Israeli politics is a Ferris wheel in which by turn different parties emerge, albeit often briefly, on top and use their elevated position to trumpet their views on a Palestinian settlement. The currently failing Labor Party and Kadima, which drove it to the sidelines have each endorsed the two-state solution. The hard-line center right has not. It was largely on the basis of his tough line against the Palestinians, that Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu has just won the premiership of a new coalition, which to the surprise of many includes the apparently dovish Labor Party.
But the key point about this circulating political wheel is that it is a single wheel, revolving on the single axis which is the continued repression, humiliation and pauperization of the Palestinians in their own occupied country, while during every administration, new settlements continue to be built illegally on Palestinian land.
The only difference between Likud, Kadima and the Labor Party is the rhetoric. Labor presents itself as peacemaker, Kadima as compromiser and realists while Likud is the party of hard men, bent on taking an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. All parties are happy with the state of siege (and generous US support) that has sustained the Israeli state since its creation 61 years ago. Despite their commitment to the two-state solution, what did the Labor and Kadima parties actually do when they were at the top of the Ferris wheel? Did the building of new settlements stop? Did the peace process actually advance an inch?
In both Madrid and Oslo, Israel obtained a framework for peace negotiations that was strongly favorable to them. But it proved not to be good enough for them. Every Israeli government has found grounds to welch on almost all their commitments to the peace process. Even Annapolis, the broken diplomatic cookie the Kadima government of Ehud Olmert gave the failed Bush administration in its final flailing months, led nowhere. Instead Kadima sought to hang on to the power and buy Israeli votes with torrents of Palestinian blood as their armed forces pounded Gaza ghetto in a display of savagery that shocked the watching world.
So how is president Barack Obama going to handle a new Israeli government, with a racist bigot in Avigdor Lieberman as foreign minister, who has just publicly trashed even the minor agreement of Annapolis?
Outsiders may hope that such negative talk will be too much for Netanyahu’s Labor coalition partners. On the face of it, Lieberman and his rejectionist policies represent everything Labor hates. But Labor leader Ehud Barak, a former general, did not enter into this coalition with his eyes closed. He knows Netanyahu. He knows Liebermam’s Yisrael Beiteinu party is notorious for its reactionary politics too. This is Labor’s chance to get back to the top of the Ferris wheel and Barak clearly has no problems with the fundamental anti-Palestinian axis on which it pivots. Obama needs to recognize that though they wear different labels, all Israeli politicians share the fear of a two-state solution and just peace for the Palestinians.
US and Russia: Easing the chill
The Guardian yesterday commented on US-Russian ties, saying in part:
Bill Clinton hugged Boris Yeltsin and it ended in the collapse of the rouble and a war in Chechnya. George Bush looked deep into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and they parte d company trading missile threats amid a war in Georgia. Barack Obama pressed the reset button with Dmitry Medvedev yesterday and produced a four-page shopping list of subjects about which they would continue to talk — chief among them the intention to cut nuclear arsenals by a third. Whatever today brings with the G-20, particularly after the public splits between France and Germany, the US president’s first international foray has already achieved results. The cold warriors, who say the West should stand up to Russia rather than engage with it, predict that the relationship between Obama and Medvedev will also end in tears. But there is a self-fulfilling quality to the notion that Russia should only be allowed to join our game when it plays by our rules.
Obama has seen a chance to create a virtuous circle. By offering to go slow on missile defense, he could generate Russian pressure on Iran to abandon its attempts to build a nuclear bomb. Russia is key to persuading Iran to stay within the bounds of a civilian nuclear program, because it is helping Tehran build one. The abandonment of a covert Iranian plan to build the bomb would obviate the need for a missile defense battery close to Russia’s border. Deep differences remain over both the missile defense program and Georgia. Obama said he had no interest in papering over the cracks. But his is more than just a change in tone.
The real change is that America has decided to stop making progress on bigger fronts — strategic nuclear arsenals, non-proliferation, military transit routes to Afghanistan — hostage to problems on lesser ones. This could be more fruitful than confronting Russia for two reasons.
