Politics.be - An alliance of failures in Israel

An alliance of failures in Israel

By Ali Abunimah

The Daily Star
20 July 2004

http://dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?...10&categ_id=5&
article_id=6403

The positive spin on the negotiations to form a Likud-Labor-led
coalition in Israel is that it will create a majority government
capable of implementing a historic withdrawal of Israeli forces
and settlers from the Gaza Strip, and that this will somehow "jump
start" the peace process. Notwithstanding the concern that the
Gaza plan really aims at nothing more than continued "occupation
by remote control," as Haaretz columnist Amir Oren described it, a
coalition headed by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Labor
leader Shimon Peres seems more a dying gasp for Israel's existing
political order.

If Labor and Likud successfully agree on a coalition government,
it will be one forged in different circumstances than their
earlier partnership, which lasted almost two years after March
2001. The previous "unity government" emerged a few months into
the intifada in an atmosphere of national panic. In effect key
Labor leaders, like Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, who served as Sharon's
defense minister, and ex-Prime Minister Ehud Barak, openly
espoused the Likud worldview that the intifada had to be crushed
militarily and that there were no Palestinians with whom to
negotiate. While this allowed Labor ministers to cling to office,
it did not stem the historical decline of their party partly due
to the numerical decline of its elite European social base.

The party split, and many Labor "doves" - those who still believed
in endless and fruitless Oslo-style negotiations - joined the
left-Zionist Meretz Party or bided their time. When Labor
contrived a budget crisis and brought about new elections in
January 2003, it suffered a major defeat. This was because its
"hawkish" wing was outbid by Sharon, while what remained of the
"dovish" wing did not have a credible message after the total
failure of the Oslo process to bring the peace and security
without sacrifice that Labor had long promised.

This time, however, rather than Labor joining up to Sharon's
Likud, Sharon is effectively joining Labor. Ideologically, this
process began last year when Sharon, through his ally and deputy
Ehud Olmert, shocked the Israeli public by admitting that unless
Israel withdrew from some occupied territory, Jews would in a few
short years be totally outnumbered by Palestinians, and Israel
would cease to be a "Jewish state." This fear of a Palestinian
"demographic time bomb" was one of the key motivations for Labor
to abandon its historic rejection of a Palestinian state, starting
in the 1980s. However, the right, and Sharon in particular, had
always scoffed at such fears. They believed that the facts on the
ground created by the settler movement, plus increased immigration
by Jews, would ensure Israeli control over Palestinian territory
in perpetuity. The monstrous separation wall that has become so
associated with Sharon was first proposed by Labor, which even
today criticizes it only for its particular route. In other words,
Sharon is, with his embellishments, implementing the Labor policy
of "us over here, them over there."

Naturally, Sharon's shift has alienated much of his Likud Party.
In May, his Gaza plan was soundly rejected in a referendum of
party members. In June, he only got the barest Cabinet approval
for a much watered-down version of the initiative by firing two
ministers who had promised to vote against it. As Maariv columnist
Nadav Eyal put it: "Likud is burning," as a third of its Knesset
members were in open revolt against the prime minister. Sharon's
leadership is under threat from Finance Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, who is more popular within the party and is outflanking
the prime minister on the right. Likud, always a shaky mix of
secular ultra-nationalists like Sharon, religious fundamentalists
and working class Arab Jews discriminated against by the European
Labor elite, now appears to be melting down just as Labor did a
few years ago.

Any coalition that Sharon and Peres manage to cobble together will
have to rest on the platform of declared willingness to see the
Gaza disengagement plan through in some form. Such an agreement
will have two immediate effects: first, intensifying the conflict
within Likud and weakening Sharon even further; and second,
reviving the international peace process industry, the only
tangible product of which will be more frequent flyer miles for
the representatives of the "Quartet."

In the long run, the fundamental problem is that there is no
partition of Palestine-Israel possible that is acceptable to
sufficient numbers of both Israelis and Palestinians. The barest
consensus, resting largely on fear of the Palestinian birth rate,
exists in Israel for some sort of separation from the West Bank
and Gaza. But it seems no two Israelis can agree on what and where
to withdraw from. Even the most forthcoming proposals fall far
short of what international law requires and any majority of
Palestinians could accept as a minimal basis for a two-state
solution. While this stalemate hardens, construction of new
settlements and the wall grinds on, further altering demographics
and geography such that the concepts of withdrawal and separation
become ever more nonsensical.

The only thing that could break the impasse is massive and
immediate international intervention to force Israel to change its
ways. But as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan recently explained
when asked how Israel's crimes in the Occupied Territories could
be halted: "You would want to see immediate action by the Quartet
to either stop the demolition of the houses, and that is going to
take the kind of action and will and resources and confrontation
that, quite frankly, today I don't see anybody on the
international community willing to take."

In the meantime, the situation on the ground becomes worse even
than that existing in apartheid South Africa. Israel's ability to
maintain control will last some years yet, but not decades. The
unbroken determination of Palestinians to be free (and the events
in Gaza in the past few days have by no means diminished this)
guarantees that there is an end date. What is needed now is an
international, grassroots movement to do the job that the Quartet
won't do, and to bring that date closer.

Ali Abunimah, a Chicago-based Palestinian-Jordanian analyst and
media critic, is co-founder of Electronic Intifada. He wrote this
commentary for THE DAILY STAR