The New Political Landscape in Israel:
Why We Have More than Two Options

October 31, 2003

Dr. Eran Lerman
Director Israel/Middle East Office
American Jewish Committee

A new analytical trend has come into vogue recently. Politicians and pundits, including former Israeli Cabinet Minister Yossi Beilin, New York University professor Tony Judt, whose article, "Israel: The Alternative," appeared in the New York Review of Books last month, and a growing chorus of tendentious Palestinian "observers," such as Ahmad Samih Khalidi, who wrote in the Guardian earlier this year about "The End of the Two-State Solution," are sounding a warning. Israel's choices will soon have narrowed to basically two: either accept what Yasir Arafat might be willing to live with - for now? - as exemplified in the provisions of the so-called "Geneva Document;" or else we will soon face the inevitable demise of Israel as a Jewish state in the face of a resurgent demand for a "democratic" binational entity with a soon-to-be Arab majority.

This line of reasoning is coupled with ominous comparisons to South Africa and/or with the broader argument that the idea of a separate Jewish national state is now obsolete and little more than a grim shadow of ancient Balkan passions. (Judt was quite deliberate in using Romania as an insult and avoiding the much more recent, resonant, and legitimate causes of the Czechs, the Baltic states, or Slovenia; perhaps it was because they evoke, in this generation, an association of brave little historical nations fighting against totalitarianism - not the story he wanted to tell.)

Moreover, the underlying assumption is that internal Israeli dynamics are also working to reduce our choices - either to take what the Palestinians are willing to offer or to consign ourselves to the designs of the Israeli far right, which presumes perpetual control over a subject Palestinian population or even the prospect of transfer. In this context, the old accusations about the "fascism" of Likud are trotted out once again. It is as if the party had not come to power, and even more importantly, left power, several times through a well-guarded democratic process, without ever threatening to tear the fabric of political liberty. It is as if Begin did not win a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts; as if Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had not been at the Aqaba summit; as if Israel had not accepted the Road Map and the prospect of Palestinian statehood (albeit not quite where Arafat wants his borders to be).

The truth is quite different, and quite deliberately obscured:

• On one hand, by those who make this argument, because they have an urgent need to disrupt what the government of Israel is now doing;
• On the other hand, by Prime Minister Sharon himself, who speaks little and says even less, because he seems to feel that talking too much about the nature of the present stage would unnecessarily rupture his strange coalition and harm the prospects of moving ahead on the path he has set out for himself. ("A blessing," said the sages, "only comes on what is concealed from the eye.")

Sharon's path, quite contrary to the thrust of the warnings cited above, leads neither to the acceptance of the current Palestinian terms nor to the fulfillment, on the sly, of wild dreams about Eretz Yisrael ha-Shlema, the undivided land of Israel. What the government is actually working on, still within the parameters of the Road Map as Israel (and the U.S.) read it, is, in fact, the partition of "Western Eretz Yisrael" - or Palestine - between ourselves and the Palestinians; but not necessarily on the basis of the pre-1967 borders or the repartition of Jerusalem. This is precisely why some of the pro-Palestinian messages are becoming so alarmist.

Should a partner be found with whom to negotiate Stage II of the Road Map, fine - and Ahmed Qureia (Abu Alaa) might, after all, be available soon, now that he has overcome Arafat's resistance to his key appointments, including the ill-fated Nasser Yusuf. If not, the fence will become a unilateral border - with its final contours still debated; but not much different from what then Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered at Camp David in the summer of 2000, an offer I have just heard former Secretary of State Madeline Albright describe as the best any Israeli government is ever going to make.

In terms of its impact on Israeli politics, this option is, in effect, creating a new set of fault lines, running within the major traditional parties and possibly laying the foundations for a new landscape in the not-so-distant future. The differences within the Labor Party between the concepts now endorsed by Beilin (or former Labor Party head Amram Mitzna, for that matter) and those upheld by Ehud Barak, for example, are now much deeper and relate to more substantive and even existential issues than anything separating Barak and Sharon; in much the same way, an increasingly visible fault line now runs straight through the middle of the Likud, and much will soon come to depend (if Sharon's legal troubles over his campaign finance transgressions keep getting worse) upon Israeli Finance Minister Bibi Netanyahu's choice as to whether he stands with President Bush's plan, or seeks to block it, as the far right does.

In any case, what we may be seeing is the slow emergence of an effective Israeli center, broader and yet more focused than in the past, which includes about half of Likud, almost all of Tommy Lapid's Shinui Party (although there are Shinui MKs who would feel more comfortable in the left grouping); and roughly half, or less, of the Labor MKs - some 45 or more members of the present Knesset. This group stands against 30-35 on the right (National Union, NRP, and parts of Likud) and 25 on the left (half of Labor, as well as Meretz, with a possibility that Beilin might merge them into a larger left party, to be called Shahar, "Dawn" - and the Arab parties). As for the ultra-Orthodox, their electorate may not be Zionist, but remains strongly right-wing; their religious leaders, on the other hand, are likely to support the centrist position (but will never accept the left's willingness to negotiate major concessions in Jerusalem). The ground is thus laid for new initiatives - negot iated or unilateral - once they mature. Much will continue to depend upon the broader regional balance and, in particular, the pace of the reconstruction in Iraq and the success of the American endeavor there