Israel’s New Defense Minister Ain’t Ehud Barak

With the new coalition about to be put in place, the Defense Ministry will go to Likud’s Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon, the former Minister of Strategic Affairs. In the past I argued that Ehud Barak would be missed as Israel’s Defense Minister, because of the restraint he could exercise on both Iran and settlements. Ben Caspit argues that Ya’alon is moderate, thoughtful, and careful. But I’m skeptical. His recent statements on Iran and the peace process (including the settlements and a Palestinian state) seem more in line with Benjamin Netanyahu, or even more with the hardliners in the party.

On Iran, Ya’alon believes—like most Israeli leaders—that it is the major strategic threat to the country. But where Barak viewed the use of force (against Iran or the Palestinians) as part of a larger foreign policy tool kit, Ya’alon seems bent on a military strike against Iran—sooner rather than later—to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon. He’s said that “The best defense is a good offense.” And he seems to have a less positive view of President Obama’s support for the Israeli position than Barak did, which could cause problems for coordination between Israel and the United States.

On the peace process, Ya’alon is more in line with Netanyahu’s “there is no Palestinian partner” argument, particularly when it comes to the demand to recognize Israel as the Jewish state. Indeed, this past January he ruled out any possibility of a Palestinian state.

Ya’alon is also less interested in the open exchange of ideas and criticism. When he attended a Jewish Leadership conference (a far-right faction within Likud whose head, Moshe Feiglin, advocates for the construction of a Third Temple), he called Peace Now a “virus” and continued that “Jews can and need to live in all of the Land of Israel for all eternity.”

Certainly Barak was no Peace Now member: he authorized “illegal settlements” and allowed his ministry, and the IDF, to facilitate the expansion of “legal” settlements and violent attacks by settlers against Palestinians and their property. But he wasn’t an unrestrained Greater Israel advocate either. This seems to have angered Ya’alon, who once called for Barak’s authority to determine settlements (which belongs to the Defense Minister) to be stripped away and given to others.

All of these hard-right positions will be amplified in the new government, because Ya’alon is not a serious contender for power either in Likud or in government. He can be counted on to support Netanyahu’s policies on the peace process and Iran, and because Bibi doesn’t view him as a threat he’ll be brought in to reinforce Bibi against Yair Lapid and Tzipi Livni.

As I said before, we’ll soon miss Barak.

Bibi’s Coming Unstable Coalition

Over at Open Zion I argue that the coalition government Bibi is about to bring together will have tensions automatically built into it. This will likely cause the coalition to collapse before it serves out its full term:

By all accounts, the coalition negotiations in Israel will conclude in the next day or two, with a government in place by the end of the week. It’s been expected for some time now that the government will be composed of Likud-Beiteinu, Tzipi Livni’s HaTnua (which has already signed a coalition agreement with Benjamin Netanyahu), Yesh Atid, Jewish Home, and Kadima.

With a total of 70 votes in the Knesset such a coalition would be—in theory at least—very stable. But it’s more likely that the coalition will build into itself the very conditions for its early demise.

Netanyahu could well be the only one involved in the coalition discussions who isn’t happy about leaving the haredi parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism, out in the cold. Though it might seem as though general agreement on leaving them out is a stabilizing factor, it could instead lead to a greater effort by these parties and their constituents to push hard to change the calculus of voting and politicking in the next round of elections, or even before then.

After all, despite the fact that they have already begun preparing for their exclusion, the haredi parties aren’t out of the game yet. There are enormous implications to their absence from government, including a redistribution of the resources that used to go to their communities; the nature of the military draft; the status of halacha in personal status issues ranging from marriage to divorce to citizenship; and genuine reform of the electoral and political systems. Because all of these would directly affect their political power, they can be expected to continue to fight even after the agreement is signed to return to power. This includes enticing Netanyahu away from Jewish Home, the party they apparently now see as their primary obstacle if not enemy.

There are still some issues to be hammered out in the coalition bargaining, including which party gets how many and which ministries and the framework that will govern Israeli policy toward the peace process (which may require a renegotiation of Bibi’s agreement with Livni). It’s likely the intense discussions between Likud, Yesh Atid, and Jewish Home continuing to take place will resolve at least most of these issues, but it’s just as likely they’ll paper over the differences. Signing an agreement on these policy problems and actually following through on them are not the same thing. The latter will be even harder than the former. In other words, any of these issues could crack open the coalition.

Personal ambitions and differing party objectives will probably also serve to make the coalition more fragile than it might appear on the surface. Yesh Atid’s leader Yair Lapid is skeptical about taking on the Finance portfolio. Given the necessity of major changes to the economy and the budget, whoever takes that Ministry will be extremely unpopular among much of the population and will be subject to intense and competing demands from other ministers for a share of the shrinking pie. Whatever comes out of such reforms could well affect his party’s ability to compete as successfully in the next election, and thus change the distribution of votes. He’ll be very much aware of these implications.

Similarly, Jewish Home’s position on settlements and Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank is at odds with all of its coming coalition partners except Likud-Beitinu. Despite Naftali Bennett’s insistence that the peace process should not lead to any serious change in the status quo (unless it’s to annex parts of the West Bank), Livni’s presence in the government, President Barack Obama’s coming visit to Israel, and a host of other conditions all point to a renewed interest in the peace process. If Obama is successful at convincing Israel to adopt his position regarding Iran, he’ll be able to demand something in return.

Similar to George H.W. Bush’s trading of Iraq for Madrid, Obama could well demand something concrete on negotiations with the Palestinians, and Netanyahu will be open to such pressure. This, in turn, would likely push Bennett out of the coalition.

A successful conclusion to the negotiations would be welcome so that the government can get back to the process of governing. But the fact that it was so difficult to get to this point, and that there are plenty of issues requiring urgent attention but with no easy solutions, indicates that plenty of uncertainty will remain even after the agreement is signed.

What Did Labor Do Wrong?

As I noted yesterday, there’s some dispute over whether Labor should be called a winner of the Israeli election in any sense of the word or whether it’s a clear loser. The answer should probably be some combination: it did better than it had in the previous election (even if only by a couple seats), while at the beginning of the campaign it was polling into the low 20s but ended up with only 15 seats.

The more important underlying question, then, is why did it only get 15 seats—third place—when it was widely expected to be in second place with at least 17-18 mandates. It’s true there are some concerns over the methodology and practice of public opinion polling in Israel, but it’s also true that surveys were often within their margins of error on most of the parties. Let’s look, rather, at the campaign itself.

I’ll start off by repeating that Labor leader Shelly Yachimovich made a clear choice not to talk about the occupation or foreign affairs, and I think it was a solid decision. All indications were that Israelis simply didn’t want to talk about these things either, but they were highly interested in domestic issues, especially socio-economic ones.

Factors beyond Labor’s control

First, the appearance of Tzipi Livni and Yair Lapid clearly undermined Yachimovich’s claim to represent the only new face in the campaign. Lapid was obviously the “freshest,” especially with continuous comments about his appearance, but his was a totally brand new party. As dynamic as Yachimovich tried to seem, Labor still represented something old.

Labor, Livni, and Yesh Atid fought for the same electorate of centrist, undecided voters. Such a crowded field certainly meant a division of votes, since there was so much choice. At the same time, Labor was competing with Meretz, as usual, for those further on the Zionist left. That Meretz explicitly talked about the occupation but Labor didn’t was bound to lead to some shift in votes.

Second, Labor was operating among an electorate that was still very much interested in the right. There are some claims that Israel isn’t the right-leaning country everybody feared it was. Israel was never about to descend into a long winter of theocracy, authoritarianism, and violent militarism. Still, while it’s true the right and religious parties didn’t do as well as widely expected, demographic and public opinion trends indicate there really is a slow right-religious shift among the Jewish population. Moreover, the right and religious parties still did well (Jewish Home) or held their own (Shas, UTJ). Likud-Beiteinu is the only list that dropped, but many of their voters went to Yesh Atid—a center-right party.

Factors in Labor’s control

First, as I said, Yachimovich—against the advice of some within the party—made a conscious decision not to talk about the Palestinians, the settlements, or the occupation. This was fine as far as it went, but it was inevitable that the issues would come up during the campaign, forcing her to give some response. When she did, though, it came across as too forced, and made it seem as though she was ducking the issue as much as possible.

Again, this isn’t a big deal as far as it goes given what Israelis were saying they wanted to talk about—and Lapid himself said pretty much the same things she did—but for some it came across as deceptive. Labor was seemingly held to a higher standard because it’s the traditional party of doves, and is expected to focus on the peace process. That it wasn’t a major party issue was seen as a betrayal—even Haaretz and +972 writers were arguing that Livni was the better choice because at least she was talking about this most important of issues.

Second, Yachimovich seemed to close the door on joining a Benjamin Netanyahu-led coalition. It was clear to everybody that Bibi would become prime minister again. Closing off options before the results were even in seemed petulant to some, bad strategy to others, and inexperience to many.

Third, Yachimovich didn’t have enough security officials on her list. Labor has been a traditional home for military officers once they left the army, and the gap at the top of the list was glaring. Binyamin Ben-Eliezer was there, but he’s an older, more tired version of the crop of young recruits that have long seemed to populate Labor at every election. Instead, her list was filled with dynamic, creative individuals who worked in a range of other areas. This was, again, good for the focus on domestic issues but not on security affairs.

That Lapid’s list was similar to Yachimovich’s, in that his top security official held the number 5 slot (Yaakov Peri) but the rest of his list had a variety of non-security candidates, didn’t mean anything since Lapid was not expected to campaign to foreign affairs. He could get away with things she couldn’t.

Fourth, Yachimovich angered some within the party by bringing in lots of new people, but also changing some of the voting procedures of the primary process. This led to some perceptions of infighting, which may not have played well.

Labor has been struggling for many years to rebuild itself into the party that founded the state and posed a serious alternative to Likud in the 1980s and 1990s. Some of the lessons to be learned from this campaign may not be relevant for the next one, but clearly Labor still has a long way to go.

Coalition Considerations after the Vote

The Israeli election is upon us, or at least upon them. There have been lots of good analyses about the campaign and likely results of the voting—though there has been less discussion of possible outcomes of coalition bargaining. But this is important—the voting itself will heavily influence what government eventually emerges after several weeks of discussions, but several other factors will come into play, including how the parties determine their interests, the number of seats each got, and the regular give-and-take of politics.

Most of those who have considered what a post-election government will look like have assumed it will be a right-religious one. This is entirely plausible, but as I’ve argued already I don’t think it’s a given. Here are some of what I think are these other factors, all predicated on the assumption Netanyahu will be asked to form the government:

- Benjamin Netanyahu is more interested in stability and maintaining his position than anything else. He’s a pragmatic opportunist, and he can be pushed (through domestic and international pressure). He’s very committed to making Israel a free market economy, as his work in the 1990s and 2000s and his spinning away from promises to account for the demands of the 2011 tent protests have demonstrated. But he is open, I think, to moving around on other domestic issues like electoral reform, the haredi draft, and religious freedom. On the peace front, while I don’t think he wants to actively pursue an independent Palestinian state and does believe settlements are a legitimate expression of Jewish identity, he has in the past signed agreements (Wye River, Hebron) under the right conditions. In other words, his conceptualization of interests opens the door to more potential coalition partners than it seems.

- Tzipi Livni is desperate to make something of herself out of this election. I won’t say it’s her last chance, but she did nothing constructive when she served as leader of Kadima. Her perhaps surprising ability to garner 7-10 mandates, according to polls, is an indication that her name still matters. Look for her to try to enter the coalition; if she doesn’t, she’ll have nothing to show for two election cycles, which could well end her political career.

- Yair Lapid seems to have surged toward the end of the campaign, again according to polls. He, too, isn’t interested in remaining outside of government. Look for him to get in so that he can work on his credibility, legitimacy, and experience.

- The coalition negotiations will prove trying for Shas. In addition to competing with another religious party (Jewish Home), it will have to compete on the social-economic front with Yesh Atid, Labor, and possibly Am Shalem as well. Its position is the weakest it’s been in for a long time because of the emergence of so many rivals to its key positions.

- Final thought for now: whatever coalition does emerge, don’t get too excited or lose hope (depending on your views of it). It would not be a surprise if the coalition doesn’t stay together for four years. Bibi has a lot more choice than usual, but this also makes whatever government he puts together more unstable in the sense that the more parties there are inside and the more waiting for their chance in the wings, the more he and they can play everybody off everybody else.

There are some shared ideas between different sets of parties, but each of them still represents a set of very narrow interests. Those parties in government will have to stay true to them if they want to remain credible to their constituencies—and that includes those with narrow constituencies and those that are fighting for the same ones. But if they stay too true to them, in the face of competing demands from coalition partners and policies they don’t like, they can lose their position in the government. I suspect these dynamics will very much matter.

For other good posts about things to consider at this point in the election, read Michael Koplow’s piece and Noam Sheizaf’s analysis.

Bibi and Bennett Break Up?

It’s becoming increasingly common to assume that Naftali Bennett and Jewish Home will join a Benjamin Netanyahu-led coalition government after the election. I’m not sure it’s a done deal, and this piece from Open Zion explains why:

Last week Jonathan Tobin wrote a piece in Commentary explaining the rise of Israel’s right. He focused on Jewish Home, the religious Zionist party set to become the third largest party in the Knesset, and its leader Naftali Bennett. After listing Bennett’s “advantages” (including being “savvy”), Tobin assumed that Bennett, because he was in a powerful position, would be brought into the next government coalition and “demand and get” a Cabinet position.

The problem with Tobin’s assumption about Bennett is just that—it’s an assumption. In fact, the evidence suggests the opposite of what Tobin concluded. There’s every reason to believe that its Bennett’s very strength that will make Bibi nervous and therefore just as likely to exclude Bennett from any coalition. Tobin neglects to mention, for instance, that Netanyahu and Bennett had a major falling out a few years ago, and only recently started speaking again. It’s not clear their personal relationship is a strong enough foundation to build on.

Of course, in politics personalities alone don’t founder political alliances. But Bibi is in Likud, and he wants his party to maintain control over whatever coalition emerges from the election. A powerful Jewish Home serving in the government, with its own agenda, could derail Bibi’s efforts to maintain a stable coalition and endanger his own position.

There is also the image problem. David Horovitz correctly notes that—despite popular misconceptions—Bibi hasn’t been building settlements throughout the entire West Bank. But Bennett would—at least throughout Area C, which he wants to annex—while maintaining security control over the rest of the territory. And unlike Bibi, who has publicly said he supports the two-state solution, Bennett has been explicit that the Palestinians won’t get their own state.

Bringing Jewish Home into the government will also distract from other issues, particularly social and economic ones—which Israelis have said are their top concerns. Expending resources on settlements at this time might even bring back the ghost of Yitzhak Shamir to haunt Bibi. In the 1992 election, Shamir insisted on defending expenditures on settlements even while Israelis were telling pollsters they wanted the government to focus on issues within the Green Line. Shamir’s West Bank focus cost him the election.

Because of all this, Bibi is less comfortable with Bennett than Tobin, and others, assume. He’s always had other coalition options, but it’s been hard for Bibi to directly attack Bennett. Bennett is very popular, and many among the right and religious Zionist community see him as a savior-type figure. And Bibi’s own Likud party’s shift to the nationalist right has constrained him.

But Bibi now has his opening. Last Thursday, Bennett said in an interview that if given an order from the army to evacuate settlers from their West Bank homes, he would ask to be excused from carrying it out on the grounds of conscientious objection because “to kick people off of this land is a terrible thing.” Bennett added that he wasn’t calling for widespread disobedience, but if he personally could ask for an exemption on these grounds, others could as well. He opened the door to mass refusal of IDF orders.

Reactions across the political spectrum came quickly. The leader of a Zionist party contending he’d ignore orders from the military set a dangerous precedent—alternate sources of power and refusal to acknowledge the authority of the state are some of the components that make for a failed state. It’s also an unpopular position among rightists and the national-religious for whom the state is an important vehicle for realizing (their understanding of) the Zionist dream.

It took some time for Bennett to fully clarify that he wouldn’t disobey the order if his request was rejected. But the point was already made, and for Bibi this was a bigger opportunity: to castigate Jewish Home, and Bennett himself, for its extremist priorities and the damage they would cause Israel in the international arena.

“Anyone who upholds insubordination will not serve in my Cabinet,” Netanyahu responded in an interview. Some of his ministers took more direct aim at Bennett. But Bennett then gave Bibi further opportunity by reacting harshly to the criticism, accusing Likud of being behind a series of ads attacking Bennett (and comparing his comment on IDF orders to a similar one made by Labor candidate Merav Michaeli), and claiming Bibi himself opened the “gates of hell” on him.

Painting Bennett as an extremist who will undermine the state itself while strengthening international condemnations of Israel will probably be a new Likud tactic in the days to come. Since Bibi can’t attack Jewish Home or Bennett for their lack of dedication to the Land of Israel, hitting them for their lack of dedication to the State of Israel appears to be the next best thing.

Coalition Math

The talk on Twitter this morning is of Naftali Bennett and the sudden surge his Jewish Home is making at the polls. The fear is that if Bennett is included in a coalition government under Bibi, he’ll drag Bibi further to the right. As Michael Koplow has already shown, even before the bargaining over government spoils has begun, Bibi has been announcing settlement expansions all over the place. It will, conventional wisdom suggests, only get worse after January 22.

But the coalition math indicates that a Likud-Beiteinu-Jewish Home government is not a sure thing. As I’ve argued before, Bibi isn’t an extreme rightist who wants to build and build in the West Bank and damn the international consequences. If he think Bennett is pulling him too much in that direction, he’ll think twice about such a coalition.

It’s true that right-religious bloc is maintaining its majority. But it’s malleable; Jewish Home could easily be replaced with Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid and Tzipi Livni’s Tzipi Livni Party. Both are more centrist than leftist. Lapid’s election program has been more vague than anything else, and although Livni has a history of hostility with Bibi, she’s a natural fit for a rightwing government.

In addition, both have worked hard for centrist and center-right votes by staying within the Israeli consensus on settlements: keeping the main settlement blocs (probably including Ariel) but willing to evacuate the rest.

“Third” or “centrist” parties such as theirs’ don’t last long in Israeli politics. And neither of them entered the race in order to stay in the opposition; they both want a piece of the action, which they believe is in the government. They’ll make themselves available, and Bibi will know this.

None of this is to say either a far-right government or a centrist government is a done deal. The joint ticket with Yisrael Beiteinu might have leaned Bibi toward the latter. But this is why the Likud primaries are so important: the staunch pro-settlement, illiberal-leaning rightists who now occupy top positions on the list will constrain Bibi from moving toward the center. It’s one thing to leave Jewish Home out of a coalition; it’s another to go against the politics and trends within his own party.

We’ll have to wait and see what happens: Jewish Home’s momentum might not last; Bibi might be stronger than most assume when it comes to dealing with other Likudniks; or Shas or Avigdor Lieberman might upset the balance one way or another. But at this point we shouldn’t assume outcomes. Israeli politics is fluid, and this election is no exception.

Mr. Abbas Goes to Ankara

Fatah leader and President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas is in one of the toughest positions I’ve ever seen for a leader of a somewhat-recognized-but-not-really state. He’s physically hemmed in on all sides by Israel; his rival for control over Palestinian politics (Hamas) is growing stronger than him all the time; and he seems genuinely uncertain, or scared, about his options.

And yet with one visit to Turkey he made two moves that deserve not only commendation for their boldness, but also an immediate and positive response by Israel.

Israel has long demanded that Abbas separate himself from Hamas, in order to be recognized as a true moderate. During his visit to Turkey, Abbas did just that: he publicly disagreed with a very popular Hamas over the right of Israel to exist, which in turn underlines his support for two states.

And the location of the comments could not be more symbolic. Abbas took on his rival in the presence of the Turks, who have been growing closer to Hamas at the expense of ties with the PA, and who have been at fierce odds with Israel over its policies toward the Palestinians. It was a mild rebuke to Ankara at the same time.

The claim, then, that there is no Palestinian partner for peace is at best an incomplete one.

Unfortunately, in his characteristic way, Abbas undermined his own effort at the very same time. During the same visit that he chided Hamas, he also hinted—at a press conference with Turkish President Abdullah Gül—that if Israel continued with its settlement project, particularly in the explosive E1 area, he might go to the International Criminal Court.

On the one hand, you can understand Abbas’s frustration. Since the Oslo Accords, Israel has continued expanding settlements throughout the West Bank and around East Jerusalem—a unilateral action if ever there was one. Yet after Abbas asked the United Nations General Assembly to recognize Palestine as a non-member state, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu accused Abbas of unilateral action and, flying into a rage, immediately began building more settlements.

At the UN, Abbas gave what can only be described as a vicious speech accusing Israel of every possible wrong and absolving Palestinians of their own responsibilities and agency. And one might argue that Abbas’s effort to form a unity government with Hamas is a sign of his secret tendencies toward extremism.

But on the other hand, one can see that Abbas has little choice but to take such a tough rhetorical stance. Israel has all but ignored him, preferring to lend credibility to Hamas and its violent ways instead of the PA’s diplomacy. And Israeli leaders themselves engage in harsh comments about and display a lack of sensitivity toward Palestinians. In a conflict increasingly incorporating collective memory, identity, and claims to victimhood, perhaps this is to be expected.

In the same hateful UN speech, Abbas explicitly recognized the 1967 Green Line as the border of the Palestinian state. Israel and Palestine can disagree over the exact route of the border, but that’s what negotiations are for. The focus on the Green Line is the very essence of the two state solution that Israel, including Netanyahu, has accepted.

And Abbas might contend that his calls for unity with Hamas are no different from the center-right Likud allying with far-right parties in an Israeli coalition. (I’m not convinced it’s the same, but the argument is there to be made.)

Abbas is trying, in his way. Given his circumstances, and despite his fumbling, this deserves Israel reciprocation, not condemnation. He’s clumsy, and he’s certainly made mistakes. But if leaders never negotiated with others who’d made blunders, we’d never get international agreements.

The Abba Eban Factor

This piece was originally posted at Open Zion:

Ehud Olmert’s appearance at the Saban Forum last week was a big hit in Washington. The former prime minister spoke passionately and combined an adequate amount of humor, politics, and mystery. He said all the right things: that Benjamin Netanyahu has done terrible things for the peace process and hinting that he, Olmert, might at some point return to Israeli politics to repair the damage. Observers loved it.

Call it the Abba Eban factor. Or, if you prefer, the Shimon Peres factor.

Eban was Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations and Foreign Minister. Shimon Peres occupied several offices, and today is President of Israel. Both were seen as urbane and cultured—Eban’s Cambridge accent and Peres’s eastern European inflections were both endearing—and not at all representative of the quintessential Israeli quality of aggressive pushiness bordering on rudeness.

More than these qualities, though, was their orientation toward compromise with the Palestinians. Both were seen as having shifted from hawkishness to dovishness on the peace process. Eban was famous for referring to the 1967 lines as “Auschwitz borders” (though he later regretted the term) while Peres was one of the fathers of Israel’s defense industry and the one who fought Yitzhak Rabin on behalf of settlers in the early 1970s.

Today, both are considered to be smart former insiders who know what’s best for Israel. On this basis, both had larger, more dedicated constituencies outside of Israel than inside it. Eban was seen in Israel as a delusional leftist unaware of its real security threats. In addition to that accusation, Peres was for a long time viewed as a politician interested only in furthering his own position.

Olmert is their latest incarnation: he initiated two terrible wars during his term, but now speaks fervently of how close he came to peace. And his legal troubles, political maneuverings, and bad decisions are derided in Israel.

The near-hero-worship in Washington rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of Israeli politics itself. Natan Sachs has convincingly shown that neither the numbers not the politics add up to an Olmert victory in the Israeli election. Yet observers continue to hope.

This is facilitated by pundits’ direct comparison of Olmert to Bibi. (Blake Hounshell’s interview with Olmert is titled “The Case Against Benjamin Netanyahu.”) Let’s be honest: Olmert certainly comes off favorably. There is a real dislike for Bibi, who’s seen as something like an aggressive war-monger with a superiority complex. Steven Cook put it best when he tweeted during a conversation about the issue, “Olmert has a bigger constituency in D.C. (where polite company disdains Netanyahu) than Israel.”

There is also the conviction that Olmert has made a major transformation in the name of peace. There is great frustration in D.C. about Israeli actions on the peace process. Olmert, like Peres and Eban before him, is considered to represent the heroic Israeli who is willing to lay it on the line for peace.

When Olmert said near the beginning of his Saban discussion that the “Government of Israel has to be changed,” there was some applause from the audience. Olmert’s contention, reported in Open Zion, that he supports the Palestinian bid for non-member state status at the U.N. was tweeted over a thousand times. And in his write-up of the Saban meeting, David Remnick notes that Olmert moved “courageously to the left on the Palestinian issue.

For a while, analysts made the same mistake with Tzipi Livni. The latest poll has her eponymous party winning six seats. Contrary to expectations, that’s not enough to challenge Bibi, but it is enough to strengthen him —the opposite preference.

The longstanding admiration for Israeli hawks-turned-doves in Washington is a problem, because it leads to unrealistic expectations. Waiting for Israelis to elect the leader Washington prefers is simply not good policy.

Ehud Barak As Tactician, Not Politician

At Open Zion I argue that Ehud Barak really is necessary to have in the Israeli government. The full piece is reprinted below.

Daniel Gavron has responded to my contention, here on Open Zion, that Benjamin Netanyahu should try to keep Ehud Barak at the Defense Ministry because he’ll be a restraining force on some of the more hawkish members of the new government formed after January 22. Gavron argues that Barak was a disaster as a politician and a strategist, and therefore good riddance.

Gavron’s argument builds on a particular interpretation of the failure of the peace process that puts most of the blame at Barak’s feet. Also, it’s not that Barak was a genius who always made the right decisions for Israel, but that compared to those who’ll be deciding on security matters, he thinks far more critically and will therefore be more open to alternate policies.

Gavron’s assertion hinges on the implication that Barak’s policies led to the Second Intifada, which in turn killed off the peace process because he chose to respond with brute force from the beginning. Yet the notion that Barak “decimated the Israeli peace camp” is ahistorical at best.

The flaws inherent in the Oslo process had already started the process of decline long before Barak. Settlement building continued apace under Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, and Benjamin Netanyahu before him. The shift from a collectivist ethos to consumerism and individualism that underlies Israelis’ lack of interest in the peace process was already evident by 1999.

By 1999, Palestinians themselves were wondering about the benefits and likely outcomes of the Oslo process. A March 1999 survey found that only 18.9% of Palestinians expected a Labor government would, if it won the May election, improve the Palestinian political condition; 49.8% expected things to remain the same, and 25.8% thought it would get worse.

I agree that Barak’s actions at Camp David were clumsy, but don’t see evidence they were nefarious. It’s not clear he was being deceitful in the way Gavron writes of his interview in September. By then Barak was more concerned with defending his actions, not proclaiming his true but previously hidden motives. Moreover, Barak’s decision to shift negotiations from Palestinians to Syrians and back indicates he wanted a deal with somebody, as opposed to trying to unmask every Arab actor around him.

And, of course, Barak really did make unprecedented offers, including on Jerusalem. He broke taboos that were strangling peace talks.

I also agree Barak was a terrible politician. He alienated every constituency he had, and his refusal to play nice with others—even to listen to them—caused considerable problems. And he made strategic errors: the unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon is arguably one of them.

No one can claim Barak was a successful politician. But he was a constructive leader working to improve Israel’s security situation. Like Yitzhak Rabin, for Barak that could entail military or diplomatic tools. Given the results of the Likud primaries, whoever is brought into the ministerial security forum or Bibi’s inner cabinet will exert a less flexible line toward the West Bank, Hamas, Iran, and any number of other issues Israel will have to deal with.

Avigdor Lieberman, Eli Yishai, Danny Danon, Moshe Ya’alon, Silvan Shalom, Gideon Sa’ar, Naftali Bennett—or any of the other likely contenders after January 22 for top ministries—have, based on their historical record, either given short shrift to diplomatic as opposed to military initiatives, overshadowed their diplomacy with clumsy or ham-handed efforts, or undermined their foreign policy efforts with illiberal domestic policies.

Netanyahu is of the right-wing, but he’s not an extremist. He’s demonstrated time and again his ability to learn from past mistakes and to adapt to the structural constraints that surround him. He’s open to changing ideas and policies; the others are less so. Barak is a necessary lever in that process when it comes to Israel’s major security challenges. He can, for instance, be expected to adopt non-military ideas when they are viable—and then convince the prime minister of their validity by the weight of his arguments and credentials.

Take settlements as another example. Barak’s record here isn’t stellar—in April he helped authorize three illegal outposts. But more often than not he’s been a constraint on settlement activity. It’s more than we can expect from the new Likud MKs.

Gavron writes: “A successful soldier and a man of brilliant intellect, Barak proved singularly inept as a political leader.” I wasn’t promoting Barak’s political instincts. Once we separate that from his qualities as Defense Minister in a very right-wing coalition government, what he has to offer today becomes more obvious. Who does Gavron think will replace Barak?

Why I Support the Palestinian Request at the UN

When Mahmoud Abbas said last year he was going to ask the Security Council for recognition, I was at first opposed to the idea, thinking the price would be too high. I changed my mind, believing it might help light a fire under Israel. That didn’t happen, mostly because the bid itself failed.

And so I still support the Palestinian request for non-member state status. Mostly it’s because the Palestinian Authority under Fatah and Abbas is never going to get a shot at genuine negotiations so long as domestic conditions in Israel don’t change.

That’s not to say, of course, that only Israel is responsible for past failures and potential future progress. Nor do I think Israel should unilaterally withdraw from the West Bank.

But looking at Israel specifically, all I see are obstacles. The Israeli public is less interested in the Palestinians than it’s ever been. The electoral list that emerged from Likud’s primaries this week is composed of members who take a hard line on negotiations over land, settlements, and a Palestinian state. Given that the party is most likely to still be the core of a new coalition government, I’d guess we can expect even less government interest than there is now.

Israel, of course, argues that it’s always ready for negotiations. Yet the hard truth is that it’s not. It’s insistence that the PA recognize Israel as a Jewish state first is a red herring; worse, it’s an excuse to avoid talks. As has been argued by many countless times before, there is no necessary or good reason for the Palestinians to do this, and every reason not to. And it’s a precondition that Israel insists on even as it calls for Abbas to sit down without preconditions.

Israel’s insistence that settlements are not an obstacle to negotiations is also misleading. The reality is that, as facts on the ground, they shrink the potential land area open to negotiations. The Israeli government insists that any final agreement accounts for settlements blocs as part of Israel.  Yet the manner by which “neighborhoods” are spun off from existing settlements and then included as part of the settlement’s territory, plus the physical, legal, and security infrastructure that is built up around them, absorbs more and more land considered off-limits.

Progress on peace talks is essential for Israel’s well-being, too. World trends are moving against the occupation and the settlements. Hamas is growing stronger all the time. If it doesn’t get ahead of the curve, Israel’s ability to contribute to management of the conflict and shaping of outcomes will diminish.

There’s just no evidence that a successful Palestinian bid will change things for Israel for the worse. Rather, all the evidence points to the conclusion that not changing the status quo is the most dangerous for Israel.