COLLISION COURSE

Lead article, The Other Israel

     On the evening of Nov. 4, lights remained on late, TV sets tuned to the US elections. With little inspiration to be derived from Israeli politics, peace-minded Israelis of all feathers were clinging to the tide of hope from beyond the Atlantic. Young Jerusalemites stayed the night in a pub festooned with Hebrew-language Obama posters, until at 7.00 in the morning (by Israeli time) McCain conceded loss. As during a football game, the broadcast cheering resounded from the open windows.

     Some Israelis, however, found a very different reason to stay awake that night. At the very moment when the outcome of the US elections hung in the balance, drawing the world's full attention, Israeli commandos cut the Gaza Strip border fence and embarked on a raid which left six Palestinians dead  -- thus abruptly breaking a cease-fire which had held reasonably well since June 16.

     Yet another cycle of bloodshed, fear and misery on the two sides of the Gaza border was precipitated.

Stoking the Gaza fire

     According to official statements, the timing had no relation whatsoever to the US elections. It just happened that exactly on this day Military Intelligence got information of a tunnel being dug. Army experts came to the conclusion that Hamas was going to use the tunnel in order to penetrate into Israeli territory and capture Israeli soldiers.

     One might have naively thought that once the tunnel's location was known, the Palestinians would have no chance of using it to launch a surprise raid. But the army decided that there was no alternative to sending in troops that very night in order to blow up this "ticking tunnel" (to use the neologism of the official communiques).

     Israel's political and military establishment has a long record of engaging in provocative acts and creating "accomplished facts" at times when the world's attention is focused elsewhere. (The Israeli attack on Egypt in 1956 coincided with the Soviet invasion of Hungary, and the 1981 unilateral annexation of the Golan  -- with the Polish Communist government's crackdown on Walensa' "Solidarity.")

     Ehud Barak  -- Defense Minister and Labour Party leader  -- had been boasting of having secured a more quiet life to the Gaza border communities. And it is true that, back in June, it was he who promoted the Gaza cease-fire  -- with the support of Gabi Askenazi, Army Chief of Staff, but against considerable opposition from within the army.

     General Yoav Galant, in charge of the Southern Command, started leaking to the media news about Hamas using the cease-fire to accumulate and stockpile more arms. This was very likely true  -- but the Israeli foorces did the same; in fact, Israel is at present negotiating the purchase of thirty of the most advanced American fighter planes, each of which packs considerably more firepower than Hamas' entire armory.

     Whatever the precise details of the power struggles that culminated with Barak letting the generals have their way, the results were clear enough. The initial raid was answered by a salvo of Qassam missiles shot into Israel (exploding harmlessly in the fields, but still causing considerable fear in Sderot and other Israeli towns), which was answered by more Israeli raids and more missile retaliations.

     Every time when the situation seemed about to calm down, the army killed one or more Palestinians (most of them armed fighters, but also some chance civilians), which inevitably precipitated some more missile attacks.

     The "body count" was completely one-sided  -- twenty dead Palestinians to an Israeli soldier losing his foot. Nearly all Palestinian missiles exploded harmlessly in the fields. Some commentators regarded this as a deliberate policy aimed at avoiding escalation. However, this aspect rarely got noticed by Israeli politicians of various stripes, endlessly reiterating that "No country can endure shooting at its territory." And the missile attacks were answered by closing the border crossings.

     For more than a month, the entry of vital goods into Gaza was blocked. The Gaza population's already meagre reserves were stretched to the limit. Electricity in the Strip was cut off for large parts of the day, and supplies of the most basic goods running out. Smugglers using tunnels under the Egyptian border could not entirely alleviate these shortages. And what they brought in, at considerable personal risk since tunnels dug in sandy soil are liable to frequent cave-ins, was too expensive for large parts of the Strip's impoverished population.
 
     Also stopped at the Gaza border was the monthly consignment of Israeli Shekel notes  -- indispensable for the daily running of the Gazan banking system, since even at the heyday of Oslo the Palestinians have never been allowed to mint their own currency.

     Communities on the Israeli side of the border, though not contending with an economic siege, did endure the eroding effect of daily running for cover at the repeated air-raid alarms and sirens.

     "Mostly they explode in the fields, but until they fall you never know which is the one which will come down exactly on your street. My children are very restless, many of my neighbors simply left and I think we will soon follow them," said a young mother from Sderot on TV.

     The Israeli media hardly ever report the anxiety symptoms of Gazan children, whose families in besieged Gaza have nowhere to run to. For their part, people in the border communities tend to compare their daily life to that in carefree Tel Aviv, and feel themselves  -- not without reason  -- left out and abandoned by the rest of Israeli society.

     In the midst of the crisis, the Sderot townspeople went to the polls to elect a new mayor. The previous one, Eli Moyal, distinguished himself by high-flown warlike demagoguery, and also got himself implicated in unsavory corruption scandals involving misappropriation of public funds. His successor David Buskila struck a more pragmatic tone: "We in this town look to the government to give us back a quiet daily life. If they want to use military means, let them send the army; if they want to have a political solution, send the diplomats. Everything goes  -- just do something?"

     Whatever their affiliation, Israeli politicians daily express their deep sympathy with the people of Sderot. Prominent foreign visitors are invariably brought there and expected to voice a similar sympathy (Obama was, and did, a few months before elections). But from decision-makers the new mayor's request got little more than lip service.

     Barak defended the breaking of the Gaza cease-fire as having been "utterly necessary for security" and the missiles falling on the border communities  --  "a regrettable side effect." Thereupon, he was faced with a barrage of demands for a "follow up", i.e. a major offensive upon and invasion of Gaza.

     Such calls were made, not only by the predictable stalwarts of the extreme right, but also by Barak's fellow cabinet member and rival, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. Barak rebuffed this out of hand, repeatedly speaking out in favor of "clear-headedness" and sounding dire warnings against "making dangerous, precipitous decisions."

     In the end  -- when the alarm was sounded in earnest by the UN and the international relief agencies, crying out that Gaza faced a complete collapse and outright humanitarian disaster  -- Barak let the border crossings open and a trickle of vital goods get through. Just enough to keep the siege at its "normal" level of misery, and let it go on festering into the new year.

     Quite a few commentators had accused Barak of taking military decisions based on political and electoral considerations  -- especially, out of concern over the catastrophic nose-dive predicted by the polls for the Labour Party under his leadership. But if Barak's conduct on Gaza was derived from such considerations, it was singularly inept  -- as he neatly managed to equally displease and alienate hawks and doves, left and right.

Wishy-washy coalition

     The latest Gaza episode encapsulates it all: the ineffectiveness of the government of Israel, headed by the two ever rivaling and feuding twins, Labour and Kadima. Right from its inception in 2006, and up to what seems its impending demise, the Kadima-Labor coalition's lack of a coherent policy has been setting the stage for a return to power of hardliner Binyamin Netanyahu and his Likud.

     The cast of characters meanwhile changed. Kadima was founded by Sharon, who went into coma and passed the baton to Olmert, who was finally forced by his corruption scandals to give place to Livni, though holding on to the position of PM and as a sullen lame duck hampering his successor, actually reducing her chances. Earlier, the Labor leadership moved from Amir Peretz, the supposed social reformer who aroused many hopes and dashed them all at record speed, to Ehud Barak who aroused few hopes and managed to dash these, too.
 
     Under whatever leadership, they repeated it again and again  -- neither fish nor ffowl, never taking a conclusive or consistent line which could have won real support from any part of the spectrum.

     Initiating a war in Lebanon, sowing terrible death and destruction and still managing to end it with a humiliating fiasco  -- and also delaying the ground invasion of Lebanon until when it could no longer influence the outcome, and then still launching it ineptly and ineffectively and throwing away the lives of thirty three soldiers, during the very hours before cease-fire.

     Holding up the Gaza Disengagement as a proud achievement, but following it up with conflict and siege  -- managing to convince Israelis that withdrawal from territory would lead to a barrage of missiles upon their heads, and to convince Palestinians that an Israeli move towards seeming evacuation would lead to siege, misery and near-starvation.

     Playing the old "divide and rule" game, setting up Abu Mazen's Fatah to smash Hamas  -- and ending with Hamas entrenched in the Gaza Strip and Abu Mazen weakened among his people and clinging to the tattered reminder of legitimacy.

     Engaging in the Annapolis charade, a series of futile "negotiations" which led nowhere and served to discredit the idea of peace among Israelis and Palestinians alike. Promising again and again to remove the "illegal settlement outposts" and never doing it, except for a single settler-occupied house evacuated in Hebron.

Floundering campaigns

     Evacuating the settler house  -- accomplished with ease after a week when its occupants threatened bloodshed -- did give Barak something. At least, so new polls indicate, he escapes the ignominy of having his party reduced to a single digit number of seats in the 120-member Knesset. The Israeli Labour Party  -- the party of Ben Gurion, which boasts of having created the state and which once bestrode Israeli politics like a colossus  -- has little to say about the country's present and even less about its future, and is struggling to get 12 or 13 seats.

     The younger Kadima Party seems positioned to do a bit better in the elections due on February 20, 2009, but its campaign, too, is increasingly floundering.

     Tzipi Livni did start out with an impressive bold gesture: "I could have formed a government by giving in to the demand not to negotiate with the Palestinians about the future of Jerusalem. Than I could have gotten the Shas Party and gained a solid parliamentary majority. But it would be useless to have such a government, incapable of taking any step forward. My mandate to try forming a cabinet runs for another week and half, but I will not humiliate myself with futilities. I will no longer try to form a cabinet. We go to elections  -- let the people deccide!" But she did not continue along this path  -- evidently advised by her advisors and spin-doctors that it was "dangerous" and "too radical."

     Instead, Livni chose a rather drab elections slogan "Tzipi Livni  -- what's good for Israel", added to it a rather drab photo of herself, and spent a considerable fortune having slogan and photo placed on enormous billboards all over the country.

     And when the public was not particularly impressed, her advisors gave her the advice to take ever more hawkish public positions. So far this failed to sway the kind of voters who are attracted to rivals with long-established right-wing nationalist credentials.

The Feiglin syndrome

     The old maxim  -- that it is not the opposition that wins but the incumbent that loses  -- had rarely seemed so apt.

     Binyamin Netanyahu, in his earlier term as Prime Minister, became so universally detested as "sly" and "unreliable" that his defeat in 1999 was considered inevitable and foreordained. And as Finance Minister under Sharon he got even further opprobrium, his radical Neo-Liberal economic policies having greatly impoverished the Likud's traditional constituency and made him (then) become considered "a major liability to the party."

     Yet, such is life  -- Netanyahu's past record seems to have been entirely wiped out from public memory, people who just a few years ago cursed him soundly now look to him as the country's saviour, and only a few questioned his suddenly posing as a staunch supporter of government intervention in the economy.

     Pundits now regard Netanyahu's election as all but a forgone conclusion, and hordes of opportunists emerged from the shadows to climb on his bandwagon. Eventually, however, many of these hopeful newcomers were thrown off by the older party stalwarts, in the primary elections held among registered Likud voters.

     The Likud parliamentary slate that emerged from these primaries presents a gallery ranging from right wing to extreme-right and on to what should have been extreme-right lunatic fringe  -- except that they seem destined to be influential members of the new ruling party.

     A somewhat worried Netanyahu spent time and energy in a highly publicized combat with the odious Moshe Feiglin and his well-organized band of religious-messianic West Bank settlers, known as "Jewish Leadership" and constituting in effect a party within the Likud Party.

     Feiglin proclaims that it is Israel's Divine Mission to keep every inch of the hallowed Eretz Yisrael, crush all Arab resistance with an iron fist, repudiate any earthly alliance with the US or anyone else and rely solely on its alliance with God. Accordingly, the time of Secular Zionism is over and a new elite of "The Faithful" is Divinely ordained to take charge of Israel. And Feiglin managed to get himself  -- and several others who believe the same  -- nominated among those likely to become Likud parliamentarians within less than three months.
 
     Still, Feiglin has actually proven to be quite useful for Netanyahu. Next to such a zealot, little effort is needed for anyone else to seem "a moderate" in comparison: Netanyahu himself; former Army Chief of Staff (and possible near-future Defense Minister) Moshe "Boogy" Ya'alon, who believes that negotiations are futile and that "the fact of being defeated should be burned into the Palestinian consciousness"; or Benny Begin, brought out of retirement after considerable courting by Netanyahu  -- the son of Menachem Begin, who seems a throwback to his late father's earliest and most intransigent phase...

Save us from ourselves!

     With little to look for in the coming Israeli elections it is inevitable that what is left of our hopes comes to be focused, almost entirely, on the new President of the United States of America  -- due to take office three weeks before Israel goes to the ballots.

     Every public statement and leaked rumor coming out of the Obama Headquarters is studied deeply and carefully. The record of every new appointee is most thoroughly scrutinized. Peace-seeking Israelis (as well as all Palestinians, from quarreling leaders to marketplace vendors) are divided between those who entertain wild speculations and hopes, and those who already prepare themselves for bitter disappointment and futility.

     It would be useless, in the framework of this magazine, to go in any detail into all these expectations and speculations. Time, and not a very great deal of it, will provide a clear answer.

     Suffice it to say that in fact, Barack Hussein Obama need not change very much. It would be quite enough for him to stick to what Bush said he wanted  -- i.e., promote the creation of a viable Palestinian state and oppose the creation and extension of settlements  -- but, for a change, do something to get such a policy implemented.

     As things now stand, there is a good likelihood that President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu will face each other at the White House next March; that Netanyahu will find it difficult to provide even the lip service which Olmert, Livni and Barak had given; and that Obama will want a bit more than lip service.

     In that case Israel and the United States, staunch and long standing allies, will find themselves on a collision course.

 The editors