PREDICTIONS THAT Israel’s Jan. 22 elections would result in a
sweeping victory for the religious right turned out to be wrong—but not
very. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s far-right Likud-Yisrael
Beiteinu coalition won 31 seats, down from 42 in the outgoing Knesset,
and Yesh Atid (There is a Future), the secular party led by charismatic
media commentator Yair Lapid, came in second with 19 seats. Yesh Atid’s
surprise victory over the religious nationalist Jewish Home party of
Naftali Bennett, with its 12 seats, put brakes on Bennett’s meteoric
rise to prominence. But the two far-right religious parties, Shas and
United Torah Judaism, won 18 seats, only 1 less than Yesh Atid.
After trying for weeks without success to persuade Yesh Atid and
Jewish Home to join Likud in a coalition government, Netanyahu reached
out to Tzipi Livni, whose centrist Hatnua (The Movement) party won 6
seats. Livni will serve as justice minister and also lead peace
negotiations with the Palestinians. She is known to favor the two-state
solution, but it is not clear on what terms. As foreign minister and
chief negotiator under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert—whose government
unleashed Operation Cast Lead on Gaza in 2008-09—she failed to reach an
agreement with the Palestinians. Sima Kadmon, a columnist for Yediot
Ahronot, predicted she would be a “fig leaf” in Netanyahu’s government.
What the final vote count chiefly revealed is that Israeli society is
deeply divided between secular and religious factions. An equally
significant, though less prominent, split exists between the rich and
the poor. Consequently, television commentator Emanuel Rosen predicted,
“This is a government that will not be able to make decisions on
anything—on the peace process, on equal sharing of the burden, or on
budgetary matters.”
Another observer, Rabbi Shmuel Jakobovits, took note of the worries
expressed by the secular community at the growing number of
ultra-Orthodox Israelis, and said, “The underlying issue is that there’s
an ideological contest over the soul of the state of Israel and the
Jewish people.” The ultra-Orthodox known as Haredim now make up
nearly 10 percent of the population—compared to 20 percent of Arab
citizens of Israel—and get disproportionately high subsidies for housing
and religious schools. Many of the men and all of the women are
entitled to exemption from the draft.
Lapid has vowed to end such special privileges and promote social
justice for those Israelis left behind. The economy is booming—with
Israel doing far better than the U.S. in terms of economic
growth—exports are approaching $18 billion, and the budget deficit is
less than 1 percent of GDP. Unlike the deeply indebted U.S., which
nevertheless hands out $4 billion-plus to Israel every year, Israel is a
net creditor to the rest of the world.
The darker side to this picture is that unemployment in Israel is at
8.3 percent, and the poverty rate is higher than in most Western
countries. According to Sever Plocker, an Israeli economics writer for Yediot Ahronot,
nearly a quarter of the population is poor, including a third of all
Israeli children. The income of the poorest Israelis is lower than it
was six years ago, and in Arab sectors child poverty is more than 50
percent. The New York Times reported last year that “a handful of families” controls 30 percent of Israel’s wealth.
The issue of how to end Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine was
as absent from Israel’s election campaign as it was from the U.S.
presidential race. Lapid indicated only that there would be minimal
change in Israel’s hard-line policies and its defiance of international
law. “I don’t think the Arabs want peace,” he said a few days before the
election, and made it clear he would not join in a coalition with the
Knesset’s three Arab parties (see article p. 16).
He opposes any division of Jerusalem and would keep intact the huge
illegal settlement blocs that divide the West Bank in half. Like
Netanyahu, Lapid claims to be all for a return to negotiations, which on
the terms Israel has laid down would be the equivalent of asking a
hold-up victim to negotiate with the gunman who stole his wallet, his
clothes, and his shoes, and is willing to consider returning the tie.
The far-right Bennett has pledged to do everything in his power to
assure there will never be a Palestinian state.
Israel’s violations of international law were spelled out a week
after the election when a U.N. fact-finding mission, headed by Christine
Chanet of France, again called on Israel to dismantle all of its West
Bank settlements, saying they were in violation of the Fourth Geneva
Convention and the Palestinians’ right to self-determination. Unity Dow,
a member of the commission from Botswana, accused Israel of “violence
and intimidation against the Palestinians” with the aim of driving them
off their land.
Israel is also the first nation to withhold cooperation with the U.N.
Human Rights Council, which reviews the human rights policies of 193
member nations every four years. Israel said the review is “a political
tool” for those who want to “bash and demonize” Israel. Critics say
Israel’s decision puts in jeopardy the entire review process, which has
targeted nations such as Zimbabwe, Iran and Sudan and defends the rights
of gays, lesbians and women.
The panel estimated the settler population in the occupied
territories as 520,000, and said it was growing faster than the
population in Israel. Israel’s finance minister, Yuval Steinitz,
reported last fall that the government had doubled the budget for new
settlements but “in a low-key way because we didn’t want parties in
Israel and abroad to thwart the move.” Should Palestine go before the
International Criminal Court, the U.N. panel said, Israel could be
charged with “gross violations of human rights law and serious
violations of international law.”
The Obama administration gave its well-worn response that the panel’s
findings did not “advance the cause of peace” and would slow efforts to
resolve the issues between the two sides—as if those issues were more
complicated than Israel’s continued theft of Palestinian land and its
imprisonment of three million Palestinians behind walls and checkpoints.
Israel also feels free to violate international law at will. Israeli
warplanes struck deep inside Syria in late January and heavily bombed a
research center that was being used to improve Syria’s air defense
system. The multiple attacks reportedly targeted anti-aircraft equipment
as well as facilities for research in biological and chemical weapons.
Israel claimed the Russian-made anti-aircraft equipment was intended
for shipment to Hezbollah, which was formed in Lebanon in 1982 in
response to Israel’s invasion and occupation of Lebanon. Hezbollah is
now a member of the Lebanese government and is recognized as a political
party by the European Union, despite being branded as terrorist by
Israel and the U.S. Israeli officials claim the missiles in the hands of
Hezbollah would limit Israel’s freedom to carry out its reconnaissance
flights over Lebanon—flights that illegally violate sovereign Lebanese
air space.
Military analysts said the Russian-made equipment was too
sophisticated for Hezbollah to use, and suggested that the air strike
was a signal to Tehran that Israel would conduct a similar attack on
Iran’s nuclear facilities if Iran came near to achieving weapons
capability. Despite warnings from abroad that such an attack could have
disastrous consequences, Netanyahu continues to issue threats. On Feb. 3
he called for a national unity government whose “supreme mission” would
be stopping Iran from arming itself with nuclear weapons.
On the same day, Iran’s foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi,
reiterated Tehran’s offer to hold direct talks on the nuclear issue with
the U.S., and agreed to a meeting between Iran and the five permanent
members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany on Feb. 26. Iran’s
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad offered last October to stop enriching
uranium to 20 percent if the Western powers would supply Iran with that
grade of fuel and lift the sanctions, but they refused, instead
demanding that Iran ship its stockpiles of enriched uranium out of the
country and reveal all of its weapons technology. They would receive in
return spare airplane parts and a “gradual” lifting of sanctions.
Although renewed negotiations are scheduled, a harsher set of
sanctions by the U.S. and its allies went into force on Feb. 5,
forbidding purchasers of Iran’s oil from sending money to Iran and
requiring Iran to engage in barter for needed imports. Iran’s Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei angrily reacted to the increased sanctions
by rejecting the idea of one-on-one negotiations with the U.S. “The
U.S. is pointing a gun at us,” he charged. “The Iranian nation will not
be intimidated by these actions.”
In a Jan. 30 column in the San Francisco Chronicle by
William Luers and Thomas R. Pickering, the two former ambassadors made a
strong plea for the West to recognize Iran’s right to enrich uranium
for civilian purposes and argued that if economic pressure increases no
matter what Iran does, its leaders will have no incentive to make
concessions.
Contrary to Israel’s claims that Iran is building a nuclear weapon, The New York Times reported
on Feb. 13 that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium is of far lower
purity than is needed to make weapons, and some of that uranium has been
converted into fuel for a research reactor. Iran’s Foreign Ministry
spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said, “All weapons of mass destruction and
nuclear arms need to be destroyed.”
Tom Koenigs, a member of the German parliament, points out that the
nation George W. Bush called part of “the axis of evil” has opposed the
Taliban from the beginning and taken in more than three million Afghan
refugees. He argues that constructive involvement of Iran is key to
finding a solution in both Afghanistan and Syria. “By not talking with
Iran, the Western community is gambling away its influence over a key
actor in the Middle East,” he says.
Many observers hope that Obama’s new security team of Secretary of
State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel will result in a
more conciliatory U.S. approach to Iran. But both appointees are chained
by the ankle to a U.S. policy—strictly enforced by Congress—that
precludes any agreement that recognizes Iran’s right to enrich uranium
even for peaceful purposes as long as Netanyahu and his colleagues
regard Iran as an “existential threat” to Israel.
Congress maintains a similar lock on U.S. policy toward the
Palestinians on behalf of Israel, and it is almost exclusively punitive.
Among Kerry’s first official acts was to call Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas to assure him that Obama is “very interested in the peace
process,” and promising to press Congress to restore the $500 million in
aid it has withheld from the financially strapped Palestinian
Authority. He could give no assurance that Congress would agree.
Congress’ obsessive allegiance to Israel was vividly demonstrated
during the confirmation hearings of Chuck Hagel for secretary of
defense. Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee largely ignored
such issues as the size of the military budget and troop reductions in
Afghanistan, and instead bullied him about his loyalty to Israel. Esther
Riley, a member of Northern California Friends of Sabeel, confessed she
was confused. “I watched the Senate Armed Services Committee grill
Chuck Hagel on his suitability to be secretary of defense,” she
said—“but for what country? I couldn’t tell whether it was for the
United States or Israel.”
Like the hapless defendants in the 1930s Soviet show trials, Hagel
buckled under the verbal hammering. He apologized for having said that
Congress was “intimidated” by the Israel lobby, even while his hearings
were demonstrating such intimidation. As a Republican senator in 2007
Hagel had said, “When people have no hope, when they have despair,
little else matters. This is not about terrorists not liking
freedom—tell that to the Palestinians who have been chained down for
many years.” Hagel apologized for that statement, too.
The fact that as a senator Hagel consistently voted in support of
Israel did not deter Republican senators from blocking his nomination
until after a 10-day recess. Despite such delaying tactics, the fact
remains that no one qualified to be secretary of defense can help but be
aware that Israel tightly controls all movement of people and goods in
the West Bank and Gaza, and observes no laws when it comes to seizing
Palestinian land and water.
Palestinian students encounter so many obstacles when they try to go
to school that the Human Sciences Research Council calls the situation
“a denial of the right to education.” Israel’s restrictions on movement
can even prove fatal. Twenty children were killed in February when their
school bus crashed on one of the dangerous back roads West Bank
Palestinians are required to use instead of main highways.
The Israel-firsters who dominate Congress seemingly are unmoved by
such incidents or by the daily suffering caused by Israel’s occupation.
The bombing of Gaza’s one power station in 2006 and during Operation
Cast Lead, combined with the severe shortage of fuel caused by Israel’s
six-year blockade, have left the people of Gaza without power for six to
eight hours a day. Because Gazans often use candles to provide light,
house fires are a constant hazard. It took only one candle to engulf the
home of Hazem Dhair and his wife in flames on Jan. 31, killing the
couple and their four children, ages 3 months to 7 years.
Rawan Yaghi, a student in Gaza, has described on her Web site what it
feels like to live with F-16s constantly flying overhead. They
regularly stage ear-splitting mock raids, and often actual raids that
within minutes reduce homes and buildings to rubble. Two recent attacks
aimed at assassinating militants instead killed 11 small children and
their parents. “After a number of days of incessant explosions and
making sure you’re still alive every five minutes,” she writes, “you
start cursing Israel, the United States government, your political
leaders and everyone participating in the daily act of terrorizing you.”
Obama plans to visit Israel and the West Bank in March in what Kerry
said would be a “listening” trip. But since he will not bring solid
proposals he is prepared to enforce, there is little hope for
progress.The Palestinians for their part cannot negotiate successfully
unless Hamas and the Fatah party can unite to speak for all
Palestinians. Israel has done its best to prevent this from happening,
sabotaging the effort at unity again in early February by jailing the
Hamas official in charge of reconciliation talks.
As Israel’s closest ally, the U.S. inevitably shares in the
resentment that Israeli actions arouse.That resentment encourages the
rise of militant groups, not all of them connected to al-Qaeda, and
attempts by the U.S. to eliminate them with drone strikes in turn help
the militants recruit more members. John Kerry at his confirmation
hearings spoke of the need to make sure that “American foreign policy is
not defined by drones and deployments alone.”
There’s an equally urgent need to make sure American policy is no
longer defined by the dictates of the Israel lobby and its supplicants
in Congress.
Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Mill Valley, CA. A member of Jewish Voice for Peace, she writes frequently on the Middle East.
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