Likud dumps moderates

[Sheilbh]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/27/likud-the-party-of-annexation.html

Likud: The Party of Annexation
by Elisheva Goldberg Nov 27, 2012 2:45 PM EST

Leaders of the organized American Jewish community often claim that across the political spectrum, Israelis have embraced the two-state solution. But as the gates of the Likud primary polls swung shut late last night, the doors to a one-state solution swung open.

Take a look at the top 15 Knesset candidates nominated yesterday by the Likud, who roundly support annexing large parts of the West Bank.

This list was compiled with help from the staff of the new Israeli website "sixtyone." All sources are in Hebrew:

Gideon Sa'ar (#2): "Peace will not be achieved by uprooting Jews from the land of Israel. To the extent to which we build up the land (read: settle) we safeguard the practical and spiritual Land of Israel." "According to our faith, Jews have always lived in Hebron."

Gilad Erdan (#3): "The Palestinians are taking international, unilateral action — Israel, too, will take unilateral action.  Israel should announce the annexation of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria."

Silvan Shalom (#4): "We cannot rule out the possibility of annexing the settlement blocs."

Yisrael Katz (#5): "Israel will need to take unilateral steps to extend Israeli sovereignty over the Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria."

Dani Danon (#6): "The real solution is to extend Israeli sovereignty over the settlements in Judea and Samaria."

Reuven Rivlin (#7): "Better that the Palestinians become citizens of the state than divide the Land." "So if they come and say to me: 'You decide, one state or divide the Land of Israel,' I will say that the greater danger is division."

Moshe (Bugi) Ya'alon (#8) — [Note: Bugi is "old school" Likud and stands as an exception to the annexationist elite on its way to power]: "The essence of Zionist existence in Israel: settlements across the country."

Ze'ev Elkin (#9):  In the political sphere — annexation of the settlements in Judea and Samaria.  Because we need to attempt to arrive at...we need move to annex Judea and Samaria, at least those parts of it that are in the Israeli consensus.

Tzipi Hotovely (#10): "The state of Israel needs to put her unilateral solution on the table.  Not the unilateral solution of withdrawals, but the unilateral solution of declaring sovereignty over Judea and Samaria."

Yariv  Lavin (#11): "The Land of Israel is precious to me.  Our right to this land, all of it, is unshakable. It is a birthright, handed down from generation to generation.  I have no right to take [that birthright] away from my children, and an obligation to bequeath it to their children." [In a separate statement:] "Regardless of the Palestinian [UN] move, we should have extended sovereignty [to the West Bank] long ago...but the Palestinian unilateral move is good timing."

[And one more, because it's hard not to quote the proud homophobe some are calling the "real winner" of these Likud elections]:

Moshe Feiglin (#15): "I'll summarize it for you in one sentence: Until we're ready to say, full-throated, that "this is our land!" yes, also Gaza. Until we declare sovereignty on all areas of the Land of Israel in our hands, we have no real solution to the situation there [Gaza]."

In a few days Mahmoud Abbas will head to the UN with his palms up.  But even if he does make it past the majority vote, the Likud leaders they find in office when they get back don't sound particularly interested in complying. And it's not just Likud. Good chunks of Yisrael Beiteinu, and the entirety of the Jewish Home party headed by Netanyahu's former chief of staff Naftali Bennett, are wholeheartedly and openly pro-annexation of Area C. Some of them are even up for rebuilding the Jewish Temple in the spot where the Al-Aqsa Mosque currently stands. And with a Likud lineup like the one above, they might just be able to. Speedily, and in our day.

On the same day old 'moderates' like Benny Begin - son of Menachem, he left Likud in the 90s because he opposed Oslo and supported Arab autonomy under a Jewish state - were voted off the list.  Ehud Barak also announced his retirement from politics.  On the upside apparently the Foreign Office has been beaten over the PA's UN recognition bid.  Lieberman's suggestion of 'dismantling' the PA for heading to the UN won't be state policy.

The next government is likely to be Likud-Lieberman (from what I've read of that merger, Bibi gets a term and then Lieberman takes over) with parties like Shas backing it.  It won't be long before the PA'll be the only body in the region trying for a two-state solution.

The threat for Israel of this shift is that I think it leads us closer to this problem:

How Palestinians Can Finally Achieve Independence
By Jeffrey Goldberg Nov 26, 2012 11:30 PM GMT

The Hamas prime minister in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, said in a televised speech last week that his group remained committed to a policy of indiscriminate murder. He gave this policy a different name, of course. "Resistance," he said, "is the shortest way to liberate Palestine."

So, how's resistance working out for you so far, Mr. Prime Minister?

The Palestinian liberation movement is one of the world's least successful post-World War II national liberation movements. At the time of the United Nations partition of Palestine, in 1947, the world body had 57 members. Today, the UN has 193 member states. Palestine is not among them.

Blame for this sad fact can be apportioned widely: Arab nations rejected the partition of Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish, and instead invaded the nascent state of Israel -- and then lost to it on the battlefield. Egypt and Jordan occupied the Gaza Strip and the West Bank between 1948 and 1967 but did nothing to bring about an independent Palestine. The Arab world at large, though possessing the oil- derived resources to free the Palestinians from material misery, sequesters them in refugee camps in order to perpetuate the conflict. Israel has occasionally shown an interest in freeing Gaza and the West Bank, which came into its possession in 1967, but has more often focused on keeping a permanent hold on the West Bank, colonizing it in destructive, and self-destructive, ways.

Not Blameless

To blame everyone but the Palestinians for their current condition, however, is to treat them as a people without independent agency. Palestinian leaders have made a series of terrible decisions that have brought their people nothing. Terrorism -- the Palestine Liberation Organization will be remembered for its great innovations in the field of terror -- brought the Palestinians attention, but no state. Demonization of Israel brought the Palestinians great emotional satisfaction, but not a state.

Today, the two main (and warring) Palestinian parties are implementing strategies that are similarly flawed. Hamas, as its prime minister says, is committed to "resistance." This means waging an endless war of attrition against Israeli civilians and advancing a religiously inspired, hate-filled, maximalist argument for the slaughter of all Israeli Jews, in both the West Bank and in Israel proper. (If you doubt this description of Hamas's agenda, please read the group's covenant. Suffice it to say that the covenant is frankly annihilationist, arguing that God himself demands the killing of the perfidious Jews. Hamas could always change, but it would have to repudiate its very essence.)

This strategy might actually work if Hamas got ahold of three or four nuclear weapons, or if the Jews of Israel would simply acquiesce to their own massacre. Hamas's arms supplier, Iran, is working toward nuclear-weapons capability, though it doesn't seem likely that officials in Tehran would turn over control of a nuclear weapon to their friends in Gaza. It also seems unlikely that the Jews will agree to be slaughtered.

Hamas believes that its war of attrition -- the latest round of which ended last week -- will eventually wear Israel down, causing its Jews to abandon their country before the final, God-endorsed massacre. This is not a realistic expectation.

The current strategy of the more moderate leadership of the Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank, is less bloodthirsty but is also grounded in unreality. Part of this strategy is to continue to argue against the legitimacy of the Jewish state -- against the idea that Israel is the historic home of the Jewish people. This argument, aside from ignoring archaeology and history, has failed to convince Jews that they are not who they believe themselves to be. (Many Israelis have also advanced the argument that the Palestinians are not who they say they are. This, too, has failed.)

Not Unrecognized

The second prong of this strategy is to seek recognition of Palestinian statehood in the West Bank and Gaza from the UN General Assembly, the world body that 65 years ago offered the Palestinians a state. On Nov. 29, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, is scheduled to make this appeal in New York, and he is almost certain to gain some level of heightened recognition for the Palestinians.

This is very nice, and it will make Abbas, at least, feel very good before his imminent retirement. But it won't move the Palestinians any closer to statehood. The only country that can grant the Palestinians statehood in Gaza and the West Bank is Israel. Israeli leaders are opposed to Abbas's gambit, and Israel's Western allies will protect it from the fallout of whatever happens at the UN.

There is, however, a strategy the Palestinians could implement immediately that would help move them toward independence: They could give up their dream of independence.

It's a very simple idea. When Abbas goes before the UN, he shouldn't ask for recognition of an independent state. Instead, he should say the following: "Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza 45 years ago, and shows no interest in letting go of the West Bank, in particular. We, the Palestinian people, recognize two things: The first is that we are not strong enough to push the Israelis out. Armed resistance is a path to nowhere. The second is that the occupation is permanent. The Israelis are here to stay. So we are giving up our demand for independence. Instead, we are simply asking for the vote. Israel rules our lives. We should be allowed to help pick Israel's rulers."

Reaction would be seismic and instantaneous. The demand for voting rights would resonate with people around the world, in particular with American Jews, who pride themselves on support for both Israel and for civil rights at home. Such a demand would also force Israel into an untenable position; if it accedes to such a demand, it would very quickly cease to be the world's only Jewish-majority state, and instead become the world's 23rd Arab-majority state. If it were to refuse this demand, Israel would very quickly be painted by former friends as an apartheid state.

Israel's response, then, can be reasonably predicted: Israeli leaders eager to prevent their country from becoming a pariah would move to negotiate the independence, with security caveats, of a Palestinian state on the West Bank, and later in Gaza, as well. Israel would simply have no choice.

This won't happen, of course. Israeli intransigence has always had a friend in Palestinian shortsightedness.

(Jeffrey Goldberg is a Bloomberg View columnist and a national correspondent for the Atlantic. The opinions expressed are his own.)

[Valmy]

The problem that the Palestinians will start to be smart?  I don't see how that is a problem.

[Sheilbh]

The problem that the Palestinians will start to be smart?  I don't see how that is a problem.

No.  That if the Israeli right becomes more attracted to a one state solution then Israel either ceases to be a state of the Jewish people or it ceases to be a democracy.  Either, in my view, would be disastrous.

Edit:  I wonder if part of this is a function of the evangelical support for Israel and part of Bibi's playing US politics.  I can't imagine that the diaspora would long support Israel as much if it became a genuinely apartheid state with Palestinian Bantustans.  On the other hand I don't think evangelicals would care one way or the other.

[Faeelin]

Why would it be disastrous if Israel ceased to be a Jewish state?

[Martinus]

Why would it be disastrous if Israel ceased to be a Jewish state?

Yeah, I missed that part. 

[Tamas]

Again that analysis and grand plan at the end assumes that Palestinians have no internal politics, and they have only outside factors, and are charactless actors of the Jewish Question of the 21st century.

They are not. Let Abbas drop the claim on independence even as a bluff, and a dozen screaming populist would-be leaders would jump up to denounce him as a jewish agent and an enemy of the people, vowing that they would rather die than give up on a free Palestine.

[Josquius]

Again that analysis and grand plan at the end assumes that Palestinians have no internal politics, and they have only outside factors, and are charactless actors of the Jewish Question of the 21st century.

They are not. Let Abbas drop the claim on independence even as a bluff, and a dozen screaming populist would-be leaders would jump up to denounce him as a jewish agent and an enemy of the people, vowing that they would rather die than give up on a free Palestine.

Yeah, pretty much. The internal factors in both Israel and Palestine are often forgotten with people assuming they're just like countries in a strategy game.

[dps]

Why would it be disastrous if Israel ceased to be a Jewish state?

Disastrous for Isreali Jews, not necessarily anyone else.

[Neil]

Why would it be disastrous if Israel ceased to be a Jewish state?

Because millions would be killed, and terrorists would inherit Israel's nuclear arsenal.

[The Minsky Moment]

Where is Meridor?

[garbon]

In other news, what do we feel about Abbas seeking the UN to upgrade the status of Palestine today?

[Valmy]

No.  That if the Israeli right becomes more attracted to a one state solution then Israel either ceases to be a state of the Jewish people or it ceases to be a democracy.  Either, in my view, would be disastrous.

Ah I guess I was thinking the Pals forcing the Israelis hand in a deft manuever to gain independence.

[Valmy]

Why would it be disastrous if Israel ceased to be a Jewish state?

Well this particular way of that happening, having their mortal enemies be the new majority, would be pretty disastrous for them.

[Neil]

Where is Meridor?

It's the dark land where Merithyn forged the One Ring.

[merithyn]

Where is Meridor?

It's the dark land where Merithyn forged the One Ring.