The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict – an Update July 2016

Notes based on the following papers, all taken from Foreign Affairs July-August 2016:

Ministering Justice – a conversation with Ayelet Shaked

Anger and Hope – a conversation with Tzipi Livni

The End of Old Israel – Aluf Benn

Israel Among the Nations – Robert M. Danin

Israel’s Second-Class Citizens – As’ad Ghanem

Israel’s Evolving Military – Amos Harel

Israel and the Post-American Middle East – Martin Kramer

Some of the more interesting points made are:

That Israel of today is more polarized than ever between those still willing to pursue a two-state solution and those who, for ideological reasons or a fear of the security risks involved in the compromises necessary to create a truly independent Palestine, prefer the status quo.

Aluf Benn argues that the Israel of today is the product of a series of Likud governments and has moved steadily to the right. It is thus fundamentally different from the old, secular, Ashkenazi progressive Israel of 1948 and of the Labour Party tradition. He claims that Prime Minister Netanyahu, while still formally committed to the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, now leads a coalition government that believes that Israel is a Jewish state and a democracy (as does the opposition), but in that order. Benn argues that this implies that only Jews should enjoy full rights as citizens (a position supported by 79% of Jewish Israelis in a Pew opinion survey in March 2016). As’ad Ghanem argues that as regards Palestinian Israelis there is already considerable discrimination in Israel. The Israeli response is that Palestinian Israelis enjoy more freedom in Israel than Palestinians or other Arabs enjoy in any Arab country.

Benn argues that at present the two-state solution is, in practice, off the table and Israel is systematically making the occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, or at least large parts of it, permanent and irreversible. This would produce a kind of Greater Israel in which the Palestinians on the West Bank would effectively be stateless and reduced to the status of second-class citizens. Israeli-Palestinian relations are thus at a low point. In 2015 the so-called loners’ intifada began with young Palestinians on the West Bank and in Israel using knives and guns to attack Israeli soldiers and civilians and the Israeli military responding in kind. According to Danin this low-level violence is an indication of the frustration on the Palestinian side, while the Israeli government has blamed human rights groups and Arab Israeli politicians for the violence.

Benn also argues that the current Israeli government, although led by Netanyahu, a secular Ashkenazi, includes many among its exponents and supporters who are Mizrahi or Sephardic Jews (who previously played little role in politics) and religious Zionists. He argues that they see democracy simply as majority rule and have less space for critics and little respect for the checks and balances of the Western model. Thus the government has criticized the left-wing’s hold on the Supreme Court, the press and the universities. The government has also introduced a state school program that emphasizes the essentially Jewish character of the Israeli state and has been strongly pro-settler. Ayelet Shaked, the current Israeli Minister of Justice, rejects the above criticisms and argues that Israeli democracy is robust and freedom of expression guaranteed.

Critics of the Netanyahu government like Tzipi Livni, a centrist and leading member of the opposition, argue that for demographic reasons a Greater Israel could not be both democratic and Jewish. Thus to preserve Israel as a Jewish democracy means accepting a two-state solution and opening negotiations to achieve that.

Both Harel and Kramer point out that the current situation in the Arab world means that Israel faces both new opportunities and new challenges. The outcome of the Arab Spring and the Arab Winter and the instability in the Arab world may, in fact, have strengthened Israel. Israel now faces, perhaps for the first time, no direct threat of invasion from any of its neighbors. This makes Israel less open to pressure from the international community and less dependent on the US, which also sees the Middle East as less of a priority than in the past. It allows Israel to give its traditional support to moderate Arab states that have made peace with it (Egypt and Jordan) while allowing it to work towards open or secret agreements with other Sunni Arab states (e.g. Saudi Arabia). However, it leaves Israel with the risk of a significant threat from Iran at some point in the future and the danger of an increase in terrorism and rocket attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah and the problem of how to respond to these asymmetric attacks without killing large numbers of civilians. Above all, developments in the Arab world seem to have led in turn to a radicalization of Palestinian society, with many Palestinians now embracing less secular and more religious beliefs, many no longer in favor of a two-state solution but hoping for a single non- Jewish state with West Bank Arabs becoming full citizens along with returning refugees and thus able to challenge demographically the Jewish majority. Clearly this vision of things is simply unacceptable to the vast majority of Israelis.