News Quiz, Trump Vs. Erdoğan Edition

March 7, 2016 § 6 Comments

Normally when I do a news quiz post it is with a sense of cheeky jest, but today’s is deadly serious. Donald Trump is the leading candidate to be this year’s Republican nominee for president amid a swirling debate over whether, in Robert Kagan’s words, a President Trump would demonstrate “how political parties die and how democracies give rise to authoritarian rulers.” I agree with Kagan that the question over Trump’s authoritarian inclinations is no longer a question and is rather definitively settled, and the simplest way to see this is by examining Trump’s treatment of the press. A free press is the sine qua non of any functional democracy, and Trump has made it very plain that he views a free press as a nuisance that would hinder his ability to do whatever he pleases.

Conveniently for someone like me who writes about Turkey, there is another world leader who also views a free press as something to be quashed rather than accommodated. I think we can all agree that Turkey under President Erdoğan is not exactly a paragon of press freedom, coming in at 149 out of 180 countries in the 2015 Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index and recently featuring scenes of angry pro-government mobs attacking both media offices and individual reporters while the courts order the government takeover of newspapers that conveniently happen to not toe the government line. This assault on the press has heralded a real and measurable authoritarian turn in Turkey, and the two developments have gone hand in hand. When a political leader inveighs against the media doing its job in such a consistent and unrelenting fashion, it reveals a lot about that leader’s stance toward democracy, as tragically seen again and again in Turkey. It stands to reason that if it takes some effort to distinguish Trump from Erdoğan when it comes to the subject of the press, we here in the U.S. should be more than a little concerned about Trump’s candidacy. So without further ado, read the following quotes and see whether you are able to identify which ones insulting, threatening, and belittling the media emanated from the current autocrat and which from the budding one.

  1. “Most of it [the media], seventy percent, seventy-five percent is absolute dishonest, absolute scum.”
  2. “The media should be independent and the level of democracy in a country is shown by the extent to which the media, journalists, and media employees are free. However, this freedom should not mean being exempted from all responsibilities. What matters is that people have access to true and objective news.”
  3. Singling out a reporter at a campaign rally by name who had written about him earlier that week – “A militant in the guise of a journalist, a shameless woman… Know your place!”
  4. Singling out a reporter at a campaign rally by name who had written about him earlier that week – “She’s back there–[derogatory nickname for the reporter]–she’s back there. What a lie it was, no, what a lie, [reporter’s name], what a lie it was from [media network] to have written that, it was a total lie…Third rate reporter, remember that, third rate, third.”
  5. “You know the press is among the most dishonest people ever created by God.”
  6. “Media should never have been given the liberty to insult.”
  7. “I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them.”
  8. Threatening to sue a prominent newspaper – “The press wants to throw mud to see if it sticks. The [name of newspaper] is renting out its own pages for money. This is the [name of newspaper’s] failing. We will pursue legal channels regarding the [name of newspaper].”
  9. Calling out a reporter during a speech by name who refused to be in the same place as the candidate because of concerns over press restrictions – “Ah, we really depend on you. Who cares if you come or if you don’t….What an ignorant man you are.”
  10. Confronting a reporter at a press conference while alleging that the reporter misquoted him – “Do you apologize? Do you apologize for not reading my words? Do you apologize? No? . . . Okay, forget you. Just forget you.”

Folks, guessing the provenance of quotes is a fun little game, but the consequences are serious. Trump is fundamentally different than every other person running for president, because unlike the other candidates from both parties – whose views and policy positions you may find awful and contrary to American values – Trump gives no evidence that he is committed to democracy beyond getting the most votes and assuming power. Like Erdoğan, his fetishization of polls and vote totals as the only factors that matter betrays a theory of majoritarian governance that cannot be reconciled with liberal democracy. It is the notion that when you receive the most votes, you are entitled to do anything you please because the voters have given you a mandate to govern unencumbered by checks and balances. When Trump treats reporters as scum of the earth, this is what he is signaling. Accountability may be annoying to those in power, but it is the lubrication that keeps the engine of democracy from stalling.

Since this has been a sobering experiment and I want to end with a little bit of levity, who said the following quote yesterday? “I am a second father to every girl, a second brother to every woman.”

A. Donald Trump, dismissing allegations that he is a sexist

B. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, speaking at a conference on women’s issues in Istanbul

C. Bill Cosby, defending his behavior toward women during a pre-trial deposition

 

Answers:

  1. DJT
  2. RTE
  3. RTE
  4. DJT
  5. DJT
  6. RTE
  7. DJT
  8. RTE
  9. RTE
  10. DJT

Bonus question: B

Being More Pro-Israel Than Israel

March 3, 2016 § 3 Comments

I consider myself to be unabashedly in the pro-Israel camp. I am glad that there is a Jewish state, I am proud that it is democratic, and I happen to like that state a lot irrespective of its characteristics, having spent a large chunk of my life living in and visiting Israel. Nevertheless, I don’t like the term pro-Israel because it draws unnecessary boundaries that oftentimes do Israel more harm than good by excluding those who do not deserve to be excluded. It effectively creates an alienating dichotomy through a standard of purity that is difficult for many, if not most, people to meet, including those who would not think of doing anything to malign, diminish, or delegitimize Israel. This is damaging enough when it involves Diaspora Jews creating an unnecessarily harsh litmus test for Diaspora Jews. It veers into Alice In Wonderland territory when it involves Diaspora Jews and non-Israelis of all stripes deciding that the government of Israel itself is not sufficiently pro-Israel.

Exhibit A: Last week, famed Israeli singer Achinoam Nini (who goes by the stage name Noa) was the subject of controversy over a Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israeli Independence Day) concert she is scheduled to perform at in Vancouver. The Jewish National Fund of Canada, which had been slated to sponsor the concert as it does every year, pulled out when it was announced that Nini would be performing due to the fact that, in JNF Canada’s view, “the entertainer that has been hired does not reflect, nor correspond to the mandate and values of the Jewish National Fund of Canada.” JNF Canada appears to have taken exception to the fact that Nini has been critical of Israeli actions in the West Bank and has lent her support to Breaking the Silence, and a number of prominent Vancouver Jews accused her of supporting BDS, a charge that Nini unequivocally denied. Not only did JNF Canada’s move prove unsuccessful in getting Nini’s performance cancelled, it backfired spectacularly when the Israeli embassy in Ottawa and the Israeli consulate in Toronto stepped in to sponsor the concert in JNF’s place. In other words, JNF Canada takes a more hardline view of who and what is considered to be so objectionably anti-Israel that it requires disassociation from the offending party or views than does the government of Israel itself.

Exhibit B: The Republican debates and victory (or pseudo victory) speeches on primary nights have been sprinkled with references to Israel and what it means to be an Israel supporter. With the notable exception of Donald Trump – a topic I can’t quite decide to write about or to avoid like the plague – the GOP candidates take a reliably right-leaning view on Israel that supports Prime Minister Netanyahu and his policies, and they use these expressions of support as a cudgel against President Obama and his Democratic heir apparent, whomever he or she may be. Nevertheless, the Republican support for Israel tends to veer into territory that is actually out of sync with the stated policies of the Israeli government or the overwhelming consensus of Israeli generals and security officials. When Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio state that their support for Israel requires them to rip up the Iran nuclear deal on their first day in office, this does not comport with the near-consensus opinion of the IDF and Mossad that the Iran deal is imperfect but has at a minimum temporarily removed the threat of a nuclear Iran. When candidates for president decry even attempting to negotiate a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, they are implicitly trashing the current and past Netanyahu governments, which have engaged in negotiations multiple times. When Cruz dubs John Kerry the most anti-Israel secretary of state in U.S. history, as he did at the debate last Thursday night, he is going to be hard pressed to find one Israeli cabinet official or MK who agrees with him, and he contradicts numerous public defenses of Kerry by Netanyahu. It is silly to pretend that the current Israeli government is enamored of the Obama administration, but it is a surreal scene when the men fighting to be the Republican standard bearer are more hawkish on Israel than its own government.

I do not mean to suggest that there aren’t people or organizations legitimately outside the pro-Israel tent, since there are. Had Nini really supported BDS, then I would have no problem with JNF Canada pulling its sponsorship. If John Kerry opposed American diplomatic recognition of Israel, as George Marshall did in 1948, then perhaps Cruz’s hyperbolic hysterics would be justified. But when you brand someone as an unacceptable Israel-hater and the Israeli government steps in to counter the charge, it is probably time to rethink your priorities and worldview. Not only does it make for foolish optics, it makes for bad policy. The reality is that most people in the world, and even most Diaspora Jews, are not going to support the most hardline and hawkish positions on Israel, and so out pro-Israeling even the Israeli government is guaranteed to create an orthodoxy on Israel that is severely limiting. There are advantages to maintaining ideological purity, but winning a broad base of supporters is not one of them. In a time when Israel needs all of the friends it can get and is searching for relatable faces to present to the world, rooting out imaginary anti-Israel monsters hiding under the bed does Israel and its government no favors.

Is It Wrong To Want A Jewish Mayor Of Jerusalem?

February 25, 2016 § 5 Comments

When Labor leader Buji Herzog rolled out his unilateral disengagement plan a couple of weeks ago – a plan that I think can be a positive step if it incorporates a number of critical components – he made a comment during a Knesset debate that rankled people and drew condemnations for appealing to racist logic. The comment was that if separation from the Palestinians does not happen soon, Jerusalem risks having an Arab mayor, with the obvious implication that this would be a bad thing that should be prevented. So at the risk of plunging into treacherous waters on this topic, is it wrong to want the mayor of Israel’s capital to be Jewish?

A simple answer might be yes. While discrimination and intolerance exist in Israeli politics and society – as they do in the politics and society of every country on Earth – Israel’s testament to being a democracy is that it has full political rights for all of its citizens. As there are Arab members of Knesset, Arab judges on the High Court of Justice, and Arab officers in the military, there is no reason why there cannot or should not be an Arab mayor of Jerusalem. To warn against such an eventuality is to transform Israel from being a Jewish state into a state only for Jews. It is easy to see why people took offense at what Herzog said.

But in this instance, this particular simple answer is insufficient. Let’s begin with some context. The idea of separation is not only Herzog’s main selling point but the animating idea behind the withdrawal plan itself, since it views separating from the Palestinians as soon as possible as so crucial that it throws out the Oslo framework with which the Labor Party is so strongly associated. The premise behind this is twofold, one that deals with the here and now and one that deals with the bigger picture. The here and now is the current security breakdown where violence has returned to Israel’s streets, and so Herzog is repeating an idea that has been largely associated with the right, which is to retreat behind a wall. The bigger picture is the more interesting one though, because it deals with the central principle of Zionism, which is the establishment of a Jewish state, and whether Zionism is a legitimate political movement.

When Herzog warned against the looming danger of an Arab mayor of Jerusalem, I don’t think this was a dogwhistle meant to appeal to anti-Arab sentiment. I get why some may think so, given the plain language involved and coming against the backdrop of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s infamous and abhorrent election night exhortation to rightwing voters to come to the polls and counter the Arab voters “coming out in droves.” I certainly cannot say definitively that Herzog wasn’t drawing from the same ugly well. But my reading of his comment in the larger context is that separation from the Palestinians is needed to secure the Zionist dream, and his invoking of Jerusalem was a clumsy shortcut to making that point. Zionism is nothing more and nothing less than an expression of Jewish nationalism, and the dream of Jewish nationalism necessarily involves Jewish officials exercising sovereignty in a Jewish state. Does it mean that only Jews are allowed into the political arena? Nope. But it’s not outrageous to express a wish that the mayor of the Jewish state’s capital city be Jewish, particularly given that Jews were barred from the Holy Basin when it was under Jordanian control between 1948 and 1967.

The entire premise behind the two-state solution is to preserve Jewish nationalist aspirations, which are at risk in a binational state when that state is no longer majority Jewish. I will not condemn anyone who suggests that Jewish leadership of a Jewish state is a desired goal, since to do otherwise is to flirt with the idea that Zionism is racism. Nobody will blink in the future at the suggestion that the mayor of East Jerusalem – presumably the capital of an independent Palestine – be Palestinian, and that will be neither a racist nor an unreasonable expectation. Herzog was expressing the flip side of that sentiment in the present, albeit in an awkward manner given that Jerusalem is not currently divided between two states. I don’t read it as an attempt to disenfranchise Jerusalem’s Arab residents – and I’d note that the fact that Herzog brings up the possibility is evidence that he isn’t trying to do so – but as an inarticulate way of expressing that without separation, the Zionist goal of a Jewish state is in danger. I for one would have no problem with an Arab mayor of Jerusalem, but there is little question that Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem is an integral part of Zionism and powerful imagery to evoke.

What Herzog said was largely deemed to be an ordinary statement in Israel because it resonated with many Israeli Jews as a simple explication of Zionist aspirations. This is not because Israeli Jews are racists seeking to keep their fellow Arab citizens down, and it is not because the state would ever prevent an elected Arab mayor of Jerusalem from taking office. It is because they rightly and justifiably view Zionism as just as legitimate as any other form of nationalism, and Jerusalem represents the very heart of Jewish nationalist aspirations. It is no coincidence that Herzog didn’t warn about an Arab mayor of Haifa or Ashdod. I do not begrudge anyone who calls out Herzog for his comment, but it is simply not the same as Netanyahu raising the alarm about the looming peril of Arab votes. It involves a larger question of whether one sees Zionism as inherently racist or as a legitimate nationalist movement of a long-oppressed people.

How To Lose Friends And Not Influence Anyone

February 18, 2016 § 4 Comments

Israel in the last week has presented two classic case studies on strategic blundering and on precisely how not to conduct a successful foreign policy. One of these cases resulted in little more than embarrassment, but the other will actually have tangible consequences for Israel’s security and long-term military planning. Let’s look at both to see if there are any lessons to be learned for Israel going forward.

The first is the fight with the European Union over labeling goods made in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. When the EU issued its labeling guidelines, the Israeli government’s response was to officially suspend diplomatic contacts with the EU on the topic of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This was not merely a cosmetic measure; it came on the heels of Israel withdrawing from bilateral forums with the EU and calling the EU ambassador to Israel on the carpet, and was seen as Israel’s harshest available punishment against the EU in response to the labeling initiative. The presumed intention behind this move was to force the EU to reconsider, admit that it had gone too far, and withdraw the decision. Israel wasn’t wrong; I think that Israel was largely in the right given the way the EU guidelines differentiate between Jewish goods and Palestinian goods (an element that the U.S. guidelines do not have). But Prime Minister Netanyahu, the cabinet, and politicians across the entire spectrum made a big deal over the limited suspension of diplomatic contacts, and played it up as Israel using its power to change EU policy.

So you can imagine just how embarrassed Netanyahu and the government must have been last week when the suspension of diplomatic contacts was halted despite the EU not withdrawing its labeling guidelines. Furthermore, during the conversation between Netanyahu and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini in which Netanyahu agreed to end the diplomatic suspension, Mogherini specifically reiterated the EU’s view that labeling does not constitute a boycott and did not promise that no further measures would be forthcoming. In other words, Israel accomplished nothing but angering EU countries even further, and possibly shot itself in the foot by prompting the emerging French initiative for an international peace conference. The bluster and rage turned out to be irrelevant at best and counterproductive at worst.

The second case is still developing, but it is over the amount of annual U.S. military assistance to Israel. Close followers of this issue will recall that in the aftermath of the absolutely disastrous maneuver that was Netanyahu’s speech to Congress last March, Israel repeatedly deferred discussing the next ten year Memorandum of Understanding that would govern the amount and type of aid until after the Iran deal was either accepted or rejected by Congress – despite the fact that it was clear as day that the votes to reject it were not there – while Israeli officials anonymously expressed confidence that it wouldn’t matter. Except that now it turns out that rejecting repeated U.S. offers to negotiate did in fact matter, as Israel is unhappy with what is now being offered and Israeli officials now anonymously express that Israel would have received a deal more to their liking had they not waited until the Iran deal was concluded and implemented. My guess is that ultimately the aid package will be more than Israel is being offered right now but still less than Israeli officials were anticipating over the spring and summer when they were casually tossing out the number of $5 billion annually as if it was signed, sealed, delivered. Make no mistake though, this is a strategic failure of enormous magnitude, and is just the latest fallout from last March’s speech, which brought Israel not a single measurable benefit.

So what are the lessons from these two episodes for Israeli strategic engagement and diplomacy going forward? Some people will no doubt infer from both of them that the European Union and the Obama administration are out to get Israel and jumped at the chance to do so. I think, however, that there are more level-headed takeaways. First, leverage is paramount in any negotiation and Israel plunged headfirst into both when its leverage was about as weak as it could be. Jerusalem went hard after the EU after Netanyahu and the cabinet had spent over a year making it clear that they were not interested in any type of peace process and only a few days after Netanyahu had rejected separate U.S. and Quartet entreaties to take steps in the West Bank that would demonstrate a commitment to two states. Similarly, Israel purposely put off negotiations over the aid MOU until it had no cards left to play on the Iran deal and after the world had largely moved on. When the U.S. and other world powers were focused on mitigating the Iran threat, then Israel was in the best position to push for military assistance that would blunt that threat. But even in foreign policy, states and leaders have short attention spans, and now that the bandwidth is being consumed almost entirely by Syria and most American decision makers view the threat from Iran as having been temporarily rectified, Israel is not going to find itself with quite so receptive an audience.

Second is that Israel made the mistake of behaving like a global power rather than the regional power that it is. It is mind-boggling that Netanyahu or anyone else genuinely thought that suspending some diplomatic contacts with the EU was going to rattle it into changing its policies in fear of what might come next. It is mind-boggling that Netanyahu or anyone else genuinely thought that it could get anything and everything that it wanted from this administration or any administration (remember how President George W. Bush refused to give Israel bunker busters in 2008?) no matter the context. This isn’t a matter of states disrespecting the world’s only Jewish state. It is a matter of an ironclad law of international relations, which is that relative power matters. Israel too often acts as if it is dealing with equals when in fact it is the subordinate party when it comes to the EU and even more so the U.S.

Finally, as with Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, there is an element of hubris and a complete misreading of domestic politics involved. The settlement labeling initiative, which passed the European Parliament 525-70, isn’t even a close call in European politics; the idea that the Israeli government believed that it could downgrade relations with the EU and get a different result was hopelessly naïve. Truth be told, Israel’s response probably only reinforced for many European leaders that they were making the right move. On the U.S. side of things, following the Congressional speech debacle, months of intensive lobbying against President Obama’s signature foreign policy priority, and open statements and insinuations that the White House wasn’t smart or knowledgeable enough to know what it was doing, Israel expected none of these factors to impact at all on dealings going forward. To call this foolish is being charitable. This isn’t to say that Israel shouldn’t have taken these steps if it actually thought that they would affect the outcome of the Iran deal, but that it shouldn’t have done them without first thinking through the consequences and accepting the costs. These are all things that should be on the minds of Israel’s leaders going forward when they make decisions on which pitches to swing at and which pitches to take.

What To Do About Gaza?

February 16, 2016 § 4 Comments

I wrote a piece last week for Foreign Affairs about why Israel must do all that it can to prevent another war in Gaza with some suggestions for how Israel can accomplish this. The article can be read at this link on the Foreign Affairs website, and I have reproduced it below.

While Israelis focus on the violence emanating from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Hamas has been quietly gearing up for its own next round of fighting. It is rebuilding its tunnel network while replenishing its rocket caches and improving its intelligence capabilities. Israel was caught off guard by Hamas’ attack tunnels during the 2014 war, and Hamas is trying to ensure that they penetrate further into Israel during the next effort. The group is working nearly around the clock to dig and reinforce a maze that lies as much as 100 feet below the ground. For Israel, larger conventional threats from Iran and Hezbollah might be a bigger problem, but Hamas is a more combustible one. The next war thus seems inevitable, a question of when rather than if—at least as judged by the matter-of-fact way in which politicians such as Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid already discuss the causes of fighting that is yet to break out.

As much as the die feels cast, this is a war that Israel’s energies should be channeled into avoiding. It goes without saying that another war will bring with it a tragically high number of Palestinian civilian casualties given Hamas’ purposeful entrenchment in civilian areas. The Israeli side will not be spared either. The last rounds of fighting in Gaza—Cast Lead in 2008, Pillar of Defense in 2012, and the more recent Protective Edge in 2014—did not lead to high Israeli civilian casualty counts, but the psychological toll should not be discounted. Israelis were justifiably shaken by the constant running to air raid shelters and the heavy reliance on the Iron Dome anti-missile system during the last round of fighting. On both sides, psychological trauma contributes to hardened attitudes that make the Israeli–Palestinian conflict more difficult to resolve. To assume that another round of fighting with Hamas and other groups in Gaza will be relatively cost-free for Israel, then, is to ignore how the recent wars have harmed Israel in real ways.

Hamas is engaged in a battle in the West Bank with the Palestinian Authority (PA) for the hearts and minds of Palestinians, and the PA is losing badly. The latest Palestinian poll shows that PA President Mahmoud Abbas would lose in a head-to-head election with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh; that Hamas would beat Abbas’ Fatah in legislative elections in the West Bank; and that two-thirds of Palestinians support the current wave of knife attacks on Israelis and believe that an armed intifada would be more beneficial than negotiations. Given these numbers, should Hamas be at the forefront of another fight with Israel in Gaza, the result will be an even larger increase in Hamas’ popularity at the expense of the PA, and could plausibly lead to the nightmare scenario for Israel of the PA’s complete collapse.

The damage to Israel in that scenario cannot be overstated. The hallmark of the past decade of relative quiet has been Israeli and Palestinian joint security cooperation—cooperation that is deeply unpopular with the Palestinian public. Should the PA disappear, the Israeli Defense Forces will have to reoccupy Palestinian cities and expend time and resources that it can ill afford in policing and administering the West Bank. A war in Gaza will also further radicalize Palestinians both inside Israel and in the West Bank by stoking nationalist tensions and giving credence to the argument that only through armed resistance can Palestinian national aspirations be realized. An increased campaign of terrorism against Israelis will almost certainly be the end result.In deciding whether to initiate a war with Israel, Hamas is responding to two different pressures. The first comes from even more radical jihadi groups in Gaza, such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad and others affiliated with al Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS), which denigrate Hamas as weak-kneed and unwilling to resist Israel. The second comes from the public, which—as demonstrated in the poll numbers—sees no path to any improvement in the abysmal standards of daily life in Gaza and supports armed resistance as the only possible way out. Fighting a two-front battle is difficult and could leave Hamas with no choice but to launch a war, whether it wants to hold off or not.

It will be easier for Hamas to hold the line against more radical groups, though, if the concerns of the public can be somewhat alleviated. The key to avoiding another Gaza war is thus providing Palestinians in Gaza some breathing space while simultaneously making it harder for Hamas to carry out successful strikes within Israel. Even if this process creates its own set of security problems, it is a far better outcome than risking the conflagration a Gaza war may set off.

One element of such a strategy would be relaxing some of the restrictions on what goes into Gaza. Over the past year, the number of Israeli trucks into Gaza has steadily increased, from 5,249 in February 2015 to 12,418 in December, which is a trend that must continue. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken in the past about the importance of allowing Gaza to be rebuilt in order to avoid new rounds of fighting, and there is evidence that the government is haltingly embracing this position. The number of items that make it across the border should be expanded as well. Wood planks are critical to a functioning Gaza economy due to their necessity for Gaza’s furniture factories, and allowing them in— despite their use in tunnel construction—is a risk worth taking when Israel has been permitting higher amounts of the more dangerous cement to enter Gaza. Another crucial element is fixing the electricity and water shortages. Both of these are dependent on Israeli largesse, and despite ongoing disputes over payments to Israel’s electric authority, the fact that Gazan sewage is beginning to wash up onto Tel Aviv beaches should be enough to convince Israel that the investment would be worthwhile. If chronic electricity and water shortages are not addressed soon, it is not unthinkable that Israel will be facing thousands of Gazans trying to breach the border fence on a daily basis.

On the other side of this equation, Israel should be taking a cue from Egypt and doing all it can to flood and destroy attack tunnels that residents of Gaza periphery communities can hear being dug underneath their homes. While providing residents of Gaza with reasons to want to avoid a war, Israel must also deter Hamas from launching one. Going after the tunnels now rather than waiting until they are used should, at the very least, set back the timetable for the next war and alleviate concerns that relaxing the Gaza blockade will only lead to more attacks on Israelis.

There is no perfect answer for Israel. Hamas’ very reason for being is resistance, and it is naive to think that the group will change. Nevertheless, Hamas has indicated an interest in maintaining ceasefires before when Israel has taken steps to make the reconstruction of Gaza easier and when Hamas has felt that it can maintain the upper hand against even harder line groups without resorting to an inevitable military loss against the Israeli Defense Forces. The damage that another Gaza war will cause makes it worth doing everything possible to keep the current ceasefire going. Anything that Israel does to avoid an outbreak of fighting will empower Hamas in some way, but the alternative is far worse.

The Perfect and the Good

February 11, 2016 § 5 Comments

Labor leader Buji Herzog did something unusual this week for a man who leads Israel’s traditionally largest party on the left. He got the party of Yitzhak Rabin and Oslo, of Ehud Barak and Camp David, to temporarily throw in the towel on the peace process and negotiations, and to embrace unilateral separation from the Palestinians instead. Herzog’s plan calls for Israel to freeze all building outside the settlement blocs, retain the blocs, and complete the security fence in order to establish a provisional border; convert parts of Area C to Area B, thereby transferring administrative control to the Palestinian Authority; and separating Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem from the Jerusalem municipality. The plan is predicated on the principle that a two-state vision is currently impossible to implement under the framework of permanent status negotiations, and that the only path forward is to preserve the two-state vision while doing everything possible to separate from the Palestinians until the environment is more conducive to negotiations. As someone who wrote with Jordan Hirsch in Foreign Affairs in August 2014 that Israel should unilaterally pull out of the West Bank and kill the peace process in order to save the two-state solution, Herzog’s general approach here is one that I favor.

But the plan has many vocal critics who raise valid concerns. Within Labor itself, former Labor leader Shelley Yachimovich has come out against it and is likely to use opposition to the plan as a springboard to challenge Herzog for the party leadership. While Yachimovich is motivated as much by politics as anything else, other critics on the left have pointed to specific aspects of the plan that they contend will cut off Palestinians from the Old City of Jerusalem, or make it harder for the Palestinians to get the land swaps they want in return for Israel annexing the blocs, or doom the two-state solution by abandoning it and empowering the current government. What much of this boils down to is opposition to Herzog’s attempts at triangulation; ditching the formula of permanent status negotiations, which is the only way of arriving at a fair and equitable solution for all sides, in favor of a stopgap strategy that will make some things better and other things worse but certainly prioritize Israel’s interests at the Palestinians’ expense.

These arguments carry a lot of weight. Any temporary measure that ends up making the situation in Jerusalem worse or turns into a permanent land grab is ultimately not sustainable. Nevertheless, I think Herzog’s measure can theoretically be a good initial step if it is done right. In order to do it right, it will also have to incorporate three Ds – define, develop, and defend. Without these, its critics are correct that it will only establish facts on the ground without moving the two sides closer to a sustainable and permanent solution.

Any plan that effectively prioritizes the settlement blocs while freezing settlement activity outside of them can only work if the blocs are defined. Everyone throws the term “blocs” around as if they constitute an agreed-upon area, but it means different things to different people. The blocs that Israel will keep in any permanent status negotiation need to be identified definitively; for instance, including the Etzion bloc as part of Israel is an easy one, but Ariel juts much farther out into the West Bank, so does a settlement freeze outside the blocs include or exclude Ariel? Furthermore, once it is settled just which blocs we are talking about, the precise borders of each bloc need to be delineated so that they don’t keep on expanding and swallow up more of the land that will go to an eventual Palestinian state. Without defining the blocs, calling for a settlement freeze outside of them is an empty gesture.

Separating from the Palestinians without a plan to develop the West Bank is another necessary condition for the success of a unilateral strategy. Herzog hints at this through his recommendation to enlarge Area B at the expense of Area C, but it can’t simply be foisting more responsibility on the Palestinian Authority and then dusting off your hands. It must also include exponential expansion of the building permits granted to Palestinians in Area C – of which only one was granted in all of 2014 – while eliminating the absurd amounts of red tape that cause goods for Palestinian towns to languish in Israeli ports (such as pipes for the new reservoir that is supposed to supply Bethlehem with water). Without building up the West Bank economy and actually giving it a chance to flourish, separation will do nothing but create a boiling cauldron on the Palestinian side of the fence.

Finally and most crucially, for any unilateral separation to eventually result in a genuine two-state outcome, defense of Israel and security issues must be addressed. The reason that Bibi Netanyahu wins election after election is because, irrespective of anything else that goes on, he has his pulse on Israelis’ psyches and the genuine fear that has dominated Israeli life since the Second Intifada. Israelis are not willing to play games with security, and no Israeli government will ever be party to the creation of a Palestinian state unless and until Israelis feel assured that the West Bank will not present a permanent security threat. This means that if unilateral separation is supposed to move Israel toward two states while waiting for a more opportune moment to resume negotiations – and I don’t doubt that this is Herzog’s wish and intention – then there must be continued coordination with the PA security forces, a robust plan for how to secure the Jordan Valley, and a mechanism for correcting the currently wholly inadequate Palestinian police coverage in Areas A and B. Defending Israelis’ daily security and providing them with a sense of calm in the aftermath of any unilateral separation is the only way to build enough trust in laying the groundwork on the Israeli side for a negotiated solution in the future.

When thinking about two states, a common mistake is to conflate the peace process with the two-state solution. Tom Friedman committed this cardinal error just yesterday, writing that because the peace process is dead, the two-state solution dies with it. They aren’t the same thing. The peace process is the perfect ideal, while the two-state solution is a good result. Any viable plan has to take the politics of the moment into account, and the politics of the moment clearly dictate that pushing negotiations on two unwilling parties is an unmitigated disaster. One can take the Netanyahu approach, which is to sit on one’s hands and do nothing, or one can try to advance an alternative that is highly suboptimal but that beats the status quo. I would rather see the latter option be tried rather than continuing to sacrifice the good on the altar of the perfect.

Truth In Advertising

February 4, 2016 § 1 Comment

There has been much sound and fury over the past couple of weeks over labeling; more specifically, over the labeling rules for goods coming into the United States that are produced in the West Bank. There is lots of misinformation going around about the rules and even why they are now in the news, so in order to make it easier to have an informed opinion, I thought I’d write a quick and handy guide to the labeling controversy answering everyone’s questions.

Why is the Obama administration coming up with new ways to punish Israelis when there are much bigger problems going on in the Middle East? Actually, the Obama administration didn’t come up with anything new here at all. The labeling controversy erupted as a result of U.S. Customs and Border Protection issuing a reminder on January 23 about the existing rules on the books for how products made in the West Bank must be labeled. The rules, which were enacted in 1995 with the support of the Israeli government as a way to boost the Palestinian economy, state that any products made in the West Bank or Gaza shall be labeled as coming from the West Bank or Gaza but cannot be labeled with the phrases “Israel,” “Made in Israel,” “Occupied Territories-Israel,” or a similar variation. It is an open question as to why Customs decided to issue this reminder now for a rule that has been honored more by its breach than its enforcement. It could have been a matter of routine, it could have been as a result of outside complaints, it could have been due to the new EU settlement goods regulation, or it could have been because the White House or State Department asked for it to be done. For those who want to assume the worst and jump on President Obama for his perfidious treatment of Israel, however, let’s remember that the same people now calling for the president’s head over a low level bureaucratic organization issuing a policy reminder twisted themselves into knots in insisting that Prime Minister Netanyahu was entirely in the dark when a low level bureaucratic organization issued plans for new construction in Ramat Shlomo during Vice President Biden’s visit to Israel in March 2010. Funny how all perceived affronts to the U.S. committed by Israel are nothing but unfortunate mistakes of timing or bureaucratic slip ups beyond the prime minister’s control, but any perceived false move toward Israel from one of the executive branch’s four and a half million employees must have been cooked up in the Oval Office by the president himself. 

Who cares whether the president did this himself or not? How dare anyone allow the boycott of goods made by Israelis! Why is the president supporting BDS? I agree; economic and cultural boycotts of Israel and Israelis are odious in my view, and the BDS movement is about destroying Israel as a Jewish state rather than ending the occupation of the West Bank. Of course, we may as well be discussing the merits of the revamped Boston Red Sox starting pitching staff as discussing BDS, since they both are equally irrelevant to the topic at hand. As we all know from the Israeli government’s position over Israel’s proposed NGO bill, labeling things is about transparency and information rather than about a value judgment. In any event, whether you think that labeling things is justified or not, it is certainly a completely different animal than a boycott since it places no barriers on anyone’s ability to buy goods made in the West Bank.

Ok, fine. But the Obama administration is singling out stuff made by Jews! Isn’t that only a short skip and a jump away from the Nazis and the Nuremberg Laws? This is a popular position being expressed in my Facebook feed, but it has the unfortunate element of being not true. The key difference between U.S. labeling requirements and European labeling requirements is that the U.S. does not distinguish between goods made by Jews or Palestinians, or between goods produced in Jewish settlements versus goods produced in Palestinian towns and villages. To suggest that this is a measure targeting Jews is completely wrong, since a widget produced in Efrat is given the same label as a widget produced in Jenin. In fact, the American labeling regulation should actually appeal in many ways to the pro-Israel community, since it does not allow for a category of “Made in Palestine,” which the EU explicitly mandates as an option, and it also rules out using the phrase “Occupied Territories.” Unlike the EU regulation, the U.S. version explicitly recognizes that the West Bank is disputed territory still subject to negotiation.

Your absence of outrage over this is outrageous. Why aren’t you angry? Quite simply, this is a policy that not only makes sense to me, but comports with Israel’s official position on the West Bank. Israel has not annexed the West Bank, and the core of the defense of Israeli democracy despite the occupation is precisely that the West Bank has a different status. Mirroring Israel’s treatment of the West Bank as a distinctly separate entity without prejudicing the outcome of any future permanent status agreement is something with which I find it hard to quibble.

Furthermore, maintaining a conceptual barrier between Israel and the West Bank makes it harder to delegitimize Israel down the road. Conflation of Israel and the West Bank is precisely what the BDS movement tries to accomplish through the back door. It denounces Israel’s occupation of the West Bank but also denounces Israel’s very existence as a Jewish state by calling for a full right of return, and by relying on people not sophisticated enough to grasp the distinction between Israel and territories under Israel’s control, it marshals those who oppose the occupation into actually opposing Israel itself. The very core of the BDS argument – that Israel is an illegitimate apartheid state – rests on erasing any line between Israel and the territories under Israeli military control and then arguing that robust Israeli democracy inside of the Green Line makes no difference because of what takes place beyond it. Why should the U.S. assist in this maneuver by itself erasing the difference? People will make up their own minds as to whether the U.S. rule on labeling is innocuous or an affront, but to throw a fit over a reminder about a twenty year old law that was enacted at Israel’s behest; that in no way boycotts Israeli goods but in fact treats all goods made in the West Bank identically irrespective of who made them; that does not use the terms Palestine or occupation; and that reflects Israel’s own view of the West Bank’s status; is to my mind a waste of energy that should be directed elsewhere.

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