Obama in Cairo

Oh, it has been a long time. But the summer is here, work is over for a while, and I'll be leaving soon to visit Israel. So the time has come to re-ignite the blog. For the 3 people who read this, welcome back!

This weekend I'm going to speak at Trinity for a few minutes about President Barack Obama's historic speech to the Muslim world which he delivered on June 4 in Cairo at Cairo University. I've watched the video of the speech, and I've looked briefly at the transcript (including the official Arabic translation posted on the whitehouse.gov web site).

Let me say right off the bat: in principle, I've got no problem with the Obama administration's new approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict. It's more an issue of unfortunate timing. It is fairly clear that the new Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu is going to use every diplomatic trick in the book to forestall the new forceful call for suspending all settlement activity in the West Bank. It is also fairly clear that the Hamas government in Gaza is not going to renounce violent resistance to the Israeli occupation. Between the two, I'd bet the Israelis would be the first to capitulate, but I hardly imagine that it will come to pass. Then what?

It is somewhat misleading to use the term "settlement" when talking about Israeli living arrangements in the West Bank. I think the English term "settlement" conjures up the notion of smaller-than-towns kind of arrangements. Let's set aside for the moment the massive suburban bedroom communities around Jerusalem like Ma'ale Adumim (pop. 33,000 in 2005). Let's talk instead about the city of Ariel (pop. 16,600 in 2007). Here is Google Earth's view of Ariel:











Look at the size of this monstro-city! Every one of those houses, schools, and shopping centers make up this so-called "settlement." There is even a controversial college in its midst claiming 9500 students enrolled! This city (for all intents and purposes) is 25 miles east of Tel Aviv, more than 11 miles beyond the internationally recognized border of Israel, deep in the heart of the West Bank (at this point the WB is only 32 miles wide). It has a reported population growth rate of more than 3% annually.

Who's kidding who? In the mid-1980s the Israeli urban planner and geopgrapher Meron Benvenisti warned that the clock on reversing Israeli settlements may already be past midnight. The opportunity to stop the settlement insanity passed a long time ago. Even if a deal could be reached on adjusting Israel's borders to accommodate the bedroom communities of Jerusalem (in exchange for some empty Israeli land somewhere in the southern West Bank-Israel border area), what in the world is to be done with a place like Ariel?

So let's say for a moment that all settlement activity is frozen (not that this Netanyahu government will easily agree to such a thing), and let's be even more charitable to Israeli expansionism and say that Ma'ale Adumim and the Etzion bloc of Israeli settlements south of Jerusalem, and all the post-1967 Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem are allowed to remain part of Israel in some fantastical settlement. What do you do with Ariel and it's 16,600 inhabitants?

For those like me who have argued for decades against Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territory, the truth is sad but true: all talk of a two-state solution at this late date is well-nigh impossible, even if

a) there was an accommodating Israeli government; and
b) there was an accommodating Palestinian governing body

But there are neither of these two things. The current Israeli government won't even commit to a two-state solution, and the self-immolating Palestinian factions (weak Fatah in Ramallah; weak Hamas in Gaza City -- currently shooting at each other) can't swallow accepting all the settlement blocs and Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem.

So now along comes Barack Obama. We Americans know intimately his rhetorical skills; we also know his analytical Spock-like detachment. Obama is also good at telling an audience what it wants to hear. I never forget -- not for a moment -- that he is an ex-academic, that he is famed for "listening to all sides" and then trying to find a middle ground. And that was the essence of his Cairo speech. Obama has surrounded himself with famed "pro-Israel" advocates like Rahm Emanuel, Joe Biden, and yes, even Hilary Clinton. These people may be more constitutionally sympathetic to the Jewish state, but they are not knee-jerk advocates of muscular Israel as was the previous American administration. Obama also was a close social friend of then-University of Chicago professor Rashid Khalidi, who has a very different set of sympathies and analyses of the conflict than the regnant theories of the Bush administration. Whatever Obama knows of this conflict comes from discussions, book-reading and briefings suggested by the likes of Emanuel/Biden/Clinton on the one hand, and Khalidi on the other. Accordingly, Obama has internalized the current "cutting-edge" analytical narrative of the Arab-Israeli conflict -- that there are two victimized peoples. One is the victim of antisemitism culminating in the Holocaust; the other is the victim of Israeli occupation. Each deserves a home, but ironically (some would say perversely) one people's successful homeland was created at the expense of the other. As Obama put it, there are "two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history that makes compromise elusive."

In a nutshell, this is the analytical approach of the "new" Israeli historian Benny Morris, who entitled his grand history of the conflict Righteous Victims. This approach doesn't so much produce a symmetrical narrative, where Jewish victimhood is equated with Palestinian victimhood, as it produces a nuanced view as to why the Zionists succeeded and how their success engendered Arab hostility and stifled the national aspirations of the Palestinians. This was the over-arching theme of Obama's treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict in Cairo. It is simultaneously sympathetic to Israel and sympathetic to Palestine. For the President, the problems of the last 61 years are not the result exclusively of Arab rejectionism, but also the result of Israeli behavior. Obama thus rhetorically endorsed the "new" history of the conflict. If one speaks of Arab or Palestinian intransigence, in the same breath one speaks of Israeli intransigence. This is a monumental shift in the underlying American approach to the conflict, a position which has been brewing for years in the State Department and in academic circles.

Does this new "canonical" meta-narrative to the history of the conflict have an impact on American policy? The answer is and will be yes. The new American insistence on the suspension of all Israeli settlement activity directly flows from this meta-narrative. On the other hand, Obama's insistence that Hamas and Fatah renounce violent resistance is a recurring trope in Obama's approach to Palestine. In his first visit to Israel and the West Bank as a US Senator back in January 2006, Obama urged college students in Ramallah to follow Martin Luther King Jr.'s path of non-violence in resisting Israeli occupation. He said the same thing in Cairo:

"Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and it does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It's a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign neither of courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That's not how moral authority is claimed; that's how it is surrendered."

President Obama thus directly addressed the Palestinian people and signaled a new American approach to Hamas. Abandon violence, and all will be forgiven. This is an understandable American policy shift from the previous administration which boycotted Hamas as a terrorist group. Only a unified Palestinian leadership can prove to be a worthy negotiating partner. As parties in a negotiation go, a reluctant Israel is one thing, but a Palestinian leadership utterly divided makes for a thoroughly untenable negotiating partner. Watch for the alleviation of the Fatah-Hamas rift to be the main American diplomatic effort for Palestine, even as it simultaneously pressures Israel to halt settlements. Unfortunately for Israel, America can apply pressure more concertedly on a constituted Israel government than it can apply on fractious Hamas and Fatah.

How will this all play domestically in the United States? That question I will take up in another blog.

Has it been 2 months?

Wow! I've not been paying attention. It's been almost 2 months since the last blog entry. So much has happened! An Israeli government, a-once-in-28-year event in the Jewish calendar, the beginning of the baseball season, Adam Lambert is dominating American Idol, and somewhere along the way I bought an iPhone. It's almost more than I can handle in a single update. In fact, I am too wasted at the moment to respond to any of these things. So maybe sometime this joyous Passover season I'll take a moment to get serious. In the meantime, Hag Sameah to all my readers. Don't forget to give a shout out to Elijah!

US & EU Prefer National Unity

In a young country with a consistent history of political shockers, Israel goes into the new week paralyzed by complete political deadlock. The drama of Israel's democracy -- its proud self-image as the "one true democracy in the Middle East" contrasted by its corrupt and venal reality -- makes for a compelling story. In the last 13 years the country has voted five times -- first, in 1996 came the short-lived government of Binyamin Netanyahu, whose premiership ended in a cloud of scandal. Then in 1999 came Ehud Barak, whose equally short-lived premiership ended in a thorough trouncing by Ariel Sharon in 2003. Sharon stroked out in early 2006, to be replaced by Ehud Olmert, who squeaked through an election later that year. Olmert resigned under a cloud of illegality in 2008, and elections occurred this past Tuesday. It is like a perpetual revolving door -- one government swept away by another -- riven by religious-secular demands, economic disparity, racial prejudices, and rabidly divergent approaches to matters of national security.

The greatest shock to Israel's body politic was the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at the hands of a Jewish assassin. Like all great but troubled democracies (India, the US), Israel has had to deal with the ultimate political catastrophe. That it has survived asassination of its head of state with its political institutions relatively intact is testimony to a certain vitality and health, but one should note that all is not perfect. The Economist rates Israel at 38 in its Democracy Index, a "flawed democracy." (Also "flawed" is India at 35; the US is at 18.) The proliferation of political parties and the complete absence of political consensus (the 2 leading parties in this past election garnered 22% each -- the 2 "big" parties together still do not represent even half of the electorate) means that this "flawed democracy" is once again rudderless.

The reason I say "once again" is because in 2009, Israeli political history is ironically repeating itself. In 1984, the two leading parties garnered over 65% of the electorate, but were split almost evenly (one party, Labor, had a 44-41 seat advantage over Likud). Then-Labor leader Shimon Peres was tapped by President Chaim Herzog to form a government, but Peres failed to create a government without Likud. In failure, Peres accepted a national unity government with his political rival Yitzhak Shamir of Likud, and agreed not only to appoint Shamir his Foreign Minister, but to resign the premiership in two years' time and rotate positions with Shamir.

Now in 2009 -- irony of ironies -- Peres sits in the President's House, and in his hands is the same decision that faced his compatriot Herzog 25 years ago. The experience of "rotation" was a bitter pill for Peres to swallow, and it is hard to imagine he wishes such a thing on either Tzipi Livni or Netanyahu. But there are a confluence of political signals coming out of the EU, the United States, and Jerusalem, which argue for Peres pushing hard for such an accommodation.

While the United States takes no official position on the internal deliberations of Israeli democracy, and the State Department vows to work with whatever government emerges, there can be no doubt that an Israeli government headed by Netanyahu and composed of right-wing "nationalist" parties is thought of by American "peace processors" as an awful prospect. EU Foreign Minister Javier Solana was not as circumspect as the Obama administration, and undiplomatically stated his clear preference for a national unity government in Israel. Netanyahu has acknowledged that he was approached by contacts in the American administration; Livni has denied any contact. But it is certainly likely that the State Department has conveyed to both politicians its desire to see a Likud-Kadima dominated government.

Netanyahu himself has indicated he would like to try for such a government. If he fails to get a national unity government with Livni, only Netanyahu has a plausible Plan B, a hard right-nationalist government. Livni has no Plan B to turn to.

But who would lead a national unity government? Here is where rotation might be helpful.

Here is my rotation scenario: Peres meets with all the parties. He notes that a majority of small right-wing and religious parties endorse Netanyahu's Plan B. Peres counsels for national unity, with Labor and possibly Shas. He then informs Livni and Bibi that, for the sake of the country, they should try to work it out. The two then explore the rotation option, with Livni getting first crack at the job of PM.

In this scenario, the problem with rotation in 2009 is the discrepancy between the 65% of shared electoral power between Labor and Likud in 1984, and the current 44% shared electoral power of Kadima and Likud. In 1984, the two partners could form a government all on their own; in 2009, they still need lots of assistance. And there are very few palatable options, other than a humiliated Labor party, to turn to. But in the end, Labor will play along. Labor by itself will hardly grant a national unity government legitimacy, so at some point one of the religious parties (Shas? more likely Torah Judaism) will have to be induced to join.

Will it happen? I don't know. But this is a deliciously ironic moment for those of us who have watched the political tragedy of Shimon Peres over the years. Peres, the frustrated former half-Prime Minister of the 1980s, and the tragic brief successor to Rabin in the 1990s, has one last fateful part to play in the ongoing drama of Israeli democracy.

Israel: Election Results

The Israeli exit poll results are in, and all 3 national TV channels are in agreement -- Kadima and current Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni have garnered a 2-seat lead over Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud party, 30-28 (or 29-27). If these predictions hold up (and they may yet prove unreliable), according to Israeli political norms Livni will be tapped to attempt to form a new coalition government of at least 61 parliamentary seats. This is not a sure thing, though, for according to Israeli law the Israeli President Shimon Peres (Kadima) must consult with all the parties to determine who will have the most support in forming a government. Only then, after a week of consultations, will the President designate a politician to form a government. The right-national parties have apparently agreed amongst themselves to uniformly recommend Netanyahu to Peres. It is nevertheless hard to imagine Peres turning away from Livni. More on that later.

This is not the only surprise. Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beitenu party seriously underperformed the pre-election polls. Instead of amassing 18 seats in the upcoming 18th Kenesset, Yisrael Beitenu managed only 14 or 15 seats. Lieberman may not find himself in the future government. Lieberman wants to see a right-wing government, and might indeed try to create with Netanyahu a blocking action to foil Livni from forming a center-right government. Netanyahu almost made the ultimate comeback -- from the irrelevancy of 12 seats in the 17th Kenesset to 27 or 28 in the new Kenesset. He just couldn't cross the finish line. But Lieberman is willing to listen to all offers.

The third surprise -- not really a surprise -- is the collapse of historic Labor and its leader, current Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Earlier I speculated that for Barak, the Gaza War was a Hail Mary pass for electoral relevancy. The strategy failed. Labor and Barak are now facing the dilemma of Netanyahu and Likud after the 2006 elections -- a humiliating 4th-place finish, the size of an irrelevant minor boutique party comprising 13 seats.

Livni had an opportunity late last year to form a government out of the more favorable configuration of the 17th Kenesset without going to national elections. She refused to accede to demands of the Shas party on social spending and on national security positions, and instead chose to go to the polls. Neither Kadima nor Shas will easily forget that episode. It was a gutsy, some say tempestuous, roll of the dice, and one could argue that Livni did not improve her situation by going to the nation. Livni now awaits Peres's decision, facing the option of forming a weak center-right government (Kadima-Likud-Labor), or a stronger right-right government (Kadima-Labor-Yisrael Beitenu-National Union), or no government at all.

On the BBC I just heard Palestinian senior negotiator Saeb Erakat speculating on the possibility of a rotation-government, whereby Livni becomes Prime Minister for 2 years, and then Netanyahu takes over. As strange as this seems, it is reminiscent of the hamstrung rotation government of 1984-88 between then Labor leader Shimon Peres and Likud's Yitzhak Shamir. Peres started first as PM, with Shamir as Foreign Minister; then in late 1986 they switched roles. Peres tried to advance peace feelers, which Shamir struggled to undo. It is possible we might see such an outcome.

What is clear is that Israel has taken a hard right turn. Kadima leads the electoral race, but Likud leads the largest electoral bloc of right-nationalists. All the self-defined rightist, nationalist (and religious) parties could constitute a blocking action of at least 62 seats. Can any of them be peeled away from this right-national bloc through promises of cabinet slots, baksheesh, or compromised political stances? That is Livni's dilemma.

At the State Department, fingers must be crossed in the hope that Livni will be the new Israeli PM.

A murky outcome, indeed. Livni may have narrowly won the evening, and yet lost the opportunity to govern.

Update, 10:30 pm (4:30 am Israel time): with the official vote count now 100% complete, it appears that the Kadima lead has been trimmed to one seat, 28 to 27 for Likud. In a further blow to the Israeli left, Meretz has been reduced to a 3 seat presence in the upcoming Kenesset.

Last Israeli Polling

An apathetic Israeli electorate is finally getting serious about the upcoming Tuesday Israeli election, and some electoral shifts are apparently afoot. The post-Gaza War bump indicated by polls for Labor and its leader Ehud Barak seems to be dissolving in this final weekend. Why this is happening is not entirely clear. To be sure, Barak has not run an attractive political campaign. And the continued drizzle of missiles out of Gaza has done nothing to burnish Barak's proposed image as the military strategist who found a once-and-for-all solution to the missile crisis.

The beneficiary of this last-minute dissolve of Labor is apparently Tzipi Livni and her Kadima party, now running a close second behind Likud and Binyamin Netanyahu. It really matters not the slightest who wins -- Livni or Netanyahu -- the upshot will be a coalition government of far righter political outlook than the current one. It is hard to imagine any conceivable coalition configuration that does not include the thuggish Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu party in its midst, but it could happen. Lieberman, who faces an ongoing corruption investigation (a bribe scandal involving the now defunct Palestinian casino in Jericho) which will not be resolved before Tuesday, might ultimately prove to be an unacceptable coalition partner, even as his rightist pronouncements garner a half million votes. Still, a Likud/Kadima-Labor-Shas coalition (75 projected seats) that foregoes Lieberman (as Yoel Marcus wishes in Friday's Haaretz) will nevertheless have a more right-wing slant, if only because of the newfound strength of Likud. No matter what, Likud and Kadima together will make up the bulk of the next government. If Labor joins, expect Barak to continue as Defense Minister. If the religious Shas party is in the next government, there is virtually no chance that Lieberman (who is rabidly secular) will sit at a cabinet table with Shas leader Eli Yishai. Livni, the well-regarded (in some circles, but not all) current Israeli Foreign Minister, might more palatably represent such a right-center government to the world community than truculent Bibi, but it will still be a government less prone to engage in enthusiastic peace processing with the broken Palestinian political leadership, and a government even more keen on insisting on "security."