Netanyahu’s Conundrum

January 23, 2013 § Leave a Comment

Yesterday morning before any of the election results were in, I had a piece up at the Atlantic arguing that the coalition stability that was a hallmark of the current government was destined to end. In my view, the choices that Bibi Netanyahu was likely to end up with were going to create pressures from one side or another no matter which path he decided to go down. Here is the relevant passage:

There are two factors that are going to contribute to detonating Netanyahu’s coveted stability. The first is that unlike during the past three plus years, Netanyahu is going to have a significant presence on his right flank both within his party and outside, creating constant pressure to take a harder line on settlements and the peace process. The Likud primary in November created the most right-wing version of the party that has ever existed. For instance, among the returning Likud MKs in the new Knesset will be the inciters of May’s anti-immigrant race riot, a mass of supporters for annexing the West Bank, and new MK Moshe Feiglin who wants to be the Mohamed Morsi of anti-Arab remarks. This group largely distrusts Netanyahu and will be waiting to pounce at even the slightest digression from their preferred policy of holding on to the West Bank forever.

In addition, Netanyahu will be dealing with the newly empowered nationalist Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) Party, which is poised to become the third largest party in the Knesset. This party is led by Netanyahu’s former chief of staff Naftali Bennett, who also advocates unilaterally annexing Area C of the West Bank and recently got into trouble for saying that he would refuse orders to evacuate settlements. ( He recanted after the predictable furor that arose.) Either as part of the coalition or as a constant thorn in Netanyahu’s side, the large Habayit Hayehudi bloc will be pushing Netanyahu constantly to the right.

The second new factor, which operates at complete cross-purposes to the first, is that Netanyahu will be looking at a renewed push by outside actors on the peace process at a time in which international pressure on Israel is beginning to reach a critical mass. John Kerry is going to want to tackle the peace process as one of his priorities as Secretary of State, and Britain and France intend to present their own plan for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the support of Germany and possibly the full European Union. Anger toward Israel over settlements and the breakdown of the peace process has lately intensified. Whether this is justified or not, given Palestinian foot-dragging, the anger exists to the point that even Israeli diplomats are beginning to get frustrated over the heat they are taking over West Bank construction.

Now that the results are in, I think this analysis still holds, and is perhaps even more salient to understanding what will happen next. Netanyahu is almost certainly going to have to build a coalition that includes Yesh Atid and Habayit Hayehudi, and this means foot-dragging on the peace process and a storm of international pressure. The option of trying to pivot to the center on security and peace process issues is a lot more difficult today than it was yesterday. Netanyahu had some serious problems within Likud before, since the newly empowered crop of hardliners did not really trust him to begin with, but now he has to deal with the fact that he has led his party to the hollowest of victories. His gambit of merging with Yisrael Beiteinu backfired badly, particularly since only 20 of the 31 Likud Beiteinu MKs hail from Likud because of the seat allocation deal he worked out with Avigdor Lieberman, and undoubtedly Likud members are not very happy this morning. If Yisrael Beiteinu separates from Likud in thirty days as the merger agreement allows, Likud will be the largest party by only one seat. In order to prevent this from happening, Netanyahu is going to have to promise Lieberman the moon and the stars, which also does not bode well for any new push to slow down settlement growth or fast track negotiations with the Palestinians. Any moves that Netanyahu makes in that direction will imperil his leadership as head of Likud and prompt a rebellion within the ranks. Nobody should underestimate just how much pressure Netanyahu is now under from his own side, let alone from the parties on the left of the spectrum that would like nothing more than to bring him down. Netanyahu is in a very difficult spot, and while I am relatively sure he will be able to form a coalition and serve as prime minister, don’t expect it to last very long.

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Domestic Politics Vs. International Politics In The Israeli Election

December 26, 2012 § 7 Comments

As regular O&Z readers know, if this blog has any sort of running theme it is that domestic politics is often decisive in determining foreign policy. When I wrote last week for The Atlantic about the rightwing political competition that is driving settlement activity, a close friend emailed, “So you’re saying it is local politics at work…#ImagineMySurprise.” I have pointed to domestic politics to argue that Israel and Turkey won’t be normalizing relations any time soon (and I’ll try and write about the recent NATO news tomorrow, but no, I don’t think it signals that anything is going to imminently change) and to predict that there was not going to be an Israeli strike on Iran last spring, summer, or fall. Does this mean that domestic politics is always decisive in every situation? Of course not. There are plenty of times in which other considerations are at work; the months-long push on the Turkish government’s to get NATO to intervene in Syria is one such instance. Nevertheless, I maintain that a lack of focus on domestic politics and the constraints it imposes leads to lots of shoddy analysis from both professionals and casual observers.

Over the next few months, Israel is going to be a great petri dish for watching these trends at work. On the one hand, influential and respected defense and security experts like Amos Yadlin are warning that Israel is losing its international support and status because of its footdragging on the peace process, Tzipi Livni has founded a new party devoted solely to reviving talks with the Palestinians, and there is chatter that the EU is losing so much patience that it is going to try and force Israel and the Palestinians into a deal. Last week the State Department issued a harsher than usual condemnation of Israeli settlement activity, as did the fourteen non-U.S. members of the Security Council. By any measure, Israel’s settlement policy and reticence on the creation of a Palestinian state is become increasingly costly. Looking at it from a black box perspective, you have a state living in a hostile neighborhood with an enormous qualitative military edge over its neighbors that is facing a dangerous potential dip in support from its main external allies and is facing increasing international isolation over the Palestinian statehood issue, which does not present an existential security threat by any means. The state is facing what it believes is an existential threat from Iran, and on that front it needs all the help it can get from its main allies. Given everything involved, you’d expect Israel in this situation to take moves to forestall its isolation and shore up its relationship with the U.S. and EU – which are its primary providers of military and economic aid and diplomatic support across the board – by making some serious concessions on the Palestinian front. After all, even if settlements in the West Bank are viewed as a security buffer, keeping them from a security perspective given Palestinian military capabilities pales in comparison to risking the cessation of purchases of military hardware and transfers of military technology, and enabling the risk of complete diplomatic isolation.

Given all of this, one might expect to see an Israeli coalition after the election that includes Livni’s Hatnua party and that undertakes serious initiatives on the Palestinian statehood and peace process fronts. Such a coalition would under no circumstances include Naftali Bennett and Habayit Hayehudi, as Bennett wants to annex Area C and does not support the creation of a Palestinian state. Indeed, there have been moves in that direction as far as keeping Bennett out is concerned, and there have also been reports that Netanyahu and Livni are exploring the possibility of Hatnua joining the coalition after the election, which would almost necessarily mean her return to the Foreign Ministry and a greater push for a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians.

On the other hand, taking domestic politics into account would point to a different path. As I wrote last week, the idea behind the joint Likud-Beiteinu list was to create a right-wing monolith that would put an electoral victory out of reach for Israel’s left and to also present rightwing voters without a real alternative. Netanyahu wanted to eliminate any challenges from his right flank by co-opting Lieberman, but it now turns out that he has to deal with Bennett on his right and a swift migration of voters (so far, at least) away from Likud and to Habayit Hayehudi. It is also the case that Israeli voters do not care about the Palestinians or the peace process, which is why Hatnua is stuck in single digits, Labor and Shelley Yachimovich barely mention anything other than social issues and the economy unless absolutely forced to, and Bennett is gaining a larger following based partly on a perception that Netanyahu is actually not hawkish enough. Taking all of this into account means a coalition that includes Bennett, continues to take a hardline on a Palestinian state, and bemoans the lack of support from European states rather than constructing a policy meant to change that reality.

So which will it be? Unsurprisingly, my money is on the second option, but the first one is certainly plausible. It really just depends on how much weight you place on the domestic political calculus. Netanyahu’s history is that he pays attention to his domestic political survival above all else, and I see no evidence that he has suddenly become a changed man. To my mind, Israel’s long term health necessitates the first path, while Netanyahu’s lies with the second. Let’s hope that events in 2013 prove me wrong.

Wieseltier Is Right About The Lost Cause That Is The Peace Process

December 10, 2012 § 2 Comments

Leon Wieseltier has penned a eulogy for peace between Israel and the Palestinians in his lifetime, and while this is not going to surprise anyone save the most Pollyannaish dead-enders, it is difficult to conclude that he is wrong. I’ll take it even further and say that absent armed U.S. intervention with the purpose of imposing a solution on the two parties, or concurrent Israeli and Palestinian civil wars, it is unlikely to happen in my lifetime either (and Wieseltier has almost three decades on me). Wieseltier describes peace between Israelis and Palestinians as a lost cause, and he refers to a number of recent events that bolster his case – Hamas rockets, Mahmoud Abbas’s overheated rhetoric at the UN, the E1 settlement announcement, and the alliance between Bibi Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman, among others. There is no doubt that the particulars of the last few years, or even the last few months, provide little reason for optimism, and Wieseltier recounts, “People assure me that all this can change if there is the political will to change it; but I do not detect the political will.” This is actually where I disagree with Wieseltier, because he frames the issue as a lack of will or courage, but I think it runs much deeper. We are rapidly getting to the point, if we have not passed it already, where structural conditions make a genuine peace between Israelis and Palestinians impossible without an outside shock to the system, irrespective of who each side’s leaders are and whether they have the will of Rabin, Ghandi, and the Dalai Lama rolled into one.

Not only is the peace process stagnant, the situation is actually getting worse by the day rather than just cruising in a holding pattern. The reason for this is that each side’s position is hardening, but in different ways. On the Israeli side, the problem is literally a structural one, in that Israel is too intertwined in the West Bank to be able to exit it in any comprehensive manner. Let’s say the Israeli government struck a deal tomorrow and agreed to keep a few of the largest settlement blocs in return for proportional land swaps within Israel, and all that needed to be done was to evacuate the rest of the settlements (and to figure out the precise parameters of such a deal, check out this amazing new tool from the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace and the Atlantic that lets you draw borders and see the precise implications in terms of population and percentage of the West Bank). There is just no way that the government could ever carry this out anymore. Gaza was a cakewalk compared to what will be when Israel orders settlers to pick up their stakes and move, and partially this is because the promises that Israel made to Gaza’s settlers on compensation and resettlement have gone unfulfilled. Just look at what happened with Migron, which is a tiny outpost, or the gnashing of teeth over settlers having to evacuate the neighborhood of Ulpana and literally move just down the street. The idea that Israel will be able to just pick up and leave when it finds a suitable negotiating partner on the other side would be a joke if people didn’t actually think it was true. Furthermore, the argument that Israel was able to pull out of Gaza or Yamit and so it will be able to pull out of the West Bank when push comes to shove is at this point hopelessly naive, as if those instances have any real bearing on the situation in the West Bank, or as if Israeli politics and public opinion can just be overcome with a government order to evacuate. This is not a question of political will in the near horizon, but one of whether a certain action can ever be accomplished under any circumstances. I hate to say that I don’t think it can, and trying to do so would ignite a full blown civil war in Israel, with settlers fighting the IDF tooth and nail and a significant portion of Israelis sympathizing with the settlers who were urged and incentivized by their government for decades to go put down roots in the West Bank.

On the Palestinian side, what is being hardened is not necessarily the physical situation on the ground but the ideological situation. For every poll showing a majority of Palestinians supporting peace negotiations there is a poll showing a majority rejecting a two state solution. More worrying than any specific poll is that Hamas now controls Gaza, is making inroads in the West Bank, and smart money is that ten years from now Hamas will be the face of the Palestinians rather than Fatah and the Palestinian Authority (unless Hamas comes to control the PA). Lest you think that Hamas’s views toward Israel and accepting Israel inside the 1967 borders are moderating, Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal wants to make sure that you are aware that Hamas is as radical as ever, as he reiterated to hundreds of thousands of cheering Gazans over the weekend that Hamas will literally fight to the death until Israel is gone. In addition, the apparent decision on the part of Sunni states such as Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey to prop up Hamas and the trend of emerging Islamist governments in the region means that Hamas is only going to grow stronger and be seen as more legitimate, and it follows that the same will happen to its views on negotiating a real two-state solution. Make no mistake, this is even more of a problem – and one that is just as intractable – as the problem I highlighted on the Israeli side, and once again making the problem disappear probably requires a Palestinian civil war, in which a Palestinian Authority led by a committed two-stater like Salam Fayyad defeats Hamas in open warfare.

So, is Wieseltier’s recent essay a depressing one? It is, and not just because one man has decided that the peace process is an irrevocably lost cause. It is depressing because it might be even more of a lost cause than Wieseltier acknowledges, and from where I’m sitting, I don’t see a good way out of the morass absent some terrible infighting and bloodshed on both sides. Ehud Olmert might have convinced some people that all he needed was a few more months and everything would have been solved, but a more realistic assessment suggests otherwise. That doesn’t mean that anyone should stop trying to work toward a two-state solution but it is as much of an uphill battle as exists anywhere.

Ehud Olmert Is The New Mario Cuomo

October 22, 2012 § 2 Comments

For years, Mario Cuomo was the great hope of the Democratic Party. He was a smart, high profile governor with the golden gift of eloquence, and every four years there was a clamor for him to run for president. He was seen as such an impressive figure that George Stephanopolous recounted in his memoir how Bill Clinton seriously considered Cuomo for the Supreme Court. The reason that Cuomo never ran for president and is not now a member of The Nine is the same – Cuomo famously was the Great Waffler, never able to make a decision or pull the trigger despite legions urging him to do so. Whether Cuomo was simply indecisive or had an acute sense of his own limitations is impossible to say for sure, but I always think of him as the prototypical politician who was constantly touted as a party savior yet was destined to disappoint.

For months now since his acquittal, people have been holding up Ehud Olmert as the only person with the ability to dethrone Bibi Netanyahu as prime minister of Israel. Early polls showed some combination of Olmert and Tzipi Livni as siphoning off enough support from Likud to make a center-left coalition a possibility. I never bought into this because Olmert is a deeply flawed figure who makes for a weak politician, yet the rumors of his resurrection persisted as politician after politician came to pay Olmert homage and the anti-Netanyahu forces worked themselves into a frenzy. But hey, guess what? Turns out that Olmert is probably not going to reenter politics after all. This should not be a surprise, and I intended to write a long screed explaining why, and then I remembered that I already did this the day that Olmert was acquitted last July. It bears repeating though given the constant voices imploring that Olmert is Israel’s only hope of avoiding another Bibi term, so here is a refresher from the summer:

I wouldn’t be so quick though to count on Olmert rising from the political graveyard. First, there is the question of his political constituency. Let’s not forget that Olmert was massively unpopular due his presiding over some enormous catastrophes, starting with the 2006 war against Hizballah. The Winograd Commission eviscerated Olmert’s leadership, judgment, and decisionmaking, and stressed his lack of military experience, all of which led to Olmert’s approval rating falling to a jaw-dropping 3% at one point. His efforts to negotiate an agreement with Mahmoud Abbas were widely viewed as a political stunt engineered to save his career. Even before the indictments against him, Olmert was seen as being overly corrupt in a political system legendary for its corruption. In short, this was an unpopular prime minister with no military record to fall back on whose primary accomplishment was negotiating an agreement that was never accepted or even countered. Which segment of the public is going to be clamoring for his return? What in his track record makes him a foe that Bibi should fear? Plenty of Israeli politicians have had second lives in politics after being cast aside, with Ariel Sharon and Netanyahu being the two most prominent recent examples (and Tzipi Livni perhaps poised to be another), but they all had large cadres of backers and took advantage of new political developments to reassert themselves.

Which brings me to point number two. Given his efforts at the end of his time in office and his public comments since he stepped down, Olmert’s presumed constituency would be the Israeli center that wants to see a renewed push for a deal with the Palestinians. The problem is, this center is pretty much non-existent at this point. It is no accident that we hear very little from Labor leader (and opposition head) Shelley Yachimovich about the peace process, or that Tzipi Livni barely harped on it when she was opposition leader, or that Shaul Mofaz focused almost exclusively on social issues when he ran to replace Livni as Kadima head. There are a combination of factors that have contributed to the death of the Israeli peace camp (and this deserves a long blog post, which I plan on getting to soon), but suffice it to say that a deal with the Palestinians is not a winning issue in Israeli politics these days. Given that this has become what Olmert is best known for (aside from royally screwing up in Lebanon), I don’t envision a huge grassroots movement to draft Olmert back into politics.

The one place where he does appear to have a constituency is within the ranks of Kadima. The Kadima MKs who called for him to return yesterday are pretty clearly unhappy with Mofaz, who went from stating that he would never join forces with Netanyahu (whom he dubbed a liar) to joining the coalition to then making empty threats about leaving and is now seen as an incompetent as he endlessly dithers over whether to stay or go following the Plesner Committee fiasco. The problem is that Mofaz is not going to just step down and hand over the reins of his party to Olmert, despite the nonsensical assertion in Time that Mofaz’s congratulatory message to Olmert yesterday means that he would do exactly that. Let’s say that Olmert’s supporters within Kadima, who are disenchanted with Mofaz, decide to revolt. Either they manage to break off and form a rump party with Olmert at its head, which is not going to scare anybody, or they force another divisive leadership battle within Kadima, which weakens it even further and leads to its virtual disappearance. Either way, I don’t see how this provides a successful vehicle for Olmert to rise back up to political relevance.

I can understand why there are those who look at Bibi and miss the days when Olmert was prime minister, but my hunch is that this group of people, however large, mainly resides outside of Israel. Within Israel, I just don’t see how Olmert at this point reenters politics with any real support behind him. There doesn’t seem to be a contingent of Israelis that would naturally support him, and some disenchanted MKs being led by a former PM whose popularity at one point was almost literally zero does not a political dynamo make. It would be great if Olmert’s return to the political scene sparked a renewed interest in the peace process and a reexamination of what Israel needs to do to separate from the Palestinians and create a Palestinian state once and for all, but I think that Netanyahu can rest easy when it comes to Olmert presenting a challenge to his political dominance.

Will The Israeli Elections Have Any Policy Effect?

October 10, 2012 § Leave a Comment

I wrote a piece for Open Zion about Bibi Netanyahu’s call for elections to be held within three months, and I argue that the effect on Israel’s foreign policy will be pretty close to nothing. My essay went up a couple of hours ago and can be found in its original form here, but if you haven’t already seen it on Open Zion it is reprinted below for convenience sake.

As was widely expected, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced yesterday that Knesset elections are going to take place within three months. The ostensible reason that Netanyahu provided was deadlock over the budget, but this was an obvious move on Netanyahu’s part given the political situation in Israel. The J14 social protests this past summer were a shadow of their previous incarnation, the situation on the southern border with Egypt appears relatively quiet for now, and Iran has been put on hold. Netanyahu’s Likud party is on top of the polls and the parties that make up the rest of his right-wing coalition bloc are all poised to do reasonably well.

More importantly though, Netanyahu’s opponents don’t appear to present much of a threat at the moment. Kadima’s erstwhile leader Tzipi Livni, who led the party to the most seats in the 2009 election, is now without a political home and has been reduced to communicating to the public through her Facebook page, and current Kadima head Shaul Mofaz is busily running the party into the ground. Labor will almost certainly do better this time than it did in 2009, but the consensus is that Shelley Yachimovich is not quite ready for prime time and needs some more seasoning before presenting a real threat to Netanyahu. While there are some plausible but remote scenarios in which Netanyahu is cast out of the prime minister’s residence, the overwhelming likelihood is that three months from now Netanyahu will remain exactly where he is.

The reason Netanyahu is calling for new elections now is primarily because the domestic political scene is so favorable for him. Much like when he engineered the unity government deal with Mofaz and Kadima last spring, there will undoubtedly be speculation that the timing of the vote is related to Iran or to the peace process, but as was the case back in May, this is not being done with foreign policy considerations in mind. Thinking about what this abbreviated election campaign will look like and what constraints will be in place when it is over yields some insights as to why this is so.

On Iran, there should be little question left that the elections are the final toss of dirt on top of what I have argued is the long-buried coffin of a strike on Iran in the next six months. Even if Netanyahu were able to give the order to launch a strike, he is historically extremely risk-averse, and would not do so with an election coming up so soon and potentially endanger his strong political position. That does not, however, mean that Iran is not going to be an issue in the campaign. Mofaz is likely to bring up what he calls Netanyahu’s “warmongering” again and again, and I expect we will hear mentions of Netanyahu’s recklessness on Iran and his related precarious management of the U.S.-Israel relationship from Yachimovich as well.

The reason for this is that a unilateral strike on Iran remains deeply unpopular with the Israeli public, and that will still be the case once the campaign is over. If things go as expected, Netanyahu will remain in office with the same coalition partners and the same security cabinet, where he will still not have the votes for a strike on Iran. The upper echelons of the IDF will still be against a unilateral strike, and there will still be enormous pressure from the U.S.—assuming that President Obama is reelected—to hold off. In short, if Likud picks up an additional seat or two and the coalition grows by 2 to 5 seats, which is what the current polls indicate will happen, the structural constraints that are in place now and that have prevented a strike from happening will have not changed at all. The idea that Netanyahu will be newly empowered when it comes to Iran after this election seems to me to be highly dubious.

A similar static dynamic is at work when it comes to the peace process. Raphael Ahren argues in the Times of Israel that one of Netanyahu’s aims in scheduling an early vote is to avoid pressure from the U.S. on negotiating with the Palestinians. But irrespective of whether Obama is a lame duck come November or is gearing up for a second term, no such pressure will be forthcoming. Obama was burned during his first term by his attempt at creating an environment in which serious negotiations could resume, and between the massive uncertainty created by Iran’s nuclear program, the civil war in Syria, and the continuing reverberations from the Arab Spring, not to mention the administration’s Asian pivot, the peace process is not going to be chief among Obama’s second term priorities. If Romney wins in November, Obama is neither going to have enough time left nor sufficient political capital in his arsenal to push Netanyahu on the Palestinian issue.

Leaving the American dynamic aside, the early Israeli elections do not signal any change coming down the road on the peace process. Before the formation of the brief-lived unity government in May, the Israeli campaign season had begun to gear up, yet there was virtually no mention of the Palestinians or the peace process by anyone, including the left-wing parties that historically have used the peace process as a campaign issue. Social and economic issues dominated the Labor and Meretz discourse, and the current election campaign is going to be fought on similar grounds. The Israeli peace camp has basically disappeared in the aftermath of the second intifada and rockets from Gaza, and elections will not change that. Should Netanyahu remain prime minister, there will be little reason for him to suddenly deal with an inept Palestinian Authority or a violent and intransigent Hamas.

It is tempting to think that Netanyahu has some big grandiose plan in mind when it comes to Iran or the Palestinians and that he is calling early elections so that he can secure a mandate for some major foreign policy moves. The reality of the situation, however, is that Netanyahu is simply trying to capitalize on his current popularity at a time when the opposition is weak and fractured, and the effect that this election will have on Israel’s foreign policy is as slight as it could possibly be.

Guest Post: Rhetoric On Israel Matters

August 8, 2012 § 2 Comments

No introductions needed this time. Here is Gabe Scheinmann’s half of Round Two on the implications for U.S. policy toward Israel if Mitt Romney is elected in November (for the previous three installations, go here, here, and here.

Well, I think I’ve gotten Michael to move the needle a little bit (from “little daylight between the two men” to “Gabe is undoubtedly correct that differences exist between Romney and Obama” to saying Michael is “on board with the notion that Romney’s rhetoric and personal convictions on Israel are more friendly than Obama’s”. However, if the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over again expecting different results, here I go.

First, on Iran, Michael somewhat jumbled my argument. Forget the exact chronological predictions for the moment as neither Michael nor I, nor Washington, London, or Jerusalem truly know how far along Iran is. However, my overall point remains unchanged. It’s the Israelis, not us Americans, that have a shorter window for military action should it come to that. Large differences in capabilities between the two countries means that the U.S. can afford to allow the Iranian program to develop much farther than Israel can. Moreover, the gravitas of that difference is magnified by how much Israel trusts Obama’s promises. So, when the Obama Administration draws a red line that is the furthest possible down the road, it makes a massive difference to Israel. So, for the Israelis, a broken U.S. commitment to stop a “nuclear Iran” could mean that it would be too late for Israel to take out the program. Whereas a broken U.S. commitment to stop an Iran with “nuclear weapons capability” would still gives Jerusalem an opportunity to take care of the program itself if need be. As to “walking back” the “respect” quote, maybe we are splitting hairs here, but Senor clarified and did not retract his statement. He said that he hopes diplomacy and sanctions succeed—a position agreed to by all—but in the likely event that they don’t, Romney “recognizes Israel’s right to defend itself, and that it is right for America to stand with it.” Even if the “respect” language hadn’t been initially used, the Romney camp is saying in no uncertain terms that America will support Israel if Israel chooses to exercise its right to self-defense. In conclusion, the differences in policies here are still quite large: Obama is actively trying to restrain Israeli action—Panetta at one point even telegraphed the date of a possible attack which really hemmed in the Israelis—whereas Romney is merely saying that he will support our ally if push comes to shove.

Second, on the Palestinian portfolio, let me bring a little more evidence to bear. The Obama Administration is on the record as stating that not only is Jerusalem not Israel’s capital, but that it is not even in Israel. It is Obama’s policy, not Romney’s position, that marks a large change in the American position. See Omri Ceren’s cataloguing of efforts by the Obama Administration to scrub “Jerusalem, Israel” from the archives of past administrations, literally rewriting some history. (You can see the differences in the photo captions.) All previous presidents have recognized Israeli sovereignty over at least pre-1967 Jerusalem, where all Israeli government institutions reside.Nixon (see the September 5, 1972 entry), Carter, Clinton, and Bush43 have all had no problem admitting that Jerusalem was in Israel. Lastly, while candidate Obama stated that “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and that it will remain undivided”—two positions he has now backtracked on—candidate Romney has actually not said the “undivided” part. While this could merely be an unintended omission, it could also be an astute recognition that while Jerusalem is obviously in Israel and obviously Israel’s capital, the final borders of Jerusalem could change in line with the decisions of an Israeli government. It lends more weight to Romney’s other statements because his silence naturally defers any decision to its rightful place: the Israeli government.

On borders, Michael has misquoted the joint Netanyahu-Clinton statement, which in turn demonstrates that the Obama position on borders is unprecedented. The relevant parts of the statement says that the “the United States believes that through good-faith negotiations, the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state, based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps…” which is actually quite different than what Michael wrote. It merely commits the U.S. to a negotiated outcome and states that those borders are a Palestinian goal. Obama went further in his May 2011 State Department speech, converting the Palestinian goal into the U.S. position. But nowhere in the statement does it say Israel believes this. In fact, a quick search of “1967 lines” or “1967 borders” on the American Presidency Project, an eminently useful archive of presidential speeches, demonstrates that Obama is the first to ever use the formulation in this way. Contrast that with this nifty Reagan quote: “In the pre-1967 borders Israel was barely 10 miles wide at its narrowest point. The bulk of Israel’s population lived within artillery range of hostile Arab armies. I am not about to ask Israel to live that way again.” Even President Carter said that while he expected there to be “minor adjustments to the 1967, pre-1967 borders” that it was “a matter for Israel and her neighbors to decide.” To summarize, Obama believes that Jerusalem is neither the capital of Israel, nor in Israel, and that the borders of a future Palestinian state should be based on the 1967 lines with mutual agreed swaps. Romney believes that Jerusalem is both in Israel and is Israel’s capital, a position more in line with most U.S. presidents, and has not commented on what he believes Israel’s final borders to be. In doing so, he has deferred to Israel’s own evaluation of its objectives as well as the outcome of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Obama, meanwhile, has prejudged those negotiations by putting down the starting point as the Palestinian position. Those are fairly stark policy differences.

Third, on the overall regional approach, Michael points to Zvika Krieger’s article, where Zvika argues that the U.S. did Israel a favor by not including it in a counterterrorism forum because it made Arab and Turkish participation easier. Overlooking the fact that the sole source of the article is an Obama Administration official who presumably drew the short straw of trying to explain the exclusion by saying it was in Israel’s interests, I would argue that reinforcing the Arab diplomatic boycott of Israel, especially in regards to a forum that Israel is a leading expert, as a way of being “pro-Israel” verges on delusion. Unless the Obama Administration thinks it can whisper sweet nothings in Arab ears that will alter their decades-long boycott of Israel, I don’t see how this is productive for Israel in the long run. But, even if Michael buys Zvika’s story, the story confirms what I wrote: the Administration purposefully excluded Israel from the forum, though the Obama line is that in the hopes that it will make cooperation easier down the road. I’ll let the readers decide whether they think that is a good strategy. As per Israel’s non-attendance at the NATO summit in Chicago, Michael refers to his own post on the issue, whereby he cites Administration officials saying that Israel was never invited in the first place, and Israeli officials that it was never going to attend anyways. I would merely submit that this is a diplomatic waltz, a way for the two countries to avoid making an issue out of something that was unlikely to be changed.

I’ll end with a question for Michael—I’ll defer to him as to whether his silence on the numerous other points (calling on Israel to give up its nuclear weapons, desiring to fund UNESCO in contravention of U.S. law, making the peace process a “vital national security interest”) constitutes agreement. By telling Jewish leaders that he intended to put “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel because he thought that the lack of daylight during the Bush years did not lead to peace process progress, was Obama himself not therefore stating that he intended to pursue a different policy than the Bush Administration?

In conclusion, I want to make the case that rhetoric and personal conviction do end up having an important policy impact. There’s no magic formula that explains how convictions translate into policies, but many policymakers will easily attest that a president’s priorities, convictions, personal history, and relationships end up having a greater impact on policy than stand-alone statements. As such, I’d like to link to President Bush’s speech to the Israeli Knesset upon his attendance of Israel’s 60th Independence Day celebration. For a man that was not known for his oratory, the speech is a wonderful expression of the deep, personal convictions of the leader of the free world. “I have been fortunate,” Bush said, “to see the character of Israel up close. I’ve touched the Western Wall; I’ve seen the sun reflected in the Sea of Galilee; I have prayed at Yad Vashem. And earlier today I visited Masada, an inspiring monument to courage and sacrifice. At this historic site, Israeli soldiers swear an oath: “Masada shall never fall again.” Citizens of Israel, Masada shall never fall again, and America will be at your side.” Contrast that language with that of Obama’s in his 2009 Cairo speech, where he implied that the “aspiration for a Jewish homeland” was a result of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, and not its Biblical existence.

Policy Vs. Campaign Rhetoric on Israel

August 7, 2012 § 1 Comment

Gabe Scheinmann wrote a great guest post last week responding to my contention that U.S. policy toward Israel is going to remain largely the same irrespective of who wins the election in November. In short, Gabe argues that there is a world of difference between Obama and Romney and that it will have a significant impact on U.S. policy regarding Iran, the peace process, and Mideast regional politics and security. I don’t disagree with Gabe that Obama and Romney have different views on various issues related to Israel, but I think where Gabe goes awry is in his contention that it’s going to matter for U.S. policy. Looking at what has gone on under Obama and the history of presidential candidates and campaigns saying things that get walked back later on (including by Romney just last week), I think that a Romney administration will hew to much the same line that the Obama administration has.

On Iran, Gabe argues that the difference between the U.S. drawing a red line at nuclear capability versus drawing a red line at a nuclear weapon is a drastic one, and that by taking the former position Romney is aligned with the Israeli stance. Gabe also thinks that Romney’s position means that the U.S. is looking at a multi-month window, rather than multi-year window under Obama, to strike Iran. There are, however, a couple of factors that Gabe is overlooking. First, we don’t know that the U.S. and Israel are necessarily in agreement as to how long before Iran develops nuclear capability; the British estimate is that Iran is two years away from nuclear capability, while Israeli officials have at times estimated that Iran is only months away. If U.S. intelligence agencies are in line with the British view, then it means we are still looking at a multi-year window for U.S. action. Second, Gabe claims that the Romney campaign has said he will “respect” an Israeli decision to unilaterally attack Iran and he contrasts this with Obama’s efforts to prevent Israel from launching at attack, but Gabe must know that this is misleading. The link that he provides for the “respect” claim is an article detailing how the Romney campaign walked back aide Dan Senor’s respect position – widely interpreted as giving Israel a green light – just hours after he made it, and instead clarified that Romney simply “recognizes Israel’s right to defend itself.” The idea that Obama is constraining the Israelis from striking Iran but that Romney would tell them to go right ahead, or even assist them in doing so, is one that was consciously contradicted by the Romney campaign. As I wrote in my original post, the difference between capability and an actual weapon is a real one, but the effect this has on what actions the U.S. will take and when is not as large as Gabe suggests.

On the issue of the West Bank and the peace process, Gabe says that Obama does not believe that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and that Romney does, and that Obama has endorsed the Palestinian position on negotiations with regard to Jerusalem and borders and that Romney has not. Again, this is a highly selective reading of events. Much like Romney now, when Obama was a candidate in 2008 he famously said that “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided,” and when he attracted a storm of criticism for the “undivided” part of the comment, he walked back that portion but pointedly did not refute the part of the comment calling Jerusalem the capital of Israel. Once in office, his administration’s official position was the exact same as literally every president before him since – including George W. Bush, widely seen as the most pro-Israel president in history – that Jerusalem’s final status should be subject to negotiations. This is, in fact, the position that Israel agreed to when it signed the Oslo Accords, so when Gabe refers to this as the Palestinian position in negotiations, it is unclear to me why he implies that Israel has never agreed to negotiation Jerusalem’s final status. It is also unclear to me why Gabe believes that Romney will be the first president in history to overturn the U.S. position on Jerusalem, and why he thinks that Romney is not doing the exact same thing that Obama did when campaigning in 2008. On the issue of borders, Netanyahu issued a joint statement with Hillary Clinton in November 2010 using the phrase “1967 lines, with agreed swaps,” which is the same formulation Obama has used. It is also the same position that the U.S. and Israel have taken in every single negotiation with the Palestinians during the Bush, Clinton, and Bush administrations, so I’d again be curious to know why Gabe thinks Romney will do things differently. This is furthered by the fact that the Romney campaign website is completely silent on this issue and Romney has, as Gabe note, “issued no such positions” because he has been silent on specifics with regard to Israel, instead relying on empty platitudes. This is not a coincidence, since Romney does not want to upset Jewish voters but also does not want to box himself in by taking positions he will have to repudiate in office. No matter what Romney believes, the fact is that if he wades into the peace process morass, he is – like every president before him irrespective of party – also going to endorse the 1967 lines with swaps and refuse to prejudice the outcomes of negotiations over Jerusalem.

Finally, on the issue of the approach to Middle East regional issues, Gabe says that Obama has excluded Israel from the new Global Counterterrrorism Forum, although I would direct my readers to Zvika Krieger’s excellent reporting on the subject which makes clear that this has nothing to do with the administration trying to isolate Israel. Gabe also contends that Israel is being sold out to placate Turkey, but his claim about allowing Turkey to block Israel from the recent NATO summit is incorrect (as I have written about before), not to mention that I don’t think Gabe would suggest that the U.S. not attend NATO summits if Turkey does indeed exercise its right under the NATO bylaws to block non-members from attending. It should also be pointed out that Israel has never once attended a NATO summit in its history, so the idea that this can be pinned on Obama and that Romney would somehow change that is quite a stretch. Similarly, I think it is questionable to imply, as Gabe does, that the decision not to back Egypt’s autocratic dictator once the handwriting was on the wall was directed at Israel and that Romney would have done things differently.

In sum, Gabe is undoubtedly correct that differences exist between Romney and Obama, but I think he overstates the extent to which this will affect much of anything. Unless you think that Romney is going to upend the bipartisan consensus on the peace process that has existed for decades, or that he is going to destroy ties with Turkey rather than trying to work a middle ground that preserves the relationship with Israel while simultaneously preserving the relationship with another important regional ally, what we are left is with a difference on Iran, but one that still puts Romney at odds with the Israeli position. I am on board with the notion that Romney’s rhetoric and even personal convictions on Israel are more friendly toward Israel than Obama’s, but despite making a host of important points, I don’t think Gabe meets the burden of proof in demonstrating that this will ultimately matter when it comes to U.S. policy.

Guest Post: Romney and Obama Differ On More Than Just Iran

August 3, 2012 § 5 Comments

On Monday I wrote a post arguing that irrespective of who wins the presidential election in November, American policy toward Israel is unlikely to change very much. My friend Gabe Scheinmann (whose previous guest post differed with me on which side is politicizing the Israel debate) is now here to present an opposing view, since he believes that I have downplayed the differences between Obama and Romney when it comes to Israel policy.

Michael argues that, outside of rhetorical flourish intended for the election season, the sole policy difference with regards to Israel between a Romney Administration and a second Obama term is the “limited exception of what threshold will trigger [U.S.] military action against Iran”. While I respect Michael’s analysis, I have to say that the differences between the two are far, far starker. Whether it be the U.S. approach to the peace process, the status of Jerusalem, relations with regional countries, or dealing with Iran, the policy priorities and principles between the two potential leaders will be vastly different.

First, I concede that, under Obama, the military relationship has strengthened, mostly attributable to the nearly $300mil the Administration has granted to Israel to purchase additional Iron Dome batteries. While this is absolutely commendable, I would surmise that this would have also occurred during a hypothetical McCain Administration and would continue under Romney as well. Moreover, while this is my own opinion, the rhetorical echo chamber nurtured by both the White House and the Israeli government when it comes to security ties has been a way for both governments to claim “Situation Normal” without having to add the AFU part. The nature of military-to-military ties makes it difficult for Congress, interest groups, or the public to know what is concrete and what isn’t. By touting “the closest ever” security ties, both sides are able to mask the deep political and diplomatic problems that do exist.

First, on Iran. The difference between “nuclear weapon capability”, which is the Romney and Israeli position, and a “nuclear Iran”, which is the Obama position, is drastic. While Michael admits that this is the sole point of difference, I think that he undervalues the importance of the difference, which could be a multi-year window for the U.S., a multi-month window for Israel. Moreover, while Obama’s efforts have been focused on constraining, preventing, and even preemptively condemning potential unilateral Israeli military action, the Romney campaign has now said that it will “respect” Israeli action should it come to that. Lastly, Romney supports aiding the Iranian opposition in an attempt to remove the current regime, a notable contrast with the president, who was notoriously silent at the most opportune moment in 2009 for such support. Put simply, Obama’s Plan A is negotiations/sanctions, Plan B is simply “trust me” a few years from now. If he burns your trust, it’s too late. Romney’s Plan A is negotiations/sanctions/regime change from within or “trust me” a few months from now. If he burns your trust, it is still not too late to act unilaterally.

Second, on the West Bank portfolio. On settlements, Obama believes that Jerusalem, including the Old City, is a settlement and should be treated no differently than everything else in the West Bank. The Administration does not believe that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. (Note: One could still not move the Embassy, state that final borders are subject to negotiation, but still believe that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. The Administration has gone out of its way to not do that.) Romney believes that Jerusalem is not a settlement and that it is Israel’s capital. That is a fairly significant difference. Romney has been silent on West Bank settlements, a marked contrast with Obama who made it the focus of his Israel policy for nearly a year, souring the U.S.-Israel relationship and setting back Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Whereas Obama has endorsed the Palestinian negotiating position (Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel and is subject to negotiation, borders (not negotiations on borders, but borders) should be based on the 1949 armistice (he called them 1967 lines), Romney issued no such positions and condemned the president for doing so. Whereas Romney has promised to defund the Palestinian Authority if it enters into a unity government with Hamas or seeks unilateral statehood recognition at the UN, the Obama Administration has gone to great lengths to keep bankrolling the PA, even though Abu Mazen has crossed both those red lines. It also upgraded the diplomatic representation of the Palestinian mission very early on.

Third, Obama and Romney regional policies would be different with different effects on Israel.  The Obama Administration has excluded Israel from the first two meetings of a new major counterterrorism forum, has endorsed a conference statement calling for Israel to give up its nuclear weapons, has pushed Israel to apologize to Turkey for the flotilla affair, and has given Turkey a veto on Israeli participation in NATO exercises. Moreover, while it swiftly called for Mubarak, a longtime American and Israeli ally, to step down in the wake of domestic protests, it resisted doing the same in Iran, an American and Israeli enemy, despite its more brutal oppression and troublemaking.

Fourth, the semiotics of Obama’s approach to Israel have been somewhere between wrong-footed, disingenuous, and appalling. The president snubbed the democratically elected Israeli leader at the White House two years ago, denying him a perfunctory photo-op and abandoning him to eat dinner with his family, equated the Holocaust with Palestinian suffering, visited Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, but not Israel, made his first foreign phone call as president to PA president Abu Mazen, and purposefully put “daylight” between the two countries, as he openly told Jewish leaders. In contrast, Romney has promised to make Israel his first foreign visit.

To conclude, the differences between the two men’s policies are glaring. On Iran, Romney has said that he respects an Israeli strike if it comes to that, but more importantly the threshold for what constitutes as “unacceptable” is a lot lower than what Obama has said. On the Palestinians, the two men see Jerusalem, settlements, and the basis of negotiations in far different lights. Overall, whereas Obama believes that the best way to stop an Iranian nuclear program and to increase U.S. popularity in the Arab world is to loosen its political support of Israel, Romney believes that only by tightening the U.S.-Israel relationship will the U.S. stop the Iranian nuclear drive and enhance Arab-Israeli peacemaking. (The Obama Administration even elevated Palestinian-Israeli peace to a U.S. “vital national security interest”.) The evidence suggests that a Romney Administration’s Israel policy would represent a distinct departure from the policies of the last four years.

The Impact of the Second Intifada

July 16, 2012 § 1 Comment

The Washington Post this weekend ran a lengthy tick tock account by Scott Wilson of how President Obama ultimately failed during his first term to accomplish anything on the Israeli-Palestinian peace front, and while there isn’t much new information in there that wasn’t already widely known, it does illuminate some important points. The first is the way in which the way one presents a policy is nearly as important as the actual policy itself. There are numerous instances in the Post story of the president and his team being surprised that some policy did not go over well with the Israelis, and oftentimes it was an issue of presentation or coordination. For instance, there was an uproar following Obama’s speech at the State Department in which he referred to a deal based on the 1967 borders with land swaps, with Israeli officials and American Jewish leaders outraged that the president implied that the starting point would be the Green Line. In fact, the president used the exact same formulation and language in that speech in May 2011 that Netanyahu himself used in a joint statement he issued with Hillary Clinton through the Israeli Foreign Ministry five months earlier, but as the Post points out and as was reported at the time, Netanyahu was upset because he felt blindsided and hadn’t known what the president was planning on saying. Obama made this same point earlier this morning in an interview with Charlie Rose, in which he said that one of the lessons he has learned on domestic policy is that getting the policy right is only half the battle, since it then also has to be effectively communicated to the American people. The same applies (but to a different audience) when it comes to Israel policy. I have written before that I think the accusation that Obama is anti-Israel is a silly one, but much of it stems from a terrible failure of communication and choice of words.

For instance, the fact that Obama has still not visited Israel has, quite frankly, passed over into the realm of the absurd. Yes, I know that President Bush did not visit Israel as president until 2008, and no, I do not think that presidents must visit Israel as a rite of passage. The difference here is that Obama is asking more of the Israelis than Bush did and so it would be enormously helpful for him to do it in person. It also does not escape Israeli notice that Obama gave speeches in Istanbul, Cairo, and visited Saudi Arabia, all of which brought him directly to the neighborhood, and the fact that he couldn’t make a one day stopover in Jerusalem leaves many Israelis feeling jilted, as if this is somehow a purposeful snub. I don’t think that it is, but if it isn’t worth Obama’s time to talk to Israelis directly in their own country, then it is understandable that many do not view Obama’s priorities as being worth their time or sacrifice.

The bigger lesson that jumps out though from the Post piece is that Obama and his team completely failed to take into account the way the second intifada changed the dynamic in Israel. Think about the Israeli mindset for a minute – following the Oslo process and the devolution of parts of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority and then the pullout from the security zone in Lebanon, Israel was met by a Hamas suicide bombing campaign and ultimately the second intifada. This rightly made Israelis nervous and largely killed the peace camp, and in order for Israel to keep the process going, it wanted to feel reassured that the U.S. understood its concerns. In short, it did not want a blank check to do as it pleased, but just a bit of empathy from the president. Obama and his advisers, however, missed this crucial point. The president is quoted as saying to American Jewish leaders in July 2009, “Look at the past eight years. During those eight years, there was no space between us and Israel, and what did we get from that? When there is no daylight, Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arab states.” This was the wrong lesson to be learned from the Bush years. It wasn’t that Israel felt that a close embrace from the U.S. gave it the green light to sit on the sidelines. It was that the Bush administration did not ask Israel to make any concessions. Had Bush pushed the Israelis on settlements or easing up on Mahmoud Abbas, the Israelis may very well have done so, but there was never a concerted effort from the Bush administration to extract many concessions from Israel. Israelis are extremely disenchanted with the peace process, and if the U.S. wants real movement, it needs to understand how scarring the second intifada was to the Israeli psyche and take that into account.

Similarly, the Post article recounts how Rahm Emmanuel thought that Netanyahu could be pressured into making concessions as he had during the 1990s, but then Wilson writes that “Netanyahu had changed since the 1990s, and so had the Israeli public. From his experience with Clinton, Netanyahu learned that he could not afford to lose his base. For him, a fight with a U.S. president pressuring Israel was a safer political bet than it once had been.” This is certainly correct, but it leaves out the most important variable. The Israeli public changed because of the second intifada, and this has led to Netanyahu being able stand up to the president in a more forceful and domestically cost-free way because there is a widespread belief in Israel that Obama does not really understand Israel’s security situation. This needs to change, and the very end of the article indicates that there is a growing understanding in the White House that Israel’s security concerns need to be assuaged. Does this mean that Israel should get to do whatever it wants at all times? Of course not. I think that the U.S. should keep up the pressure on settlements and convince Israel to prop up the PA and grant it a larger degree of autonomy in the West Bank (converting Area B to the same status as Area A would be a good start). The fact is that a close Israel-U.S. relationship does not necessarily impede progress on a peace deal; it just depends on what the administration decides to ask for. A greater appreciation for how Israel has changed and what assurances Israelis feel they need will only lead to more progress, not less.

Olmert Is No Lazarus

July 11, 2012 § 1 Comment

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, who resigned amid a slew of corruption allegations, was acquitted yesterday on two corruption charges and found guilty of merely breach of trust in a third. While the Holyland corruption trial is still ongoing, yesterday’s verdicts are a clear victory for Olmert, who is now seen in some quarters as the victim of an unfair witchhunt, and his acquittal has prompted calls for the state prosecutor to resign. Olmert’s reputation has also undergone a resurgence overnight; a bunch of Kadima MKs publicly called for him to return to politics, with Yuval Zellner calling him one of the best prime ministers in Israel’s history, and one columnist posited that Olmert is the only Israeli politician who could credibly challenge Netanyahu in the next election.

I wouldn’t be so quick though to count on Olmert rising from the political graveyard. First, there is the question of his political constituency. Let’s not forget that Olmert was massively unpopular due his presiding over some enormous catastrophes, starting with the 2006 war against Hizballah. The Winograd Commission eviscerated Olmert’s leadership, judgment, and decisionmaking, and stressed his lack of military experience, all of which led to Olmert’s approval rating falling to a jaw-dropping 3% at one point. His efforts to negotiate an agreement with Mahmoud Abbas were widely viewed as a political stunt engineered to save his career. Even before the indictments against him, Olmert was seen as being overly corrupt in a political system legendary for its corruption. In short, this was an unpopular prime minister with no military record to fall back on whose primary accomplishment was negotiating an agreement that was never accepted or even countered. Which segment of the public is going to be clamoring for his return? What in his track record makes him a foe that Bibi should fear? Plenty of Israeli politicians have had second lives in politics after being cast aside, with Ariel Sharon and Netanyahu being the two most prominent recent examples (and Tzipi Livni perhaps poised to be another), but they all had large cadres of backers and took advantage of new political developments to reassert themselves.

Which brings me to point number two. Given his efforts at the end of his time in office and his public comments since he stepped down, Olmert’s presumed constituency would be the Israeli center that wants to see a renewed push for a deal with the Palestinians. The problem is, this center is pretty much non-existent at this point. It is no accident that we hear very little from Labor leader (and opposition head) Shelley Yachimovich about the peace process, or that Tzipi Livni barely harped on it when she was opposition leader, or that Shaul Mofaz focused almost exclusively on social issues when he ran to replace Livni as Kadima head. There are a combination of factors that have contributed to the death of the Israeli peace camp (and this deserves a long blog post, which I plan on getting to soon), but suffice it to say that a deal with the Palestinians is not a winning issue in Israeli politics these days. Given that this has become what Olmert is best known for (aside from royally screwing up in Lebanon), I don’t envision a huge grassroots movement to draft Olmert back into politics.

The one place where he does appear to have a constituency is within the ranks of Kadima. The Kadima MKs who called for him to return yesterday are pretty clearly unhappy with Mofaz, who went from stating that he would never join forces with Netanyahu (whom he dubbed a liar) to joining the coalition to then making empty threats about leaving and is now seen as an incompetent as he endlessly dithers over whether to stay or go following the Plesner Committee fiasco. The problem is that Mofaz is not going to just step down and hand over the reins of his party to Olmert, despite the nonsensical assertion in Time that Mofaz’s congratulatory message to Olmert yesterday means that he would do exactly that. Let’s say that Olmert’s supporters within Kadima, who are disenchanted with Mofaz, decide to revolt. Either they manage to break off and form a rump party with Olmert at its head, which is not going to scare anybody, or they force another divisive leadership battle within Kadima, which weakens it even further and leads to its virtual disappearance. Either way, I don’t see how this provides a successful vehicle for Olmert to rise back up to political relevance.

I can understand why there are those who look at Bibi and miss the days when Olmert was prime minister, but my hunch is that this group of people, however large, mainly resides outside of Israel. Within Israel, I just don’t see how Olmert at this point reenters politics with any real support behind him. There doesn’t seem to be a contingent of Israelis that would naturally support him, and some disenchanted MKs being led by a former PM whose popularity at one point was almost literally zero does not a political dynamo make. It would be great if Olmert’s return to the political scene sparked a renewed interest in the peace process and a reexamination of what Israel needs to do to separate from the Palestinians and create a Palestinian state once and for all, but I think that Netanyahu can rest easy when it comes to Olmert presenting a challenge to his political dominance.

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