse. I will take up related issues over the next few months. Please feel free to comment. The remarks below are the basic issues related to settlements beginning with “What is a settlement.”
Contiguous land can be claimed or annexed for any number of reasons including economic, security, or military defeat. Benvenisti argued that Israel’s position with respect to the territories was not ideological but purely economic and practical. He held that the land was legally available to Israel and Israel’s incursion into the territories was justified by economic interests. Israel also makes the distinction between pure colonization and the slow integration of a new population into an older one. The new population is typically more powerful and considered superior and they slowly overwhelm the older or indigenous population. This process mostly describes post-1967 settlement justifications. Israel has struggled with the definition of the territories as a frontier land that is subject to the legitimization process. This is one reason that various strategies have been used to justify land acquisition. Sometimes these justifications are political and economic and other times they are ideological or religious. My concern is with religious and ideological justifications. But in either case the “settlers” and their “occupying” behavior have become a part of Israel and restructured how Israelis define themselves. Lustick is interested in state expansion and contraction and describes stages of territorial expansion. He argues that Israel is in the throes of regime occupation and so increasingly intertwined with the territories that it cannot extract itself without violence. The conflict is at the intersection of the settlers desire to naturalize and justify their existence, and the fact that their project is opposed by many and will have to be abandoned or severely curtailed in order to secure a stable peace. In the face of this conflict, the settlers must work through discourses about the land, sanctity, Zionism, and the cultural “other,” namely, the Palestinian Arabs.
A settlement is a communal Israeli village purposefully located in the West Bank or what religious settlers refer to as the ancient biblical land of Judea and Samaria, land that is currently contested territory. The settlement represents religious and political significance in every manner from architecture to geographical location and design. Israel’s victory in the Six Day War in 1967 resulted in a return to holy places and thus reconnected the Israeli public with sacred places and religious feelings. Gadi Taub in his book on the settlements credits Israel’s literary figure Amos Oz with being the first to recognize in just a few months after the Six Day War the political division that would overtake Israeli politics for years to come. Oz wrote that Zionism in the future would either continue to be about democratic self determination in the best sense, or it would be about redeeming the land. Oz knew that if Zionism drifted toward religious redemption of the land then the Palestinian population would be under the boot of occupation and Israel would evolve toward a modern Sparta focused on military expertise and subjugating a local population.
Settlements are self contained communities that require roads, schools, buildings, and all the essentials of municipalities. Various religious and political organizations (e.g. the Gush Emunim, Yesha council) have taken the lead in promoting settlements by developing apparently normal communities in every way except location. Settlements typically resemble modern suburban bedroom communities where residents come and go at will. But these settlements are anything but innocent or normal. They are a discursive space for a counter Israeli society that has religious redemption and control as its goals. We will see below how the settlements have discursively constructed authenticity through language, symbols, and the creation of their own meanings. Settlers employ a discourse that is an interrelated set of practices that shape meanings. These practices, whether cultural or interpretive, are patterned and systematized within a social and political context. A critical point about discourse is its constitutive nature. That is, a discourse states how the world is, should be and what matters the most. It defines an acceptable way to talk and conduct oneself. By attending to the discursive practices that give rise to meanings we can reveal settler claims of rationality, the ways in which they relate to institutional norms, and the political implications associated with them. Discourses, then, exist at local levels of interaction but are also related to broad discourses that become historically situated and enduring systems that take on political and cultural significance.
Consequently, discourse constitutes relationships and meanings by prescribing what conforms to the dominant discourse. And, discourse can be transformative.
The Case for Bombing Iran: Tell Me What You Think
What do you think? Should Israel or the United States bomb Iran in order to prevent the development of nuclear weapons? Weigh in with your opinions by responding in the comment section. Here’s the case for stopping Iran:
Frederick Kagan and Maseh Zarif writing in The Wall Street Journal claim that America is being played for a fool. That we are naïve and there is no other case to be made other than Iran is preparing for nuclear weapons. Iran is doing nothing that would not lead one to conclude anything other than their nuclear program is moving forward and looking toward the day they are a nuclear power. The International Atomic Energy Agency reported last week that Iran continues to accelerate its enrichment program, and they are in violation of UN Security Council resolutions. And there is no evidence that Iran would stop its nuclear program simply if we lift sanctions.
But the US goes about its business with nothing but confused and superficial discussion. Some governmental leaders claim the Iranians are ready to talk and others are blind to what is right in front of them. The thought of war with Iran and the implications for Israel and the United States is so unpleasant that we are misinterpreting intelligence data. We are desperately, according to the authors of the Wall Street Journal article, trying to convince ourselves that there are no problems and Iran is a “rational actor.” The IAEA found that Iran’s collection of centrifuges is growing and their uranium is enriched to the point of weapons grade quality. They also reported that Iran has a hidden enrichment facility with installed air defense systems and new centrifuges can be brought online at that facility.
Iran also has facilities that the UN investigators expect is being used to prepare weapons grade uranium but the investigators have been denied access to this facility. The sanctions against Iran have been harsh but the Iranian leadership seems to be willing to sell out its economy for nuclear weapons. Iran claims that their interests are peaceful but the international community has offered Iran enriched uranium for peaceful use but Iran has refused.
Iran is also preparing wartime messages. They have threatened to close the Straits of Hormuz, attack ships passing through, and preemptively attack any nation that threatens Iran. Still, the US listens quietly and patiently. Only Iran is aggressive and one has to wonder why a state interested in peace would be working so hard to fan the fires of war. The Iranians are pursuing a weaponization program and any attempt on their part to negotiate with the IAEA is essentially designed to buy time. Soon they will reach what the Israelis call the “zone of immunity” after which military options will be more dangerous.
During the Bush administration it was easy to assume that the Bush-Cheney war mongers were just looking for more weapons to label as a threat. But now the pendulum has swung the other way. The Obama administration has been far more accommodating and taken a hands-off approach. But it seems as if we are trying to play catch-up by instituting tough sanctions, lobbying United Nations, and freezing Iranian assets. Perhaps diplomacy has not yet run its course but it’s nearing the finish line. Israel simply can’t wait any longer if they’re going to do something, and if Israel preemptively bombs Iran then the world is going to be an unstable place.
There are also plenty of good reasons for Israel to avoid a military confrontation with Iran. First, the Israeli bombers cannot attack with surgical precision. They might hit facilities but cannot eliminate them completely. Secondly, even after all the damages are tallied you cannot eliminate Iran’s nuclear knowledge and the military attack will only slow the process down. Third, an attack on Iran would justify retaliation. Iran would feel genuinely threatened and their arguments for defending themselves would be defensible. Israel is already a pariah nation in much of the Arab world and this would seal their fate. Israel would have to go to war perhaps with Lebanon, Gaza, and perhaps even Syria. Hezbollah has many rockets aimed at Israel and they would rain down on the country by the time Israel’s bombers returned to base.
The decision to attack Iran is one of those 1% decision problems. The probability of Iran actually using a nuclear weapon is small (1%) and a nation could assume that it is very unlikely. Sanctions and diplomacy continue with no plans for military action. But the consequences of being wrong are catastrophic. If that 1% possibility does occur, it’s a disaster.
So what kind of a decision do you make? Do you let sanctions play out and perhaps allow Iran to complete their nuclear program? Or, do you conclude that a nuclear Iran is simply unacceptable and stop it now?
I’m interested in your opinions. Weigh in on the debate in the comments section below.
Israeli Nationalist Legislation and Democracy
Even the staunchest defender of Israel is troubled by the approval of undemocratic laws designed to maintain the Jewish nature of the state. For some time now nationalists have been challenging the good nature of Israel’s democracy by passing laws that restrict the rights of the minority community, namely Arabs, from expressing themselves even symbolically. Here are a few examples: Israel’s war of independence in 1948 is called the Nakba or the disaster by the Arabs and it is against the law to use state funds to commemorate the Nakba. Small communities have been empowered to prevent groups from moving into the community. Some have suggested loyalty oaths and there have been laws passed that prevent Palestinian citizens from seeking rights in the courts.
Many of these laws are objectionable to most Israelis and have been rejected by the Knesset. But a certain number of them appeal to a wide variety of people. Israelis fear the loss of the Jewish particularity of the state and even though they struggle with these laws some argue for their necessity. One Israeli leader even proposed legislation that suggested the superiority of the Jewish nature of the state over the democratic nature of the state, and this included rejecting Arabic as a national language in Israel.
What motivates this sort of action? There are a few prime motivators the most important of which is the essential Jewish nature of the state. Israel simply cannot be a strong liberal democracy and privilege Jewish particularity. It’s a contradiction in terms on one level. But on another level Israel has a right to remain Jewish. There is a sense in which the state of Israel makes no sense if it is not Jewish. The question is how Jewish? The answer lies somewhere betweenIsraelas a Torah state sealed in orthodoxy, and Israel as a secular democratic state with the separation of church and state. The balance between the Democratic and the Jewish nature of the state will have to evolve over time.
But there are other causes which include a failed peace process, a public tired of violence and rocket attacks, and the distasteful experience of watching Israeli Arabs cheer Hezbollah rockets. Increasingly Israelis see all Palestinians, even Israeli Palestinians, as the same and do not assume that Israeli Palestinians have any commitment to the state.
Of course, one answer to this reactionary legislation is the two-state solution. But that does not seem to be something bound for the near future; moreover, even with the establishment of a Palestinian state there will be a sizable Palestinian minority in Israel proper. This problem will not go away. This sort of reactionary legislation will not go away but it is more exposed than ever because it promises to threaten the democratic nature ofIsrael. Threats to free speech and the disempowerment of whole groups of people have placed the problem at the forefront of the public’s consciousness. Israeli Arabs are about 20% of the Israeli population and the number is simply too big to ignore.
Israel should guarantee the symbolic rights of all minority groups. The key word here is symbolic rights, the rights to express themselves through protest and the right to propose alternative perspectives on the state. Any culture has a right to protect itself from a genuine threat and Israelis no different. In the same way that the skinheads were allowed to march in the United States, as long as they were not judged to be overly provocative or violent, minority groups inIsraelshould also be allowed to express themselves through acceptable forms of protest. Protected speech is sacred to liberal democracies and, as the observation goes, the best response to unpleasant speech is more speech. Israel should have nothing to fear from the rights of Palestinians to express themselves – again, the right to express themselves peacefully and under conditions that do not promote imminent danger. Stubborn resistance to the rights of Palestinians will only cause the conflict to spiral downward and make the two-state solution even more difficult to achieve.
The Continuing Saga of Hamas Fatah Reconciliation
In May and June of 2011 I wrote about the reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas. The two sides have been jockeying for political positions for the last few months and have not been able to agree on a structure for the new unity government. But just last week the two sides broke the political impasse and agreed to make Abbas that the head of the proposed unity government, a government that tries to join the secular Fatah party with the Islamist Hamas party. Abbas will be both president and prime minister and the current Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad will move on because he is so disliked by Hamas who consider him to be far too pro-Western. There is much work to be done yet before these two groups actually reconcile or form what might be legitimately called a unity government, because these two groups have a history of disliking each other pretty intensely.
But a more intriguing question is “what should the role of Israel be or the attitude of Israel be about the proposed unity government?” Publicly, Israel holds its nose at the whole thing. They consider Hamas a terrorist organization and will have nothing to do with them. Netanyahu is on record as opposing the formation of a government reconciling Fatah and Hamas. In June of 2011 I wrote the opposite, that such a reconciliation might be a good thing because Hamas will be forced to moderate itself. Some certainly considered my position naïve but I will hold my ground by maintaining that no progress cannot be made without unity between Fatah and Hamas and without Hamas doing its share of moderating.
The received Israeli position is that Hamas is a radical movement guided by an ideology directed toward the elimination of Israel. Moreover, inclusion of Hamas in any negotiations would simply make it easier for them to reject a proposed resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There is also fear that rather than Hamas moderate itself, Hamas will bore itself into the Palestinian authority and contaminate its ideology. If this happens there has been lots of saber rattling about what damage this will cause to the Palestinian Authority. But such damage will be minimal because there is no peace process anyway, and the maintenance of the Palestinian Authority is in the interest of both Israel and the United States.
There are some very good hard-core reasons to deal with Hamas: Hamas controls the Gaza Strip and if you want to do business in the Gaza Strip, if you want to sign agreements regulating political behavior, then you must do business with Hamas. Too, there is a good chance that the “Arab spring” will help usher in Muslim political parties and consequently enhance Hamas’s power. As more countries integrate Muslim political parties into the governing body, the more groups like Hamas take on legitimacy. Egypt has already taken a softer attitude toward Hamas and this is assumed to be the result of successful elections for the Muslim Brotherhood. Any movement towards solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is going to be gradual and include partial and limited agreements. A reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah will more than likely facilitate a gradual process, where small and limited agreements can flourish, rather than hinder conflict resolution. A unity government encourages progress – small as it may be – that does not require Hamas at this point to recognize Israel, nor Israel Hamas.
Increasingly analysts and pundits have argued that engaging Hamas will have the desired moderating effect. It will encourage moderates on each side and stimulate more debate. But Israel remains a problem, as does Hamas, because it still refuses to deal with Hamas. And this might be a particularly difficult problem because of Netanyahu who seems bent on preventing a two state solution and can use the recognition of Hamas to his advantage. This plays directly into the hands of the Palestinians who believe that Israel’s rejection of unity between Hamas and Fatah is part of a grander plan to prevent the two state solution.
Unity is still far off. And the loss of Mr. Fayyed is considerable because he was more oriented toward Western values. But a shift in the center of gravity for the Palestinians is coming. Let’s hope the shift is in the right direction.
Peace and Conflict Politics 