Yousef Munayyer has done a very shrewd analysis of the settler vote in Israeli elections to demonstrate that while the Israeli public is largely divided between right and center, the settler vote is not; it is overwhelmingly rightwing. And it a large enough bloc, at about 10 percent of the vote, that politicians’ desire to win the bloc is driving the entire polity to the right– destroying the two-state solution.
“The settlers don’t necessarily have enough influence to dominate a government alone yet (though they are trending in that direction),” Munayyer says, “but effectively exercise a veto over any coalition that won’t further their interests.”
Munayyer points out that the “centrist” Kadima party, which has supported a two-state solution, took the largest percent of the overall Israeli vote, but a very small percentage of the settler vote; and it’s been left out in the cold.
You could see Munayyer’s observation alive before your eyes at the Saban Forum last weekend, where rightwing settler-politician Avigdor Lieberman didn’t even pay lip service to a Palestinian state, even as Israel’s American supporters Martin Indyk and Haim Saban fulminated at Lieberman about what this was doing to Israel.
Munayyer’s analysis:
To be clear, the 650,000 Israelis living beyond the green line make up less than 10% of the Israeli voting population. That being said, in a parliamentary system with multiple parties (34 ran in 2009) a significant edge among even this size segment of a population can tip the scales. Especially when there was near-parity between the Likud (the traditional right-wing powerhouse) and Kadima (what is today referred to in Israel as “centrist” opposition) in the non-settlement vote. The definition of ”Centrist” in Israel today is significantly detached from the political/ideological spectrum and seems to mean “biggest party not called Likud”. Thus, while the settler population is a small segment of the voting population overall, it is significant enough to change political trends and the stances of parties who must evolve to maintain political viable in an increasingly right-leaning state.
… [A]lmost every party in the government that was formed took a larger percentage of the settler vote than the non-settler vote. It should come as no surprise then that the Israeli Prime Minister and head of this coalition, Benjamin Netanyahu, declared, “There is no government that supports, or will support, settlement more than my government.”
Munayyer’s analysis is a good reminder of the apartheid policy of Israeli suffrage: Jews who live on the West Bank can vote in Israeli elections, their Palestinian neighbors can’t. And the Jews who live there are rightwingers who are driving state policy; i.e., they’re beneficiaries of apartheid who are going to vote in favor of apartheid. The only way to reverse this trend, I believe, is to give everyone the vote; that way Jewish moderates and Palestinian moderates can find one another and form a major party and begin to counter the right wing.
Munayyer suggests the same thing:
Not only did Israeli settlements in the West Bank create a geographic obstacle to a viable, contiguous Palestinian state, they also created a political obstacle as well. Both at this point have rendered the two-state outcome dead; given Israeli political dynamics, the Israeli government is not going to be willing to equally power-share in a one-state outcome until they face serious costs. As we’ve seen in recent weeks, Israel will continue to be isolated in a world that rejects this system but ultimately the system of Apartheid will collapse. But the incentives Israeli political leaders continue to face domestically have them flying full-speed ahead toward this collapse.
the settlers are front and center in this election. not sure if anyone recalls how netanyahu called for early elections last spring and then called them off the same day the high court ruled against the state in the ulpana decision. the settlers said they would ‘bring down the government’ if netanyahu tore down the settlements.
https://mondoweiss.mystagingwebsite.com/2012/05/high-court-refuses-israeli-govt-petition-on-ulpana-will-the-reprecussions-be-felt-in-the-israeli-elections.html
here’s more:
http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=267005
they are annexation freaks:
https://mondoweiss.mystagingwebsite.com/2012/09/the-land-of-israel-lobby-doesnt-trust-wobbly-netanyahu.html
One method to reduce the horrible apartheid system would be to allow everyone who lives under Israeli military rule the vote (and, quite important, the right to run as a candidate or on a “list”).
Another, and not inconsistent method, would be for the world’s nations to force Israel to remove the settlers for the duration of the occupation (that is, until a peace treaty is signed or until Israel pulls out unilaterally and completely — not as in Gaza).
I’m starting to like Bibi and the settler crowd, mostly for setting the ‘Jewish State’ on a destruction course that 20 moderate / left-wing governments couldn’t have achieved in ten times the time. I truly believe he – and any subsequent right-wing crackpot – accelerates the inevitable – the deconstruction of whatever moderate facade Israel has paid billions to uphold, and eventually, the deconstruction of its viability as a Jewish state. Thank G-d. And now that the 2SS is all but dead, the only viable option for peace is also the most just one – a bi-national state with equal rights for all, something I hope the west is going to start seriously pushing in the medium-term. It’s also the most natural outcome considering Palestinian vs. Jewish population growth.
I don’t dare to think what a further shift to the right would mean for the Palestinians and any grassroots peace efforts over the short term (I really didn’t think that this was still possible, thought the fascism express was already chugging along at full-steam…), but however painful it is, I hope the wheels that Bibi and the increasing political power of the settlers have set in motion will eventually block their own machine, to the extent of blowing up and showing the world their true foul substance once and for all. I believe that the West is going to start seriously considering a bi-national solution, and I believe that Israel will be put under increasing pressure the longer it refuses to consider this – pressing – subject. Why is it becoming pressing? We have nobody but Bibi to thank for that. Without him, people would still be flirting with the 2SS, and expecting the Palestinians to settle for a fraction of the land they once called their own, as well as forcing many of them to live displaced from their initial region of origin. Also, I have a feeling Israel would have gotten away turning the 2SS Palestinian enclaves into little Gaza 2.0’s, anyway.
I don’t question Munayyer’s analysis, as far as it goes, but it strikes me that in a way, implicitly, it lets the non-settler Israeli public off the hook. The two-state solution is dead not just because the settlers are now a crucial swing bloc and “politicians’ desire to win the bloc is driving the entire polity to the right,” but also because the Israeli public as a whole – non-settler as well as settler – and all the Jewish parties have moved dramatically to the right since at least the year 2000. That includes even those parties, such as Labor and Meretz, that have little hope of winning significant support from settlers.
(A very prescient book on this rightward drift, still worth reading IMO, is Michel Warschawski’s Toward an Open Tomb: The Crisis of Israeli Society, which was written shortly after the breakdown of the Camp David negotiations and the outbreak of the second intifada. What he argues, as I recall, is that the Israeli center and most of the “left” never really had any grasp of the Palestinian perspective. They were for peace as long as they thought they could have it on their terms. When the Palestinians refused to accept those terms and instead renewed the intifada, virtually all elements of the Jewish polity bought Barak’s line that “there is no partner for peace” and said, in effect, “to hell with them.”)
As for the assertion – apparently from Phil rather than Munayyer – that Kadima “has supported a two-state solution,” well, yes – the kind of two-state “solution” I wrote about here – i.e., a Palestinian statelet that’s little more than an archipelago of bantustans hemmed in all around by Israeli settlements, military bases, Jewish-only roads, etc. Let’s not forget that Kadima was created by the butcher Ariel Sharon!
settlers are terrorists and should be described as such