Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting Washington for his first official visit with U.S. President Barack Obama. A range of issues — including the future of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Israeli-Syrian talks and Iran policy — are on the table. This is one of an endless series of meetings between U.S. presidents and Israeli prime ministers over the years, many of which concerned these same issues. Yet little has changed.
That Israel has a new prime minister and the United States a new president might appear to make this meeting significant. But this is Netanyahu’s second time as prime minister, and his government is as diverse and fractious as most recent Israeli governments. Israeli politics are in gridlock, with deep divisions along multiple fault lines and an electoral system designed to magnify disagreements.
Obama is much stronger politically, but he has consistently acted with caution, particularly in the foreign policy arena. Much of his foreign policy follows from the Bush administration. He has made no major breaks in foreign policy beyond rhetoric; his policies on Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Russia and Europe are essentially extensions of pre-existing policy. Obama faces major economic problems in the United States and clearly is not looking for major changes in foreign policy. He understands how quickly public sentiment can change, and he does not plan to take risks he does not have to take right now.
This, then, is the problem: Netanyahu is coming to Washington hoping to get Obama to agree to fundamental redefinitions of the regional dynamic. For example, he wants Obama to re-examine the commitment to a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. (Netanyahu’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has said Israel is no longer bound by prior commitments to that concept.) Netanyahu also wants the United States to commit itself to a finite time frame for talks with Iran, after which unspecified but ominous-sounding actions are to be taken.
Facing a major test in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Obama has more than enough to deal with at the moment. Moreover, U.S. presidents who get involved in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations frequently get sucked into a morass from which they do not return. For Netanyahu to even request that the White House devote attention to the Israeli-Palestinian problem at present is asking a lot. Asking for a complete review of the peace process is even less realistic.
The foundation of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process for years has been the assumption that there would be a two-state solution. Such a solution has not materialized for a host of reasons. First, at present there are two Palestinian entities, Gaza and the West Bank, which are hostile to each other. Second, the geography and economy of any Palestinian state would be so reliant on Israel that independence would be meaningless; geography simply makes the two-state proposal almost impossible to implement. Third, no Palestinian government would have the power to guarantee that rogue elements would not launch rockets at Israel, potentially striking at the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem corridor, Israel’s heartland. And fourth, neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis have the domestic political coherence to allow any negotiator to operate from a position of confidence. Whatever the two sides negotiated would be revised and destroyed by their political opponents, and even their friends.
For this reason, the entire peace process — including the two-state solution — is a chimera. Neither side can live with what the other can offer. But if it is a fiction, it is a fiction that serves U.S. purposes. The United States has interests that go well beyond Israeli interests and sometimes go in a different direction altogether. Like Israel, the United States understands that one of the major obstacles to any serious evolution toward a two-state solution is Arab hostility to such an outcome.
The Jordanians have feared and loathed Fatah in the West Bank ever since the Black September uprisings of 1970. The ruling Hashemites are ethnically different from the Palestinians (who constitute an overwhelming majority of the Jordanian population), and they fear that a Palestinian state under Fatah would threaten the Jordanian monarchy. For their part, the Egyptians see Hamas as a descendent of the Muslim Brotherhood, which seeks the Mubarak government’s ouster — meaning Cairo would hate to see a Hamas-led state. Meanwhile, the Saudis and the other Arab states do not wish to see a radical altering of the status quo, which would likely come about with the rise of a Palestinian polity.
At the same time, whatever the basic strategic interests of the Arab regimes, all pay lip service to the principle of Palestinian statehood. This is hardly a unique situation. States frequently claim to favor various things they actually are either indifferent to or have no intention of doing anything about. Complicating matters for the Arab states is the fact that they have substantial populations that do care about the fate of the Palestinians. These states thus are caught between public passion on behalf of Palestinians and the regimes’ interests that are threatened by the Palestinian cause. The states’ challenge, accordingly, is to appear to be doing something on behalf of the Palestinians while in fact doing nothing.
The United States has a vested interest in the preservation of these states. The futures of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are of vital importance to Washington. The United States must therefore simultaneously publicly demonstrate its sensitivity to pressures from these nations over the Palestinian question while being careful to achieve nothing — an easy enough goal to achieve.
The various Israeli-Palestinian peace processes have thus served U.S. and Arab interests quite well. They provide the illusion of activity, with high-level visits breathlessly reported in the media, succeeded by talks and concessions — all followed by stalemate and new rounds of violence, thus beginning the cycle all over again.
One of the most important proposals Netanyahu is bringing to Obama calls for reshaping the peace process. If Israeli President Shimon Peres is to be believed, Netanyahu will not back away from the two-state formula. Instead, the Israeli prime minister is asking that the various Arab state stakeholders become directly involved in the negotiations. In other words, Netanyahu is proposing that Arab states with very different public and private positions on Palestinian statehood be asked to participate — thereby forcing them to reveal publicly their true positions, ultimately creating internal political crises in the Arab states.
The clever thing about this position is that Netanyahu not only knows his request will not become a reality, but he also does not want it to become a reality. The political stability of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt is as much an Israeli interest as an American one. Indeed, Israel even wants a stable Syria, since whatever would come after the Alawite regime in Damascus would be much more dangerous to Israeli security than the current Syrian regime.
Overall, Israel is a conservative power. In terms of nation-states, it does not want upheaval; it is quite content with the current regimes in the Arab world. But Netanyahu would love to see an international conference with the Arab states roundly condemning Israel publicly. This would shore up the justification for Netanyahu’s policies domestically while simultaneously creating a framework for reshaping world opinion by showing an Israel isolated among hostile states.
Obama is likely hearing through diplomatic channels from the Arab countries that they do not want to participate directly in the Palestinian peace process. And the United States really does not want them there, either. The peace process normally ends in a train wreck anyway, and Obama is in no hurry to see the wreckage. He will want to insulate other allies from the fallout, putting off the denouement of the peace process as long as possible. Obama has sent George Mitchell as his Middle East special envoy to deal with the issue, and from the U.S. president’s point of view, that is quite enough attention to the problem.
Netanyahu, of course, knows all this. Part of his mission is simply convincing his ruling coalition — and particularly Lieberman, whom Netanyahu needs to survive, and who is by far Israel’s most aggressive foreign minister ever — that he is committed to redefining the entire Israeli-Palestinian relationship. But in a broader context, Netanyahu is looking for greater freedom of action. By posing a demand the United States will not grant, Israel is positioning itself to ask for something that appears smaller.
What Israel actually would do with greater freedom of action is far less important than simply creating the appearance that the United States has endorsed Israel’s ability to act in a new and unpredictable manner. From Israel’s point of view, the problem with Israeli-Palestinian relations is that Israel is under severe constraints from the United States, and the Palestinians know it. This means that the Palestinians can even anticipate the application of force by Israel, meaning they can prepare for it and endure it. From Netanyahu’s point of view, Israel’s primary problem is that the Palestinians are confident they know what the Israelis will do. If Netanyahu can get Obama to introduce a degree of ambiguity into the situation, Israel could regain the advantage of uncertainty.
The problem for Netanyahu is that Washington is not interested in having anything unpredictable happen in Israeli-Palestinian relations. The United States is quite content with the current situation, particularly while Iraq becomes more stable and the Afghan situation remains unstable. Obama does not want a crisis from the Mediterranean to the Hindu Kush. The fact that Netanyahu has a political coalition to satisfy will not interest the United States, and while Washington at some unspecified point might endorse a peace conference, it will not be until Israel and its foreign minister endorse the two-state formula.
Netanyahu will then shift to another area where freedom of action is relevant — namely, Iran. The Israelis have leaked to the Israeli media that the Obama administration has told them that Israel may not attack Iran without U.S. permission, and that Israel agreed to this requirement. (U.S. President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert went through the same routine not too long ago, using a good cop/bad cop act in a bid to kick-start negotiations with Iran.)
In reality, Israel would have a great deal of difficulty attacking Iranian facilities with non-nuclear forces. A multitarget campaign 1,000 miles away against an enemy with some air defenses could be a long and complex operation. Such a raid would require a long trip through U.S.-controlled airspace for the fairly small Israeli air force. Israel could use cruise missiles, but the tonnage of high explosive delivered by a cruise missile cannot penetrate even moderately hardened structures; the same is true for ICBMs carrying conventional warheads. Israel would have to notify the United States of its intentions because it would be passing through Iraqi airspace — and because U.S. technical intelligence would know what it was up to before Israeli aircraft even took off. The idea that Israel might consider attacking Iran without informing Washington is therefore absurd on the surface. Even so, the story has surfaced yet again in an Israeli newspaper in a virtual carbon copy of stories published more than a year ago.
Netanyahu has promised that the endless stalemate with the Palestinians will not be allowed to continue. He also knows that whatever happens, Israel cannot threaten the stability of Arab states that are by and large uninterested in the Palestinians. He also understands that in the long run, Israel’s freedom of action is defined by the United States, not by Israel. His electoral platform and his strategic realities have never aligned. Arguably, it might be in the Israeli interest that the status quo be disrupted, but it is not in the American interest. Netanyahu therefore will get to redefine neither the Palestinian situation nor the Iranian situation. Israel simply lacks the power to impose the reality it wants, the current constellation of Arab regimes it needs, and the strategic relationship with the United States on which Israeli national security rests.
In the end, this is a classic study in the limits of power. Israel can have its freedom of action anytime it is willing to pay the price for it. But Israel can’t pay the price. Netanyahu is coming to Washington to see if he can get what he wants without paying the price, and we suspect strongly he knows he won’t get it. His problem is the same as that of the Arab states. There are many in Israel, particularly among Netanyahu’s supporters, who believe Israel is a great power. It isn’t. It is a nation that is strong partly because it lives in a pretty weak neighborhood, and partly because it has very strong friends. Many Israelis don’t want to be told that, and Netanyahu came to office playing on the sense of Israeli national power.
So the peace process will continue, no one will expect anything from it, the Palestinians will remain isolated and wars regularly will break out. The only advantage of this situation from the U.S. point of view it is that it is preferable to all other available realities.
April 2
A day after he assumed his new job, controversial Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Thursday endured more than seven hours of questioning by police in a long-standing probe over business dealings.
Police say Avigdor Lieberman was interviewed "under warning" on suspicion of bribery, money-laundering and fraud.
The allegations include receiving a bribe via his daughter Michal's consulting firm. Lieberman denies the allegations and says they are motivated by politics. His daughter and lawyer also have been questioned by authorities.
"This investigation is going on for 13 years. In today's investigation Lieberman cooperated and answered investigators' questions," Lieberman's spokeswoman Irena Etinger said.
Lieberman has emerged as a controversial figure in Israel, where his right-wing Yisrael Beytenu movement came in third in the recent Israeli elections, behind Likud and Kadima.
Over the years, his comments directed toward Arabs have been slammed as racist.
During his handover ceremony on Wednesday to his new job, he bluntly distanced himself from the Annapolis peace process -- the effort started in 2007 to revive peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
LIKUD:
Prime Minister: Benjamin Netanyahu
Vice Premier and Regional Cooperation Minister: Silvan Shalom
Vice Premier and Minister of Strategic Affairs: Moshe Ya'alon
Finance: Yuval Steinitz
Education: Gideon Sa'ar
Justice: Yaakov Neeman (Likud-appointed)
Transportation: Yisrael Katz
Diaspora Affairs and National Public Relations: Yuli Edelstein
Communications: Moshe Kahlon
Environmental Protection and Ministerial Liaison to Knesset: Gilad Erdan
Science, Culture and Sport: Limor Livnat
Minister without portfolio (for citizens' services, computerization and Internet): Michael Eitan
Strategic Affairs: Moshe Ya'alon
Minister without portfolio (for intelligence agencies): Dan Meridor
Minister without portfolio: Benny Begin
Minister without portfolio: Yossi Peled
Yisrael Beiteinu:
Foreign Affairs: Avigdor Lieberman
Public Security: Yitzhak Aharonovitch
National Infrastructures: Uzi Landau
Tourism: Stas Meseznikov
Immigrant Absorption: Sofa Landver
Labor:
Defense: Ehud Barak
Industry, Trade and Labor: Benjamin Ben-Eliezer
Welfare and Social Services: Isaac Herzog
Agriculture: Shalom Simhon
Minister without portfolio (for minorities): Avishay Braverman
Shas:
Interior: Eli Yishai
Construction and Housing: Ariel Atias
Religious Affairs: Ya'acov Margi
Minister without portfolio in Prime Minister's Office: Meshulam Nahari
Habayit Hayehudi:
Science and Technology: Daniel Herschkowitz
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: The new prime minister became the country's youngest leader in 1996 before being driven out of office three years later by Ehud Barak, who will now answer to him as defense minister. Netanyahu's swearing-in Tuesday crowns a decade-long comeback.
Long a hawkish opponent of territorial withdrawal, which he says only emboldens Israel's enemies, Netanyahu has been taking a notably conciliatory line since the February election. He now says he will continue peace talks, though he has still not uttered the words "Palestinian state."
Netanyahu, 59, comes from a prominent Israeli family — he's the son of a well-known historian and the brother of a war hero who died in Israel's daring 1976 hostage rescue in Entebbe, Uganda.
He spent years in the U.S., holds two degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and speaks fluent, American-accented English, a background that could play an important role as he works to maintain Israel's vital strategic relationship with Washington.
EHUD BARAK: Defense minister in the outgoing government, the Labor Party chief will retain his job in the new administration after leading the venerable but ailing centrist movement into a coalition with Netanyahu.
The son of Eastern European immigrants, he was born on a communal farm in 1942 and spent 36 years in the army, becoming Israel's most-decorated soldier and the military chief of staff. He joined the government under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and in May 1999, he ousted Netanyahu as prime minister.
Barak boosted his image with the recent Gaza campaign, but saw his party's support slip to a historic low — just 13 seats in Parliament.
AVIGDOR LIEBERMAN: An immigrant from Moldova who was once a marginal political player, he will serve as foreign minister and Israel's face abroad — an almost unthinkable proposition just a few months ago for a polarizing politician widely criticized as a racist.
Lieberman's election platform has drawn allegations of racism for a proposal that could end up stripping Israeli Arabs of their citizenship unless they declare their loyalty to the Jewish state.
But Lieberman's policies are not those of traditionally hard-line parties like Netanyahu's Likud, and he says he supports the creation of a Palestinian state.
Instead, his focus has on Israel, particularly on the perceived disloyalty of the country's Arab minority, which he sees as a fifth column. He supports redrawing Israel's borders and pushing areas with heavy concentrations of Arabs out of the country and into Palestinian jurisdiction.
MOSHE YAALON: A political newcomer, Yaalon will serve as deputy prime minister and a minister in charge of strategic affairs. That will give him a voice in important decisions about Israeli actions toward its archenemy, Iran, which Israel says is building a nuclear weapon that could pose an existential threat.
Yaalon served as the military chief of staff between 2002 and 2005, leading operations in the West Bank that helped crush armed Palestinian opposition to Israel there.
He was critical of Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, and has taken a hard line on security issues. Widely seen as a straight shooter not tainted by politics, he spent time at a think tank in Jerusalem before joining the Likud ahead of the elections.
Benjamin Netanyahu had previously the job from 1996 to 1999 and took a tough line on the Palestinians and the economy.
This year he led the right-wing Likud party back to power by promising a new approach to peace efforts and ways to stimulate the economy. Here are some of Netanyahu's ideas, and clues to their implementation:
* The U.S.-backed peace process has gone around in circles. Israel should instead focus on creating a generation of Palestinians with a real stake in peace, by actively building up the Palestinian economy.
* Creating a genuine "peace partnership" based on mutual economic interest, and avoiding the deadlock over territorial disputes, will enhance Israel's security.
* Creating a Palestinian state is not a priority now, and maybe never. Netanyahu refuses to reaffirm publicly an Israeli commitment to the basic, Western-backed acceptance that there can be no alternative to a "two-state solution."
* He will not try to back out on past treaties. The coalition deal states that "Israel is committed to all the diplomatic and international agreements that Israeli governments have signed throughout the years."
* He has a "strategic goal" of toppling Islamist Hamas from its power base in the Gaza Strip, since Iranian-armed Hamas says it will never recognize Israel in any case.
* Netanyahu -- who quit the Ariel Sharon government in 2005 in protest at its decision to withdraw from Gaza -- says the outgoing government's January offensive to tame Hamas militants stopped too soon and failed to improve Israel's security.
* He regards Iran's suspected drive to build an atomic bomb as a clear and present danger to Israel's survival which cannot be left to fester if Western diplomatic efforts fail. Like his centrist opponents he refuses to rule out an Israeli strike.
* With its ties to Iran, Syria seems an unlikely peace partner for Netanyahu any time soon in his premiership -- unless opening a channel to Damascus promises to pay off diplomatically.
* He will not begin his premiership by ordering any stop to the expansion of certain Israeli settlements on occupied West Bank land, despite the likelihood of United States and European Union criticism of these towns as obstacles to peace.
* His coalition promises to "enforce the law" on unauthorized settler outposts in the West Bank which the previous government promised to evacuate but mostly left untouched.
* His chosen foreign minister, coalition partner Avigdor Lierberman, looks on Israeli Arabs as a fifth column who should be invited to leave Israel and live with the Palestinians if they cannot commit to full loyalty to the Jewish state.
* He avoided forming a government relying too heavily on Lieberman and, after winning more time, secured the alliance of Ehud Barak's Labor party for a balanced "unity" government as he calls it -- a sign he will not be hostage to the far-right.
* Netanyahu impressed investors with free-market policies that took Israel out of recession a few years ago, and he aims to re-inject confidence into the market place by keeping a tight hand on the finance ministry.
* Netanyahu says he will cut taxes to stimulate the flagging economy, which could make the tight control of state spending his toughest task, having to say 'No' to coalition partners. There is already speculation about big defense and education budget cuts.
-- "The government will work to bolster national security and achieve personal security for Israel's citizens through a determined struggle against violence and terror."
-- "The government will move the diplomatic process forward and work for the advancement of peace with all our neighbors, while protecting the historic and national security interests of Israel."
-- "The government will promote a plan to deal with the economic crisis and work toward the creation of the economic conditions that will enable sustainable growth, while creating and protecting jobs."
-- "The government will maintain the Jewish character of the state and Jewish tradition, and also respect the religions and traditions of the country's ethnic communities."
Israel's incoming foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has stirred controversy over the years with comments about Arabs, notably Arab Israeli citizens and also Egypt. He once suggested Egypt's Aswan Dam might be bombed and last year he said the president of Israel's Arab peace partner could "go to hell."
Following is a selection of quotes from Lieberman, head of the Yisrael Beitenu party:
2009 - "No loyalty, no citizenship" -- Lieberman's election slogan calling for legislation to require Israelis, including Arab citizens, to swear loyalty to the Jewish state.
"What we state unequivocally is that we are completely opposed to what has been and still is the guiding principle of Israel's foreign policy: 'land for peace' ... There is either 'peace for peace' or the exchange of territory and populations."
(Referring to his proposal to trade Arab-populated parts of Israel to a Palestinian state in exchange for Israel annexing Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank)
"You have to be generous to your friends and cruel to your enemies. We are simply a society of wimps."
2008 - "Time and time again our leaders go to Egypt to meet (President Hosni) Mubarak and he has never agreed to make an official visit here as president. If he wants to talk to us, he should come here. If he doesn't want to come here, he can go to hell."
2007 - (To an Israeli Arab fellow member of Parliament:) "You are an ally in the Knesset of terrorists. I hope that Hamas will take care of you and all the rest once and for all. Don't worry, your day will come."
"If Israel has to deal with the Iranian threat by itself, it can do so."
2006 - Speaking of Israeli Arab legislators who support the Palestinian cause: "The fate of the collaborators in the Knesset will be identical to that of those who collaborated with the Nazis. Collaborators, as well as criminals, were executed after the Nuremberg trials at the end of the World War Two. I hope that will be the fate of collaborators in this house."
2001 - "Mubarak continues to act against us and to travel for consultations with Saddam Hussein. If he carries out his threat and puts forces into the Sinai, it would be an example of a (crossing) of the red line to which we would have to respond strongly, including by bombing the Aswan Dam."
Likud signed its first coalition deal Sunday, with Avigdor Lieberman's Israel Beiteinu.
According to the deal, party chairman Lieberman is to be appointed foreign minister, MK Stas Meseznikov is to become tourism minister, MK Uzi Landau will be national infrastructures minister, MK Sofa Landver will be appointed absorption minister and MK Yitzhak Aharonovitch public security minister.
While the distribution of portfolios has been set, the two sides noted in their agreement that should a national unity government be formed with Kadima, it may undergo changes.
As part of the deal, Israel Beiteinu was also promised a choice of deputy foreign minister, chairmanship of the Knesset's Constitution Committee and a representative in the Judicial Appointments Committee.
Regarding civil unions - one of the main issues on Israel Beiteinu's platform - the sides agreed that legislation on civil marriages between Israeli non-Jews would be resolved within two months. A committee would then be formed to find a solution for other couples within 15 months.
"We have agreed on all the issues, principles and positions in the Knesset and government," Likud negotiator MK Gideon Sa'ar said after the signing of the agreement.
Meseznikov, who headed Israel Beiteinu's negotiating team, said: "This is a good result…the coalition deal reflects the will of the voters and I'm sure the coalition will be strong and stable."
"Also overall security responsibility should be placed in the end on Egypt""Jordan ...in such an arrangement should give support...including the
issuing of passports and taking of overall and comprehensive security
responsibility for what transpires in Judea and Samaria"
"Thus for practical purposes this arrangement will be, almost certainly, a
kind of two confederations - in one case with the Jordanians, and in the
other case with Egypt."
Jeffrey Heller and Ori Lewis
Reuters
February 19
Benjamin Netanyahu's chances of becoming Israel's prime minister again were boosted on Thursday by the conditional backing of an ultra-nationalist politician who emerged as a kingmaker in a close election.
Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, recommended to Peres that he choose Netanyahu to form a government, if the right-wing Likud chief pursued a broad coalition. Netanyahu has said he would do so.
President Shimon Peres plans to ask Netanyahu and rival Tzipi Livni of the centrist Kadima party on Friday to join forces to form a unity government, a presidential official said.
Livni and Netanyahu both laid claim to the premiership after Kadima won 28 seats in the 120-member parliament to Likud's 27 in an inconclusive February 10 election that deepened uncertainty about peace moves with the Palestinians.
Netanyahu renewed calls on Livni and Labor Party leader Ehud Barak to join a coalition under his leadership. Livni rejected his call, saying her party will sit in the opposition. Labor has said it will do the same.
"I don't intend to be a fig leaf for a government that has no path and is dysfunctional. I don't intend to change my path or to betray the voters for a job in the government," Livni said before meeting a visiting U.S. congressional delegation.
Peres wrapped up consultations with party leaders and would meet Netanyahu and Livni separately on Friday.
Netanyahu served as prime minister from 1996 to 1999. During his term he handed over part of the West Bank city of Hebron to the Palestinians.
With Lieberman's support, Netanyahu has the backing of some 65 legislators, enough for a narrow, governing majority of right-wing and Jewish religious parties.
Unity
Lieberman, an immigrant from the former Soviet Union who has been at odds with religious parties and is reviled by Israel's Arab community, made unity the theme of his remarks to Peres.
"We recommend Benjamin Netanyahu, only in the framework of a broad government," Lieberman told reporters.
"We want a government of the three biggest parties, Likud, Kadima and Yisrael Beiteinu," he said, without disclosing what he would do if a unity government proved impossible to achieve.
A Yisrael Beiteinu official said Lieberman sought a broad coalition out of concern that creation of a narrow, rightist government could lead to friction with the Obama administration, which has pledged to pursue Palestinian statehood.
Kadima has said it would be willing to relinquish parts of the occupied West Bank in exchange for peace, a position that would put it in conflict with Yisrael Beiteinu and Likud.
Yisrael Beiteinu, which won 15 seats in last week's ballot, has angered Israel's Arab citizens by proposing a law under which Israelis would have to pledge allegiance to the Jewish state as a condition for voting or holding office.
The party also wants to trade land inside Israel in which many of the country's 1.5 million Arabs live for Jewish West Bank settlements in any peace deal with the Palestinians.
Under Israeli law, the legislator designated by Peres to try to form a government has 42 days to complete the task. Traditionally, after an election, past presidents have picked the leader of the party that won the most votes, but there is no legal obligation to do so.
In fact, it is a chance that, in fact Shimon Peres could influence, by his symbolic capital, the current trend. And an interesting piece of article in yesterday's electronic edition of Ha'aretz.
Reuters - As for February 19, the main political options of an incoming coalition
Joel Mowbray
Syndicated Columnist
FOX News
February 11
News reports in the wake of the Israeli elections have focused on the new power broker role for a right-wing party run by a newcomer to the world stage, Avigdor Lieberman. Described by the Associated Press as “ultra-nationalist,” Yisrael Beitenu (which means “Israel Our House” in English) is actually not so easy to pin down.
Israel's Yisrael Beiteinu party leader Avigdor Lieberman speaks during a meeting of his party in Jerusalem on Feb. 11 (AP)
Originally conceived as a party for Russian immigrants, who came to Israel in large numbers starting almost twenty years ago, Yisrael Beitenu has mostly partnered with hawkish parties, including forming an official alliance earlier this decade with a right-wing national religious party.
What likely has prodded the media reports to refer to Lieberman as “ultra-nationalist” is his fiery rhetoric on Israeli Arabs, who make up almost one-fifth of the Jewish state’s population. His call for Israeli-Arabs to sign a loyalty oath has stirred controversy, but also inspired large crowds at many Lieberman political rallies. What was not done during the campaign, though, was any detailing of how such an oath would be worded or enforced, let alone the exact consequences for violating it.
Polling of Yisrael Beitenu supporters in the run-up to the election showed that most of them expected Lieberman to join a Netanyahu-led coalition.
Several of the top names on the party’s list, in fact, are vocal opponents to the Oslo-era model of land-for-peace, at least until Palestinian society fundamentally changes to the point where peace is accepted by the broader public.
Lieberman is not certain to join forces with Netanyahu, however, as it was just less than a year ago that his party was part of the left-of-center Kadima-led government that appeared willing to carve Jerusalem in half, a deeply unpopular position in Israel — and especially unpopular with the voters who cast ballots yesterday for Yisrael Beitenu.
Not found in most of the Western coverage of the election is the pall cast over Yisrael Beitenu by the criminal investigation of Lieberman for possible corruption. Behind closed doors, leading political insiders joke that Lieberman may be looking in negotiations for a “get out of jail free” card. An Israeli who has known Lieberman for over a decade said frankly, “He might actually think that the chances of being prosecuted go down by joining a left-wing coalition.”
In the end, what likely will matter most is the seismic shift that has occurred in the Israeli electorate. Right-of-center parties have gone from holding 50 of the Knesset’s 120 seats to 65 or slightly more, depending on final tallies after counting votes from the sizeable number of soldiers, whose ballots will account for over 5% of the total in this small nation.
The only major candidate who ran overtly on a peace platform, albeit just in the past week or so, was Livni. That shift in message, where she announced in a major speech last week that there was a “window of opportunity” for the “dove of peace,” allowed her to pull peacenik voters to her party, away from smaller left-wing factions. In the end, if you include Arab parties, the left-of-center factions achieved just 45% of the vote.
So even though Livni appears to have won the largest number of seats by a razor-thin margin — 28 to Likud’s 27, at current count — the country overall has clearly moved to the right. If Lieberman were to throw his projected 15 seats behind Livni, he’d be going against not just his own voters, but the Israeli electorate as a whole.
Unless Lieberman extracts incredible concessions from Livni, it is highly unlikely that Kadima will form the new government. This means that barring any major surprises, Netanyahu is poised to return to the Prime Minister’s office he vacated a decade ago.
