We’ve already noted the rightwing consensus of the new Netanyahu coalition. Ofer Bronchtein, a former Rabin aide, speaking to France 24, says the government could collapse in a strong breeze:
Some people may think that this government is not as right-wing as its predecessor because several new ministers come from the centrist and secular party of Yair Lapid. That would be wrong. Yair Lapid’s party is centrist when it comes to domestic policies. But in regard to international affairs, this new government is somewhere between the right and the far-right….
Netanyahu’s main opponents – Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett – have forged an unnatural alliance in order to gain as much political weight as the prime minister’s Likud-Beiteinu and its 31 Knesset members. As soon as they start to govern, their conflicting points of views will become obvious to all, especially on the issue of public deficit. Lapid promised his voters that he would implement drastic budgetary cuts – which implies dealing with the budget of the Ministry of Defense as well as costly pro-settlement policies. That would be a non-starter for Naftali Bennett, who represents the settler movement in the Knesset. His Jewish Home party will take control of the Ministry of Housing and encourage settlement construction.
Can this government breathe new life into the moribund peace process with the Palestinians?
That’s absolutely impossible with a government that includes Naftali Bennett. The leader of the Jewish Home party is against the creation of a Palestinian state, and he doesn’t believe in a future peace agreement. The international community and US President Barack Obama have repeatedly called for a freeze on settlement construction to put the peace process back on track. Bennett can’t accept that; it’s likely that such a policy would prompt him to leave the ruling coalition
The peace process morphed into the annexation process a long time ago, “Bibi” [what a cute nickname for one of the architects of the coming disaster] will not change course.
Hope this utter impossibility becomes the “received wisdom” (of the moment, but this moment has been sliding toward impossibility for 45 years), so that the alternative of the nations (led, one would wish but not expect by USA) to demand and extract from Issrael the removal of all settlers and dismantlement of wall and all settlement buildings will seem natural as well as necessary.
The “fig leaf” for the nations (and USA) could be to say that for a brief time, albeit 45 years, it was hoped that Israeli settlement would create pressure on the PLO to negotiate peace. Never mind that the UNSC said 1967 lines in UNSC 242 (1967), that the PLO agreed to the 1967 lines in 1988, and that the Arab League, led by Saudi Arabia, agreed to the 1967 lines in 2002 (?).
So, OK, it was a long “brief time”. OK, no further need for a fig leaf. Time for international action. And believe me: demanding and securing Israeli agreement to perform the grand removal suggested above will be like pulling teeth without anesthetic. When it is done (at least the agreement, with a timetable, but not necessarily the entire removal accomplished, Israel will be trembling and the PLO will be able to extract a reasonably just peace treaty, with a Gaza-West Bank highway, equitable sharing of aquifer and other water, cleanup of garbage, sewage, and toxic dumps, and other considerations — such as Jerusalem, PRoR, etc.
Mondoweiss does well to include political analysis of the unlikely coalition within Israel. The more Americans understand the relative positions of these factions, the less possible it will be to give fawning obeisance to its (temporary) leader. American politicians who take cash from the AIPAC ATM should ask themselves, if I were Israeli, which party would I belong to? Since AIPAC wields undeniable influence in US policy and elections, and since the government of Israel wields undeniable influence over AIPAC, it behooves Congresspersons to understand Israeli politics. A nudge from Obama, or from Congress, could topple Netanyahu, but what would follow? An America willing to exercise influence, rather than obeisance, could have a real impact.
Mondoweiss should prepare a matrix with the various Israeli parties down the left, their leaders/power and other characteristics, and their positions on various important (to Israel and to America) issues across the top.
There isn’t going to be any peace process..there might be the same old ‘pretend peace talk stall’………but I doubt even that.
I though about Israel and the US while watching a program on UNC TV this week. It was about the phenomenon of people’s, and particularly ‘interested parties’, clinging to the” status quo” …their refusal to accept the status quo isn’t maintainable or is crashing. Lots of political examples were given of this, one of the biggest ones in modern history being Russia’s collapse, trying to maintain the military, economical, political status quo crashed it..and when the status quo crashes it usually does so without warning, it just caves in on itself.
Another example of how this works in most people was on fire fighters and the first instance of the practice of setting ‘back fires”. It occurred when 14 fire fighters were trapped on ground between two fires surrounding them…..one fire fighter realized immediately that if they burned off the vegetation where they were and created a already burned off space, depriving the fire of fuel, the fire would skip over it and they would be safe within the cleared ground. But guess what?….the other 13 couldn’t bring themselves to change or new thinking or abandon the status quo of their old practices and opted to run instead. Those 13 all died in the surrounding fires and the one guy who did set his back fire and hunkered down in the cleared space survived.
The US and Israel are both in that deadly status quo.
According to this guy, the USA supports Israel so much because our representative government and our mainstream media both cater to what Joe Q Public wants: http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/03/19/obama-in-israel-american-backing-is-strong/
Check out how he answers, that is, glides around each Mondoweiss talking point.