David Horovitz, editor of the Times of Israel, writes that there will likely be “a different Israel” after the January 22 election–one that has voted to reject a Palestinian state. He attributes the “dramatic imminent shift” not to the Israeli electorate moving right (total seats held by the right and left may not change materially), but to a right that has become “far-right.” The prime minister will stay the same, but he will head “a very different party.”
This analysis ignores an important fact: the Israeli left has also moved right–and its own shift has been even more dramatic. In “We Gave Peace a Chance,” Daniel Gordis notes that what destroyed the Israeli left was four years of the “Palestinian Terror War (mistakenly called the second intifada),” which disabused Israelis of the idea that the Palestinian leadership wanted a deal, and the fact that Arabs have become ever more candid about their ultimate goal, with Mahmoud Abbas telling Egyptian TV “he would never, in a thousand years, recognize a Jewish state.” Gordis writes that “Israelis across the spectrum are acknowledging what they used to only whisper: the old paradigm is dying”:
Naftali Bennett of the Bayit Yehudi party explicitly states that “land for peace” is dead and advocates annexing the portion of the West Bank known as Area C. Yair Shamir of Yisrael Beytenu says that regardless of Netanyahu’s Bar-Ilan speech, the Likud never endorsed a Palestinian state. Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party’s website makes no mention of going back to the negotiating table.
Neither does the Labor Party platform.
Even Meretz recently acknowledged that Oslo is dead.
The “dramatic imminent shift” is not a shift, but a realization; not imminent, but rather what happened over many years; and not dramatic, but rather the slow accumulation of many events: (1) the barbaric terror war against Israeli civilians, commenced after the first Israeli offer of a state; (2) the Palestinian rejection of the Clinton Parameters, after Israel formally accepted them; (3) the Palestinian failure to carry out even Phase I of the three-phase Roadmap; (4) the transformation of Gaza into Hamastan after Israel withdrew every settler and soldier; (5) the election of Hamas in 2006 and the Hamas coup in 2007; (6) two rocket wars from Judenrein Gaza, and the continuing prospect of more; (7) the year-long negotiation in the Annapolis Process that produced still another offer of a state, from which Abbas walked away; (8) Abbas’s announcement in 2009 that he would do nothing without a construction freeze, followed by his doing nothing after he got one; (9) the continual “reconciliation” attempts by Abbas with the terrorist group he promised to dismantle; (10) his failure to give a Bir Zeit speech to match Netanyahu’s Bar-Ilan one; (11) the inability of the Palestinians to hold an election, much less build the institutions of a peaceful democratic state; (12) the violation of their express Oslo commitments with repeated end-runs at the UN; (13) a Palestinian society, media and educational system steeped in anti-Semitism; (14) et cetera.
It is to the credit of Israeli democracy that it reacted to all of this not with a “dramatic imminent shift” but with repeated efforts, over more than a decade, to give the Palestinians a state if they would recognize a Jewish one with defensible borders. Four prime ministers from three different parties (representing the left, center, and right) tried, and each met the same response. After January 22, Israel will be not a different state but a more realistic one–having delivered a message that will reflect, in Gordis’s words, “what the Israeli electorate, across the spectrum, is saying.”
The sad thing is that the rest of the world and, unfortunately, the present Administration still lives in the past, the distant past.
Why is being realist deemed "far right"? nOh, yeah, it's Israel. nJust read Con Coughlin at the UK Telegraph on why Kashmir is the single biggest threat to the west. Quite refreshing – he never even mentioned that the Zionists are responsible for Kashmir, which most Pakistanis actually believe.
If even Meretz can admit that Oslo is dead, why can't the pundits at Commentary?
um, the article omits the Alice-in-Wonderland quality of the Meretz "admission"–they say the Oslo *process* is dead which is why (hold onto your hats) Israel should immediately recognize the Palestinians as a state and then proceed to negotiate with Palestine, sovereign to sovereign. For Meretz, Oslo being dead is a reason to dress up the corpse and bend the knees to it as never before.
What's wrong with being right wing?
Israelis have consistently voted against the 2-State Final Solution, but politicians of every political stripe have so far double-crossed them.
This is true. The reason has been American coercion. As much as Israelis did not like the 2 state idea, they worried about alienating America even more. n nObama actually makes it easier for them – his animus is so apparent, that they see now there is no downside to resisting him. Screwed if they go along, less screwed if they resist Obama's wishes. n nInteresting, no?
I just read Horovitz's piece and does not seem to be that Horovitz has reembraced the "crazy left". He is concerned that Israel's "crazy right" will undermine israel's international standing, which will probably happen, Actually, the root problem is that American Jews may be so ambivalent about Israel that it will enbolden those who are Israel's enemies.
These folks in Israel obviously mean business now after going down every dead end of every road map to peace. All of these road maps to peace lead to the wilderness. The other side wants Israel "off the map" full stop. It is now religious more than political. There is no place for a non-Islamic nation in the Middle East. I don't know if that has dawned on Washington yet but eventually it must. This is indeed an "inconvenient truth" if ever there was one. It reminds me of the old cowboy film about "Liberty Valiance". The point of a gun was the only law that Liberty understood.