The New Israeli National Unity Government

About two weeks ago I was getting ready to do a post about the upcoming early Israeli elections in Israel. All the pundits had decided that Netanyahu would go to the polls in September--some even mentioning September 4 as the date. Several even attributed this to a decision by Bibi and Barak to strike Iran before the American election in early November. But then a funny thing happened on the way to the election...As a bill to dissolve the Knesset and set a date for new elections had passed its first of three mandatory "readings" or votes in the Knesset, things suddenly began to slow down as Kadima members began to delay. Behind the scenes new Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz was negotiating a new coalition government with Netanyahu that would delay elections possibly until they were required by law in mid-2013. The new government was announced as ostensibly being motivated by the need to pass a new law on national service for the ultra-Orthodox and by the need to pass electoral reform. But what really motivated the two main protagonists and what are the chances of their proclaimed agenda being enacted?

Mofaz and Kadima had the most to lose from early elections. Polls showed Kadima dropping from 28 seats in this Knesset to the upper single or lower double digits in the next. Kadima would finally be going through the process that past Center parties (Rafi, Dash, Center Party) had gone through in their first three years. This gives Kadima some 15 months to attempt to build up a record with which it can face the electorate, something it failed to do under Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni.

Netanyahu can do what he is best at--playing for time. He can continue to threaten an Israeli attack on Iran thereby ensuring that the P5+1 powers engaged in nuclear negotiations with Iran don't give in easily. He can also hope that Romney is elected president in place of Obama, thereby giving Israel cover to continue settling the West Bank while avoiding any serious negotiations with the Palestinians. And he can continue to create more facts on the ground in the West Bank. Like with the rabbi who promised the local nobleman that he would teach his dog to talk in a year, he will play for time. As the rabbi explained to his wife, "The nobleman can die, the dog can die, I can die or maybe the dog can learn to talk." 

Since 1984 governments of national unity have become a regular feature of the Israeli political landscape. The first national unity government came to power in June 1967 to give backing for Israel's preemptive attack against the threatening Arab powers. That government collapsed in early 1970 when Gahal (the forerunner of the Likud) withdrew over Israeli acceptance of UNSC Resolution 242 as the basis for negotiations with Egypt and Jordan. In 1984 the next national unity government was created when neither Labor nor the Likud had enough strength to form a government on its own. It featured a rotating premiership and an inner cabinet made up of equal numbers of Labor and Likud ministers. In November 1988 it was replaced by another national unity government without a rotating premiership and with Likud leader Yitzhak Shamir as prime minister. It lasted until March 1990. National unity governments returned in the post-Oslo period to allow Israel to cope with the al-Aksa Intifada. 

None of these national unity governments enacted serious electoral reform or a solution to draft dodging by the ultra-Orthodox. Because the latter is a popular cause with secular Israelis, the two main parties may be able to overcome their mutual fear of retaliation by the religious parties and enact some sort of non-military national service scheme for the ultra-Orthodox in which they would mostly serve their own communities. As it is now most ultra-Orthodox males live a subsidized existence of poverty off of the earnings of their wives and the funds that their parties manage to extort from secular taxes as part of the coalition bargaining process.

The Likud is actually quite comfortable with the present electoral-party system as it gives an excuse for Likud prime ministers to avoid making territorial and other concessions to the Palestinians. They can then complain of coalition pressures and blame the religious and Far Right parties. Only the Left is really interested in changing the electoral system, which could be done by either increasing the entry barrier for parties to the Knesset from the present two percent (up from one percent at independence) to four or five percent or by replacing Israel's own national constituency with several smaller regional constituencies. Political scientists can quite easily design a system that will eliminate the negative features of the present system. But Israeli politicians are not political scientists--they are short-sighted hacks interested in their personal interests, then in their parties interests, and lastly--only slightly--in the national interest.

Here are links to comments by former Mossad analyst Yossi Alpher and senior Ha'aretz political correspondent Akiva Eldar on the reasons for the deal.

Is Shaul Mofaz for Real?

Last week the Partners for a Progressive Israel (formerly Meretz USA) blog reposted a NY Times Profile of new Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz, who decisively defeated Tzipi Livni the former leader in the leadership primary at the end of March. Mofaz appeared much more dovish than one would expect for a former West Bank settler and former Likud defense minister.

Mofaz appeared to be attempting to paper over the disagreements between himself and Livni before the election. Whether this is because he wants to lead a Center party that is sincerely in favor of a two-state solution or merely wants to increase the value of his stock before he enters into merger or coalition negotiations with Netanyahu is anyone's guess. 

Many former generals turned politician are very ideologically flexible during their early political careers as their main goal is to serve in government and increase their personal resumes and profiles. Ariel Sharon made statements that were all over the map when he ran as head of Shlomzion in 1977. Matti Peled started out on the far right when he was still in the IDF but after entering politics in the late 1960s quickly moved to the far left. Ezer Weizman more gradually went from being a supporter of Eretz Israel haShlema (Greater Israel) in the 1960s and 1970s to become a dovish Labor Party minister in the 1980s. And Moshe Dayan weaved all over the place both when in government and in opposition during the late 1960s and 1970s. 

Where Mofaz ends up both ideologically and in terms of political party affiliation is for the punters to lay odds on.

Shaul Mofaz decisively beats Tzipi Livni in Kadima Primary

At about midnight Israel time this morning with about 90 percent of the vote returned, challenger Shaul Mofaz had beaten incumbent leader Tzipi Livni of the Kadima Party in Israel by a margin of 62 to 38 percent--the same margin by which Richard Nixon defeated George McGovern in 1972. There was a turnout of about 45 percent for the internal election indicating that many who had voted for the party in 2009 had abandoned it. Mofaz, who emigrated from Iran as a boy in the 1950s served as chief of staff of the IDF and then as Likud defense minister under Ariel Sharon. Initially when Sharon bolted the Likud to form Kadima, Mofaz remained behind in the Likud but then was persuaded by Sharon to follow. Tzipi Livni, who served as Kadima foreign minister under Ehud Olmert from 2006 to 2008 before becoming party leader, has not indicated what she will do now. Mofaz called on her to remain in the party. But many have speculated that she will either withdraw from politics entirely or form a new party with Ehud Barak's Atzmaut (Independence) faction.  This is because both Kadima and Atzmaut are parties without developed ideologies. Both Mofaz and the media were very hard on Livni for failing to form a governing coalition in late 2008, which forced elections, and then for refusing to join Netanyahu's ruling coalition. There was also speculation that Mofaz might return to the Likud if he lost his second bid for the party leadership.

Kadima's future course won't be clear until after a general election in Israel is held, probably in the fall of 2012 or the winter of 2013. In Israeli politics former generals seem to have a preference for going into a coalition or remaining there rather than staying in the opposition out of principle. The first former general to enter the Israeli Right, Ezer Weizman, was upset when Menahem Begin pulled his then Herut Party out of the first government of national unity in 1970. Yitzhak Rabin was upset when he lost the defense ministry due to a bid by Labor leader Shimon Peres to form a narrow coalition of the Center-Left in 1990. Both Barak and Benjamin Ben-Eliezer supported Labor joining the Likud in a coalition government in 2001. Former generals tend to look upon a government ministry as another command--a stepping stone on the way to becoming defense minister or prime minister as regional or branch commands in the army were stepping stones on the way to becoming chief of staff.

Polls indicate that Kadima will probably win between 10 and 13 seats in the next election, down from 28 at present, making the party a medium-size party like Labor or Avigdor Leiberman's Israel Beitenu. Ehud Olmert, attending the J Street conference in Washington, called for a ruling coalition of medium-size and small parties of the Left and Center to keep Netanyahu out of power. But the math and ideology is unlikely to support such a coalition.

J Street, Post-Zionism and the Two-State Solution

This weekend J Street, the liberal Zionist pro-peace lobby, will be holding its third conference since its founding in 2008. In 2009 it attracted 1500 people to its first conference, this expanded to over 2,000 at its second conference last year, and it is expected to have over 2500 attendees for its third conference. This has worried the Zionist Right in America, aligned behind the dominant Likud Party and the other parties of the ruling coalition. They have been very inventive in the ways they attack it, which mainly amounts to guilt by association and obfuscation.  But J Street may not be much of a threat to their Greater Israel project.

David Frum, a former Bush administration official and a columnist at The Daily Beast, had a column in which he claimed that Post-Zionists were Anti-Zionists. Post-Zionism was a term coined in the 1990s to cover the Zionist members of the Israeli New Historians school of historiography.  The New Historians are/were a group of Israeli historians that wrote about Israeli history outside of the prevailing Zionist narrative. They range from Benny Morris and Tom Segev who are definitely Zionists, to Ilan Pappe who is definitely anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian to Avi Shlaim who is in exile in London and is highly critical of Israel and Zionism but supports the existence of Israel. The term was then applied to the Meretz Party and to the left wing of the Labor Party to mean those who were critical of Israel as well as of the Palestinians. Frum has reapplied it to refer to the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement that wants to start an economic campaign against Israel proper. His justification is that some liberal Zionists like Peter Beinart, a featured speaker at this J Street conference, are advocating a boycott of products produced by Jews living in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Daily Commentary Magazine, one of the original platforms of the neo-Conservative movement, sends out an email, which often attacks J Street. It does this by attacking progressive or radical organizations that J Street refuses to condemn, such as the Occupy movement, because J Street's pool of supporters share many positions in common with them. 

The Zionist Right in both Israel and America see J Street as a threat because it genuinely supports a two-state solution with the Palestinians, instead of paying lip service to it while building settlements meant to make it impossible. But this may soon be irrelevant because of developments in both Israeli and Palestinian politics.

On Tuesday the Kadima Party holds its leadership primary to determine who will lead the party into elections late this year or early next year (Netanyahu has not yet set a date for the general election). The two main contenders are former Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who is also the opposition leader. Polls put the party in the 10-13 seat range in the next election or less than half of what it won in 2009. It will be about the same size as Labor and Israel Beitenu, the latter being the party of Foreign Minister Avigdor Leiberman. With Kadima at this size the Center-Left will be too small to form a governing coalition without participation by the Likud or other parties of the Right. 

Meanwhile a similar situation prevails among Palestinians between the former ruling Fatah and Hamas. Many Palestinians see the two-state solution as having passed its sell-by date (the date printed on perishable food items) and now serving only as a cover for further settlement.

J Street is ostensibly dedicated to facilitating a two-state solution by lobbying for such a solution in Washington. But in reality it may really be aimed at extracting more contributions for liberal Democratic candidates from liberal Jews and to keep American Jewish youth involved in Zionist issues. But its alarmist rhetoric of now or never for a two-state solution may well backfire. Politics weren't right for a two-state solution in Obama's first term. They appear highly unlikely to be ripe--for the reasons listed above--during his second term. The Republicans aren't interested in mediating a two-state solution as they are beholden to the Evangelical base that supports the Israeli Right. If J Street continues with its rhetoric it may well neutralize the college students that it is presently bringing into the liberal Zionist fold as the next generation. They might actually come to believe in that rhetoric and so drop out of the struggle once the two-state solution is deferred again.

Kadima: The Problems

This weekend, Ha'Aretz ran an interview with Kadima and opposition leader Tzipi Livni that revealed many of the problems present in the party. What it reveals is a party with no defining or uniting ideology and a party leader so scared of losing her leadership position that she is unwilling to defend any vision for the party. She was afraid to denounce undemocratic initiatives that threatened the basic foundations of democracy in Israel. And according to the interviewer polls indicate that if elections were held today, half of the party's 2009 voters would vote for other parties. This would make Kadima a medium-sized party comparable in size to Avigdor Leibermann's Israel Beitenu party or to Labor. And there is clear fear that if she loses the leadership and former Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz becomes party leader that he will return the party to the Likud after breaking it up. Mofaz emerges from the interview as the typical Israeli general politician--interested in holding a ministry in the government whatever its ideology and makeup, not interested in ideology and with no real vision, in other words a security technocrat.

Kadima: Last Hope for the Two-State Solution?

Kadima has announced that it will hold primary elections for leader on March 27--about eight weeks from now--in anticipation of an Israeli general election in late 2012 or early 2013. Kadima is the centrist party that supporters of the two-state solution have pinned their hopes on since it was founded in November 2005. Since the June 1992 election that brought Rabin to power, Labor and Meretz have both lost three-fourths of their Knesset representation. But the creation of Kadima, the largest party in the Knesset by one seat, leaves the hope that there is a party that can replace Labor and serve as an anchor for a center-left peace coalition as an alternative to the Right.

Kadima has been a disappointment to many. It has avoided the curse of Israeli centrist parties, which tend to be a collection of defectors from other parties who join together without any coherent ideology and then collapse as pressures mount and personal rivalries flare up. The first of these, Rafi, was founded by Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, as a personal vehicle to pursue a grudge match with the Mapai Old Guard. After three years Rafi, which only won ten seats (out of 120 in the Knesset), minus Ben-Gurion joined with Mapai and Ahdut Ha'Avoda to form the Israel Labor Party. Rafi remained for a while as a faction within Labor led first by Moshe Dayan and then by Shimon Peres. But the three original party factions soon became personal camps of Dayan/Peres versus Yigal Allon/Yitzhak Rabin. 

Next came the Democratic Movement for Change led by Israel's leading archaeologist (and second chief of staff) Yigael Yadin in 1976. It lasted for three years before it split into rival parties. It was composed of a collection of former generals and industrialists from the Labor Party and a protest movement, Shinui, that merged to contest the 1977 election and change the electoral system. It won 15 seats but was unable to prevent Menahem Begin from forming a government without them. When Yadin joined the coalition government a few months later Shinui leader Amnon Rubinstein was upset. By 1979 they had split apart and Yadin retired from politics a broken man in 1981.

The last centrist party before Kadima was entitled The Center Party. It consisted of a number of defectors from the Likud and the former chief of staff Amnon Lipkin Shahak. It was formed in 1998 for the 1999 election. After polling around 15 seats initially it won only seven in the actual election. Within three years it was gone. Its Likud defectors returned to the Likud.

Kadima was founded as a personal vehicle for Ariel Sharon who suffered a major stroke less than two months after it was founded. This left the party in the hands of his deputy Ehud Olmert. Olmert formed a government with the Labor Party in 2006 but within months his public support disappeared due to Israel's poor performance in the Second Lebanon War against Hezbollah in the summer of 2006. In late 2008 the party held a leadership election to replace Olmert who was about to be indicted on corruption charges stemming from his time in the Likud. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni barely beat former chief of staff Shaul Mofaz. 

If Mofaz wins, he is likely to lead Kadima into a coalition with the Likud for a center-right coalition. If he loses in a close election, he could take his supporters into the Likud, or remain as a thorn in the side of Livni. Only if Livni wins decisively will there be a mandate for Kadima to remain as an opposition party.  If she wins in a close election and Mofaz doesn't return to the Likud, she may be under pressure to join the Likud in a coalition in order to avoid Mofaz defecting.

If Livni is successful, only the Palestinian end of the two-state solution is blocked. If she is unsuccessful, both ends will be blocked--the situation before Rabin was elected in 1992. 

Here is a link to a discussion on the future of the two-state solution on the website Bitter Lemons. It doesn't really discuss the internal politics of either Israel or Palestine but merely the policy positions of the two countries.

Why Kadima Can't Replace Labor as Peace Party

Here are five quick reasons why Kadima cannot replace the Labor Party as the backbone of the Israeli peace camp:

1) It is led by a leader, Tzipi Livni, who has confessed that she doesn't like politics and feels that politics is like a sewer. Here is Ha'Aretz's take on that revelation.

2) Tzipi Livni barely beat out Shaul Mofaz for the leadership of the party in 2008. Mofaz has in order three ambitions: a) take over as Kadima party leader; b) replace Barak as defense minister--his old job; 3) replace Netanyahu as leader of the Right.

3) In order to nearly keep its same strength in the 2009 election as in 2006, Kadima had to cannibalize Labor and Meretz. This has left it incapable of leading a coalition on its own.

4) Kadima has no core principles or ideology--it was founded as a party of convenience like the Center Party and the DMC before it. It has avoided their fates simply because it was much more successful at the polls the first time out because of Sharon, who is permanently gone.

5) Kadima's potential Palestinian peace partner is Fatah, which is as conflicted as  Kadima.

Israeli Interlocutor with the Palestinians Part III

In February 1983 the Kahan Commission, appointed by Begin under pressure by the Israeli peace movement and Labor following the massacres, held Sharon unfit to serve as defense minister and Eitan to serve as chief of staff. Sharon became minister without portfolio and spent the next fourteen and a half years in internal "exile" filling minor posts in Likud governments. Begin went into a deep depression and retired from politics in September 1983.

His successor was Yitzhak Shamir, a former leader of the Lehi underground movement and foreign minister under Begin. Shamir spent the next nine years making sure that settlement continued without stop on the West Bank--he met little resistance from Labor--and that no peace plan got anywhere. In 1992 after losing an election Shamir retired from politics and his designated successor, Moshe Arens, suprised everyone by retiring as well.

Shamir's successor then became an Arens protege, a scion, of a distinguished Revisionist and Israeli family, Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu. Sharon would spend the remaining fourteen years of his political life attempting to outflank Netanyahu from the right or the left. He joined Netanyahu in attacking the Oslo peace process. Netanyahu appointed him foreign minister in October 1998 on the eve of the Wye Plantation Summit to fortify his own right flank. Bibi signed a deal but upon returning to Israel lacked the clout to sell it to his coalition. His government collapsed and Sharon emerged as leader of the Likud, a prize he had sought since founding it a quarter century before.

In July 2000 the Camp David Summit ended with no agreement and Clinton failed to produce bridging proposals. Arafat prepared the Palestinians for a major uprising by stocking up on medical and food supplies, something that the Palestinian leadership had not done in 1936 or in 1948. Netanyahu, who had resigned his Knesset seat, looked to be preparing a comeback. The Likud voted in the Knesset for a law that would allow Netanyahu to become prime minister without being a deputy. Sharon needed to act quickly. He sought and won permission from Prime Minister Ehud Barak to visit the Temple Mount with a police escort at the end of September 2000. The visit lasted about an hour and provoked some minor clashes with Palestinian worshippers on the Mount. Arafat quickly exploited this to touch off the Al-Aksa (named for one of the two mosques on the Mount) Intifada. Barak called an election for prime minister for February 2001. Sharon handily won and then had to clean up the mess that he had helped to make.

The Al-Aksa Intifada quickly devolved into a contest between the Islamists of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Fatah Al-Aksa Brigades to see who could mount the bloodiest terrorist incidents. Unlike the mid-1990s, the Islamists no longer needed to fear any temporary jailing by Arafat. Arafat quickly returned to his true metier as leader of the "armed struggle." Attempts by Washington and Cairo to intervene got nowhere because Arafat was determined to improve his bargaining leverage and his popularity, seriously eroded due to the nature of his regime, and Jerusalem was determined to not allow Arafat to gain any advantage.

Sharon gradually adopted two main tactics. The first was "targeted killings" a euphemism for assassination of Palestinian terrorist and political leaders. The other was invasion of the areas of the West Bank from which the IDF had withdrawn in the mid-1990s under Oslo. After a major terrorist bombing in Netanya on March 27, 1992, Sharon sent the IDF back into the cities of the West Bank to destroy the terrorist infrastructure. Unlike in 1982, this time he had the complete sympathy of the American president who despised Arafat. After reestablishing control Sharon adopted the separation strategy proposed by Labor, but changed the boundaries. The separation barrier, a combination of electrified fence and high brick walls, ran along the Palestinian side of the green line or border and occasionally deep into the West Bank to include settlements like Ariel.

Sharon, who believed that a Palestinian state should consist of less than half the territory of the West Bank, began using the language of the Israeli Center-Left. He spoke of occupation and the suffering of the Palestinians. And he prepared a redeployment of the Israeli military to politically more defensible lines--he would withdraw from Gaza, abandoning the settlers who had lived there for a quarter century. And he abandoned four settlements in northern Samaria. The Likud bulked at this plan and Sharon had to turn to Labor for the Knesset votes necessary to win approval. The IDF carried out the redeployment in August 2005. Sharon then withdrew from the party, which he had founded thirty years before, two months later. Two months after that he suffered a massive stroke and his political career was over.

Sharon, except for the length of his political career, is typical of many of Israel's military politicians. He in many ways serves as a role model for military politicians in the Likud and Kadima such as Shlomo Mofaz and Moshe "Boogie" Ya’alon. Dayan had his first encounters with Palestinians fifteen years before Sharon in 1938-39 as did Yigal Allon. Ehud Barak had his about fifteen years after Sharon's in the late 1960s. His role in the assassination of Palestinian terrorist leaders in Beirut in 1973 helped to make his military career and establish him as Israel's most decorated soldier.

Except during Oslo in the 1990s and in 2008, most Israeli leaders have only dealt with Palestinians, either directly or indirectly, on the battlefield. In this they resemble Andrew Jackson who dealt with American Indians from 1788 until 1837, mostly on the battlefield or in one-sided peace negotiations. Jackson, like Sharon, also exceeded his orders in invading foreign territory in Florida in 1817. But unlike with Sharon, it helped his career. Maybe we can count Sharon's fourteen years in minor posts as a major advancement. Jackson, unlike Sharon, was able to carry out his dream of removing the natives. Sharon could only plan for this when he was a staff officer in Northern Command in the late 1950s.