How Free Is Israel’s Media?
August 4, 2016 § 3 Comments
This past spring, in a move that largely slipped under the radar, Freedom House downgraded Israel’s press freedom status from free to partly free. Freedom House cited “the growing impact of Israel Hayom, whose owner-subsidized business model endangered the stability of other media outlets” as the primary reason for the status change, and also noted Prime Minister Netanyahu’s control over regulating the media through his own assumption of the communications portfolio. Then this past Sunday, New York-based Israeli journalist Ruth Margalit wrote an op-ed in the New York Times that went significantly further, charging that Netanyahu is stifling the press across the board, trying to “fragment” the television market in a ploy to control coverage, and working to turn the media into his own personal mouthpiece. So are things really as dire as Margalit portrays them, and is Freedom House correct to no longer describe Israel as having a free press?
This is not the first time that Freedom House has downgraded Israeli press freedom in its rankings. In 2013, it also moved Israel from the free column to the partly free column, and it cited the influence of Israel Hayom then too. I wrote at the time that the designation rang hollow given that every objection listed in the Freedom House report was immediately followed (or preceded) by a disclaimer modifying most of the actual objection or admitting that the objection has not yet come to pass, and this year’s report suffers from the same flaw.
Freedom House ranks countries’ press freedom in three categories – legal, political, and economic environments – and it left Israel’s first two unchanged from last year while downgrading the economic environment two points. The section on the economic environment talks about the pressure created by Israel Hayom on the financial sustainability of other papers since Israel Hayom – or the Bibiton, as it is pejoratively referred to by many – is distributed for free, and also criticizes the proliferation of paid content.
Israel Hayom is a blatant vehicle for pro-Netanyahu propaganda, funded at a loss of tens of millions of shekels a year by non-Israeli citizen Sheldon Adelson, and given out for free in order to make sure that it has Israel’s highest circulation. In other words, a foreign billionaire is making an indirect monetary contribution to the prime minister every day in order to influence Israeli opinion in the prime minister’s favor and crowd out critical voices. Nobody will objectively look at this and say that it’s not a huge problem, but to infer that Israel’s press is only partly free now because Israel Hayom may eventually push other newspapers out of business (despite the fact that it hasn’t yet happened) is jumping the gun.
Margalit’s criticism also focuses on Israel Hayom but is much broader. Her contention that Netanyahu is not satisfied with having one newspaper in his pocket but wants to have every media outlet submit to his control certainly has elements of truth. There is little question that Netanyahu does much to pressure and cajole favorable coverage for himself in a variety of ways, from using subordinates to intimidate journalists to complaining about headlines to leaning on wealthy media magnates who are either supporters or who want some favor from the government. This should not be whitewashed. I have heard stories from Israeli journalists about being pressured to write about certain things and not to write about others. Many are hounded incessantly on social media as leftists for challenging the government in campaigns that seem to be encouraged by the government itself. There have been ongoing controversies the past few months over Galei Tzahal (Army Radio) and ministers trying to dictate what songs are played and what poems are read. During a cabinet meeting on Sunday, Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev complained that the government doesn’t have enough direct control of the media, sparking a fight between Likud ministers and Habayit Hayehudi ministers that has continued into this week, in which the latter accused the former of trying to stamp out free media and the former accused the latter of being “champions of the left.”
But the problem also should not be blown out of proportion. To begin with, some of Margalit’s assertions are oddly off-base. She brings up the government shuttering the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA) as proof that Netanyahu is trying to control the news, when in reality he is madly trying to postpone the closing of the IBA and the opening of its replacement because he is afraid that the new broadcasting authority will be too independent. She claims that “most Israelis are getting their news from Israel Hayom or Walla News” as a way of proving that Netanyahu’s efforts are not about countering leftwing bias, but Israel Hayom and Yediot Ahronot are very close in their market share – 40.8% to 35.2% – and equating Israel Hayom (quite literally a propaganda mouthpiece) with an internet news portal that employs legitimate and dogged reporters like Amir Tibon and Tal Shalev is the same as comparing Pravda with Yahoo News. As Liel Leibovitz points out in Tablet, Netanyahu’s fight to control the media is in many ways a tussle between right and left playing out in the media landscape rather than in the halls of the Knesset, which doesn’t make it better but at least provides some context. But the most effective counterargument to Margalit is the content of the Israeli press itself. Israel’s press is far from perfect, but spend one day reading Israeli newspapers and watching Israeli television – where this week alone Ben Caspit in the rightwing Ma’ariv referenced Netanyahu’s “political commissars” and Finance Ministry “jackboots” – and tell me that Israeli journalists have been cowed into silence due to government intimidation. It doesn’t mean that the intimidation doesn’t exist, but that Israel’s press is still unmistakably free.
Finally, remember that this problem is not unique to Israel among Western democracies. The fact that Fox News is owned by a billionaire supporter of Republican policies and causes, or that Breitbart reads as if its headlines are written directly by Trump campaign staffers, or that the White House brings enormous pressure to bear on editors and reporters to craft stories that support its interests, does not mean that the U.S. does not have a free press. It means that there is no such thing as unbiased news; that reporters have always had to and always will walk a line between the companies or people that pay their salaries and the people who consume their products; and that the fact that people increasingly gravitate toward sources that support their own political biases means we need to be even more vigilant about recognizing our preferred sources’ biases and figuring out how much to trust. That is true if you are Israeli and it is true if you are American.
Hold Democrats Accountable On Israel Too
July 28, 2016 § 6 Comments
I have been unsparing in my criticism of Republican positions on Israel this campaign season, and particularly those held by the (no longer presumptive) nominee and his team of one-staters. I make no secret of the fact that I see Donald Trump’s views on Israel as incoherent at best and a dumpster fire at worst, and the fact that Republicans have, despite some laudable exceptions, quietly acceded to Trump upending years of established Republican – and largely bipartisan – policy on Israel is not their finest moment. If Trump loses, one of the most entertaining sideshows of the next few years will be watching his currently eager but future shamefaced supporters walking back not only their laudatory expressions of support for him personally but the absurd positions they embraced on his behalf, and hopefully the more-hawkish-than-Bibi position will fall under this umbrella. The Republicans have the problem that they are becoming comfortable with positions on Israel that are absurdly unrealistic and will damage Israel in the long run, but events at the Democratic convention are demonstrating that the Republicans are not alone. If the Republicans are hurting Israel by emboldening its most extreme instincts, the Democrats are doing so by giving those who possess the extreme instincts legitimate cause for concern.
On Monday, speaking at an event on the sidelines of the convention, Representative Hank Johnson stridently criticized Israeli settlement activity. The problem is that in doing so, he referred to Israeli settlers as termites; made the blanket assertion that Israelis are not building their own neighborhoods but that, in his words, “you see one home after another being appropriated by Jewish people who come in to claim that land just because somebody did not spend the night there;” and falsely charged that Israel has banned Palestinians from displaying the Palestinian flag. I understand why Johnson is upset at Israeli policies in the West Bank, and I share his frustration. What I don’t share is his view that it is appropriate to compare Israelis to vermin or to just make stuff up in order to paint a bad situation with an even darker brush. On Monday afternoon, Johnson tweeted an apology for his “poor choice of words,” referring to comparing Israelis to termites, but that actually misses the point. It is the exaggerated charges that are the truly damaging aspects of what Johnson said. Democrats who supported Hillary Clinton and Democrats who supported Bernie Sanders dislike Israel’s settlement policy, and it is reasonable to expect Democratic politicians to criticize it given their voters’ preferences. But whipping people up into an ignorant frenzy by insinuating that the bulk of settlement activity consists of Israelis lurking in the weeds, just waiting for Palestinians to spend a night out of town and then taking over their houses, is grossly irresponsible. Israel’s settlement policy – which, yes, sometimes involves building on privately owned Palestinian land – is bad enough on its own that it doesn’t need to be embellished, and it is this type of rhetoric that gives cover to the farthest right of Israel’s rightwing by allowing them to claim that criticism of Israel is little more than lies and hate.
Yet more extreme behavior was on display Tuesday outside of the convention hall, as a rowdy group of louts burned an Israeli flag and chanted “long live the intifada,” no doubt demonstrating their desire for a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and their commitment to two states for two peoples. Now, this is not activity sanctioned by the Democratic Party and so to blame it on national Democrats is simply unfair; in fact, the flag burners appear to have been part of a larger group protesting Democratic policy more widely. But just as there is something about Trump that draws white supremacists to him like moths to a flame, the fact that those on the left advocating for ethnic cleansing of Israeli Jews think that they will manage to get a sympathetic hearing from people attending the convention in Philadelphia says something. These kinds of views must be unequivocally denounced, and putting Cornel West – who has accused Bibi Netanyahu of war crimes and talks about “the role of money and lobbies” when discussing Israel policy – on the Democratic platform committee sends a message of a different type.
I do not mean to suggest an absolute equivalence here where both sides are suffering on the same level. On the Republican side, we are dealing with a nominee and a platform whose Israel policy is off the rails, while on the Democratic side we are dealing with a misinformed backbench congressman and some unwashed protestors who are left with burning flags on the wrong side of the convention’s security fence. One party has abandoned the bipartisan consensus on two states while one is still holding the line. That doesn’t change the fact that there is a worrisome undercurrent in the Democratic Party that views Israel as disproportionately bad, and it should and must be called out. Comments like Johnson’s or moves to welcome the BDS movement under the Democratic big tent are wrong on their own, but they are also ultimately damaging by reinforcing the narrative on the right that nothing Israel does will ever be enough, and so better to just damn the torpedoes and go full speed ahead. It is easy to see how Republican policies are driving Israel away from two states. The fact that it is harder to see how some movements within the Democratic Party are accomplishing the same doesn’t mean that it is less worthy of opprobrium.
What Does Turkish Turmoil Mean For Israel?
July 21, 2016 § 2 Comments
As Turkish tanks and F-16s filled the streets and skies of Turkish cities on Friday night in an effort to oust President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the AKP government from power, Israeli officials had cause for anxiety. The newly announced reconciliation deal has been highly touted by both governments, and while the military coup in Egypt that brought President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to power in 2013 has been a boon for Israeli-Egyptian relations, there is no way of knowing what a military government in Turkey would bring. Ultimately, Israel’s initial radio silence and subsequent endorsement of “the democratic process in Turkey” was geared toward sending a message that it hopes reconciliation will continue apace and that is indeed the likely scenario. Nevertheless, the failed Turkish coup is going to affect Israel in other ways, some obvious and some less so.
The reconciliation agreement is still on track according to Turkish officials, and given that the government that negotiated it is still in place, there is no compelling reason to think otherwise. If anything, Turkey will be even more desperate now for Israeli intelligence and military cooperation given that the general who oversaw the army command responsible for securing Turkey’s borders with Syria and Iraq has been arrested as a coup plotter. The same rationales that existed for reconciling with Israel last month still exist today, and while reconciliation may easily get fouled up by other outside events, the Turkish government’s near-miss is not one of them.
In some ways, the events of last weekend actually may make the political relationship between Israel and Turkey stronger. Erdoğan is now laying the groundwork to be stronger domestically than he has been at any point during his tenure at the top of Turkish politics. He is using the coup attempt as an excuse to completely eviscerate all opposition wherever he suspects it lurks, from the military to the judiciary to the primary and higher education systems. His supporters, many of whom already saw him as a demigod above reproach, are now fired up and mobilized to back anything he does, and anyone who stands in the way will immediately be tarred as a Gülen movement terrorist or worse. The chances of Erdoğan now getting the constitution for which he has been pushing that will formally transform Turkey into a presidential system are nearly assured. The upshot of all this is that historically Erdoğan has used Israel as a punching bag when he has felt challenged domestically, or when he has not had a more convenient group on which to pin Turkey’s ills. The all-out war against the Gülenists combined with the fact that Erdoğan is on the verge of truly making himself into a modern day sultan mean that using Israel for nationalist or populist purposes is not going to be the crutch to which he immediately turns. That is not to say that a Turkey going through a period of nationalist-tinged anger is not going to have its share of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment, but Erdoğan has other more pressing targets for now. In the context of Israel being used as an instrument of scorn in the Turkish political arena, a strong Erdoğan is better for Israel than a weak Erdoğan.
On the other hand, the military side of things will be much thornier for reasons that are apparent. The heyday of Israeli-Turkish ties in the 1990s was driven by the countries’ respective militaries, and in some respects Israel may be lucky that the freeze of the past six years means that few in Turkey will have any cause to insinuate Israeli military involvement in a Turkish military coup, despite the fact that one of the ringleaders was a former military attaché to Israel. The purges of the Turkish armed forces began immediately and will be ongoing on a scale that is unprecedented in Turkish history, and any robust relationships between IDF officers and their Turkish counterparts may now all be erased. In addition, the coup attempt was centered around the Turkish air force, which historically had the closest connection to the IDF as a result of quarterly Israeli air force training exercises in Turkey, and so any existing institutional relationship is bound to suffer as the air force is gutted in the wake of the coup plot.
One wildcard for Israel going forward is the rapidly deteriorating U.S.-Turkey relationship, as Turkey demands that the U.S. extradite Fethullah Gülen, whom the government accuses of being behind the coup, and some Turkish cabinet ministers go so far as to blame the U.S. for the coup itself by dint of Gülen’s permanent residence here. Inflammatory Turkish rhetoric against the U.S. is hardening and the Obama administration’s response has been to warn Turkey about maintaining democratic norms and tacitly threatening its NATO status, so this is likely to get worse before it gets better. The U.S. was actively involved in encouraging Israeli-Turkish reconciliation out of a desire to see two of its closest regional allies not be at loggerheads, but a closer Israeli relationship with Turkey will not necessarily win any points with the U.S. should there be a serious falling out between the two NATO allies. While it is difficult to imagine any U.S. administration actively suggest that Israel cool things down with Turkey, there are certainly calculations to be made by Jerusalem as to how much it benefits from moving closer to Turkey just as the U.S. moves in the other direction.
Finally, the upheaval and reprisals in Turkey provide a sobering lesson and a warning sign to both the political and military establishments in Israel. On the one hand, the Turkish chaos presents a clear contrast to Israel, which has a strong army that has always been intimately – albeit informally – involved in politics and a robust military culture but has never suffered a military coup or even been close. The IDF often acts as a brake on politicians, as was the case during the years-long debate over whether to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, but it is never as a result of coercion and there is no question of the primacy of civilian oversight. Israel is, however, right now going through a rocky period in civil-military relations, and it is something that did not develop overnight. The failed coup attempt in Turkey is the result of myriad factors, but a significant one is the buildup of years of resentment from officers who feel that the government has hounded them unfairly, used them as a political tool, and treated them as pawns in larger battles. Israel would be wise to absorb what is going and use it to reinforce the longstanding Israeli ethos of harmonious and mutually beneficial civil-military relations and the necessitude of having a military that is above politics.
The Aftermath of the Failed Turkish Coup
July 18, 2016 § Leave a comment
I tried to tackle the question for Foreign Affairs of what happens next in the wake of last weekend’s tumult in Turkey. You can find the article here.
It is hard to overstate the extent to which fears of a military coup have animated Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s actions as a politician. Conservative and religious Turks have lived for decades under the shadow of the 1960 coup that deposed and executed Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, whom Erdogan frequently refers to as a martyred hero and a cautionary tale. The 1997 “postmodern” coup that deposed Erdogan’s political mentor, Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, and led to Erdogan’s subsequent imprisonment and suspension from politics for religious incitement only reinforced the notion among non-elite Turks that the old secular establishment, of which the army was the cornerstone, would never fully cede power.
It was only when Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) co-founder Abdullah Gül won their 2007 stare-down with the military over Gül’s candidacy for president (which the army opposed because Gül’s wife wore a headscarf), that Erdogan seemed to gain the upper hand and be in position to alter the balance of power with the army for good.
This is the context for the recent Ergenekon and Balyoz trials, in which the government accused Turkish officers of plotting a series of coups and false-flag attacks designed to overthrow the AKP regime—trials that decimated Turkey’s military ranks and that were also subsequently overturned when some of the convictions were found to be based on fabricated evidence.
It is also the context for Erdogan’s fetishization of elections and his majoritarian theory of governance. Both as prime minister and as president, Erdogan repeatedly expressed that elections confer ultimate power and allow the government to take any actions that it likes. Although such attitudes were partly a way of dismissing Turkey’s largely feckless opposition parties, they were also the ultimate line of defense against the military. Erdogan never felt safe from the long arm of the military and always saw the next coup right around the corner. He thus classified every challenge as a plot, whether it came from the military, his former Gülen movement allies, or even from unarmed protestors in Gezi Park.
Erdogan believed that he could get away with such characterizations as long as he could point to high margins of victory on election day and mobilize his supporters in impressive shows of popular strength. These would make it difficult for the military to continue its tradition of intervening in Turkish politics; to overthrow Erdogan and the AKP would be to take on a leader with unprecedented popularity and a party that had been extraordinarily successful.
So it was a surprise on Friday, when tanks rolled through the streets of Istanbul, F-16s flew low over Ankara, and a new entity calling itself the Peace at Home Council announced on Turkish state television that it had taken over the country. Suddenly, it seemed that Erdogan’s worst fears had been realized and that his efforts to coup-proof Turkey had provoked exactly what he was guarding against.
Please head over to Foreign Affairs to read the rest of the piece.
Send In The Clowns
July 14, 2016 § 5 Comments
There is a quip that a camel is a horse designed by committee, a witticism that never seemed truer than it did this week. In a unanimous vote on Tuesday, the Republican Party Platform Committee introduced a new plank on Israel that dropped all references to the two-state solution – references that had been included in every Republican Party platform since 2004 – and made clear that it is taking its cues from Donald Trump. Much like other Trumpian policy positions and pearls of wisdom that emanate from the candidate and his advisers, this one is destined to wither on the vine. But let’s not allow the moment to pass without fully acknowledging its myopic foolishness and what it says about how out of touch with reality the GOP platform delegates are.
The 2012 Republican platform was unequivocal in its support for Israel and its security, and in its appreciation of the shared values between Israel and the U.S. And yet, somehow it did not see the following lines as contradictory to any of that: “We support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state with secure, defensible borders; and we envision two democratic states – Israel with Jerusalem as its capital and Palestine – living in peace and security…. The U.S. seeks a comprehensive and lasting peace in the Middle East, negotiated between the parties themselves with the assistance of the U.S., without the imposition of an artificial timetable.” Republican support for two states was not an accident, and in fact the first president to explicitly call for a Palestinian state was George W. Bush. Republicans have long understood that the two-state solution is the only secure long-term path for Israel, which is why they have embraced it despite serious and valid reservations over whether an independent Palestine will be a viable or peaceful Israeli neighbor. The excising of all mentions of two states is not neutral or innocuous; it is a purposeful reversal of policy, no matter how advocates for the new platform position attempt to spin the development. Removing long-standing language is an active statement, and by cheerleading this process along, Trump and his henchmen are putting the GOP in conflict not only with American policy, but with Israeli policy as well.
In 2009, Prime Minister Netanyahu said, “In my vision of peace, there are two free peoples living side by side in this small land, with good neighborly relations and mutual respect, each with its flag, anthem and government, with neither one threatening its neighbor’s security and existence.” In November 2015, he said, ““I remain committed to a vision of peace of two states for two peoples, a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish state.” It is one thing to debate over how best to get to two states, whether it is feasible at the moment, what conditions must be in force in order for a Palestinian state to become a reality, and what the timetable should be. It is quite another not to endorse two states in any guise and to tacitly promote a one-state catastrophe. Netanyahu falls under the first category, and the Republican platform now falls under the second. Make no mistake – there is no world in which this can be considered a rational pro-Israel position.
Let’s start with what should be obvious: one state means the end of Israel as both Jewish and democratic. That David Friedman and Jason Greenblatt – Trump’s two Israel advisers, both of whom work as corporate lawyers and whose expertise in Israel policy seems to extend as far but no farther than the fact that they are Jewish and have spent time in Israel – are reduced to peddling mythical statistics in service of denying this simple truth only demonstrates the delusion at work here. The entire fight against the BDS movement is predicated on the very idea that one state means the end of Israel as we know it, so that the Republican platform can in one breath denounce BDS for seeking to destroy Israel and then with the next encourage a one-state policy is a truly acrobatic feat of cognitive dissonance. And is there even a need anymore to tackle the chimera of the “sustainable status quo,” a concept that Netanyahu has rebuffed both publicly and privately and one against which the near entirety of Israel’s security establishment has revolted? Smart Republican Israel hands such as Elliott Abrams understand the importance of preserving the two-state solution, and yet the Trumpkins have managed to drown out decades of GOP expertise and experience by employing their common follow-the-leader tactic of acting upon whatever half-baked thought pops into their heads.
But let’s set all of this aside. Let’s assume that the experts are all wrong, and that either the status quo can continue forever or that Israel can annex the West Bank with no devastating adverse consequences. Isn’t there a constant refrain from the pro-Israel community about not imposing outside solutions on Israel and yielding to Israelis to determine their own destiny? I do not say this sarcastically; I am in full agreement and very much on the record as believing that Americans can and should express their preferences to Israel, come up with helpful suggestions, and make their best arguments as to why they should be implemented, but ultimately it is up to Israelis to elect their leaders and for the government of Israel to set its own policies. Yet in this instance, the government of Israel has stated its policy preference for a two-state solution and has been clear that a one-state outcome must be avoided at all costs, and the Republican platform has actively decided to contravene that policy. Not only that, it has actively decided to contravene it out of a desire to establish “a relationship with no daylight between America and Israel,” apparently ignorant of the fact that this does the precise opposite. It is unclear to me why hawkish policies that seek to impose unwanted solutions on Israel should be viewed any differently than dovish ones.
Ultimately, platform committees don’t matter in the real world, as much as the delegates desperately want to believe that their hard work is making a difference. I’ll bet that all nominees would fail a well-constructed multiple choice test on their parties’ platform language, and I can guarantee that no president has ever made a decision in office based on what the party platform encouraged or dismissed. Nevertheless, it is disturbing to see the base of the Republican Party be led so far aground by a bloviating, ignorant clodpate and his merry band of troglodytes. Consider Greenblatt’s comments to the Jewish Week: ““My view is that we should look at a single-state solution — and any other options on the table. Don’t take two states as a given; it is quite old. Maybe the Palestinians — after having suffered through the leadership they have had and seeing Israeli Palestinians who live a safe and free life — would also like it.” Not only is this a guy who has clearly never spoken with a Palestinian – and possibly never spoken with an Israeli who doesn’t vote for Habayit Hayehudi – the shallow fatuousness of the analysis beggars belief. Yes, there are indeed Palestinians who would like to see a one-state solution, but they are not the fellow travelers of Greenblatt’s fever dream hallucination. There is a reason that even Netanyahu, who clearly does not relish the prospect of relinquishing the West Bank to say the least, has reluctantly come around to the view that it will ultimately have to be done. There is a reason that two states has become the widespread consensus position, both in Israel and the U.S.
On second thought, perhaps the fact that Trump’s team is driving the GOP into the wilderness on Israel is a good thing. I can think of no better way for the one-state delusion to be discredited for good than for Trump and his coterie of Chelm court jesters to embrace it.
A Primer on Building Beyond the Green Line
July 7, 2016 § 2 Comments
Israel announced its plans this week for new construction in a number of different places in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the variety of locations provides a great primer for why I think that not all settlements should be treated equally. Whenever Israel announces that it is constructing new units across the Green Line, it is instinctively condemned, but this is not always the most productive approach. There is no question that settlements are a large problem that cannot and should not be brushed aside as if they are ancillary to the difficulty in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There is also no question that the problem that the settlements present has grown exponentially as a direct result of purposeful Israeli policy to move as many Jews into the West Bank as possible. I do not give the Israeli government a free pass on this issue nor do I justify the activity after the fact, and look no further for why the Palestinians are so rightly distrustful of Israel constantly seeking to establish facts on the ground. Nevertheless, while I wish that we were not at this point, it does not change the fact that some settlements are a lot worse than others. Looking at the most recent announcements demonstrates precisely why.
Following the horrific terrorist attacks last week in Kiryat Arba and Route 60, Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Lieberman approved a tender for 42 new homes in Kiryat Arba, intended partly to signal that terrorism against Israelis in the West Bank will never drive them out. Netanyahu and Lieberman also approved plans for 560 new units in Ma’ale Adumim, and 140 and 100 new units in the East Jerusalem neighborhoods of Ramot and Har Homa respectively. Finally, they approved 600 new homes for Palestinians in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Safafa. None of these announcements are helpful in that they all complicate matters to one degree or another, but the question to be asked is to what extent they make arriving at a permanent status agreement more difficult. These announcements taken as a group represent four distinct types of areas, all of which should be treated differently: settlements that will have to be evacuated in a final deal, settlements that will be annexed to Israel, neighborhoods of East Jerusalem that will remain under Israeli sovereignty, and neighborhoods of East Jerusalem that have the potential to be the decisive nail in the coffin of the two-state solution.
Kiryat Arba is an example of the first category. It sits right next to Hebron and was one of the first settlements that was built after the Six Day War, and has historical and emotional resonance given the millennia-old Jewish connection to Hebron, considered to be the second holiest city in Judaism after Jerusalem. It is also a settlement that will unquestionably have to be evacuated when the time comes. Hebron is the largest city in the West Bank and Kiryat Arba is located far into what will be the future state of Palestine. It was not part of the Jewish state envisioned in the 1947 partition plan, it is outside the current security barrier, and was not included in the areas to be annexed by Israel under its own proposals at Camp David in 2000, at Taba in 2001, or at Annapolis in 2008. The Israeli government could approve one thousand new units there tomorrow and all it would do is complicate the eventual evacuation of Kiryat Arba. This type of housing approval is completely unproductive and unnecessarily provocative, but it thankfully does nothing to change the facts on the ground by making a two-state solution more difficult to negotiate.
Ma’ale Adumim is an example of the second category, although it is more problematic than some of the other settlements that share this distinction. It anchors one of the five settlement blocs, is the third largest settlement in the West Bank and one of only four Jewish cities across the Green Line, and it is inside the planned route for the security barrier. The vast majority of Israelis consider it to be completely non-controversial and part of Israel, and it has been included in the territory that Israel would like to annex during each negotiation with the Palestinians, including in the 2003 Geneva Initiative. If one takes the position, as I do, that settlement construction inside the blocs should be treated differently than construction outside the blocs, then more housing in Ma’ale Adumim should essentially be ignored. What makes Ma’ale Adumim a little different is that because it is significantly east of Jerusalem, its continued growth poses problems for Palestinian contiguity in the West Bank and – depending on which way it expands – Palestinian access to Jerusalem. But assuming that the new construction does not move north or west, the new units in Ma’ale Adumim are ultimately going to be part of Israel under a permanent status agreement.
Ramot is one of the ring neighborhoods attached to West Jerusalem to the north, and there is an even smaller likelihood than there is with Ma’ale Adumim that it does not remain part of Israel under an eventual peace deal. Far more complicated is Har Homa, which was approved by Netanyahu in 1997 during his first term as prime minister, and is one of only two Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem to be built post-Oslo. What makes Har Homa so controversial is that it is one of two pieces in the jigsaw puzzle cutting off Bethlehem from Jerusalem, and it seriously damages Palestinian continuity in the area south of Jerusalem. Despite being inside the security barrier and the municipal boundary of Jerusalem, it is obvious in glancing at a map why Har Homa makes a final resolution far more difficult, and the fact that its boundary has now outgrown the territory that Israel proposed to annex at Camp David and that it was not included by the Geneva Initiative in Israeli territory illustrates this point further. Its population is now over 25,000 and when push comes to shove it is likely to be part of Israel under a permanent status agreement, but it is one of the best examples there is of how Israel establishes facts on the ground that are specifically intended to make an agreement harder to reach, in this case by strategically expanding what is considered to be part of Jerusalem and cutting off Palestinian access from the southern West Bank.
This leaves the second part of the jigsaw puzzle between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, which is Beit Safafa and Givat Hamatos. The former is an Arab neighborhood, the latter a planned Jewish neighborhood and one of two absolute red lines for the U.S. when it comes to Israeli construction (the other being E-1, across from Ma’ale Adumim) since it would cut off the last remaining corridor between Bethlehem and Jerusalem and make dividing Jerusalem in any permanent status agreement exponentially more difficult. The importance of Givat Hamatos to opponents of two states is evident in the reactions to the approval for Palestinian construction in Beit Safafa, with Zeev Elkin slamming the construction announcement since it does not also include Jewish housing in Givat Hamatos and Naftali Bennett calling it a “Palestinian arrow in the heart of Jerusalem” and a de facto division of the city. The government didn’t have much choice in the matter as the Jerusalem District Court in May ordered the construction of housing in Beit Safafa to move forward since it had already been planned and approved, but the fact that it instantly created pressure on Netanyahu from his right is dangerous. There is no more precarious area beyond the Green Line than Givat Hamatos, and should the neighborhood ever be built, it is hard to see a worse obstacle for the two-state solution.
The policy of the United States is to criticize any building by Israel over the Green Line, and this week’s announcement prompted the expected deep concern from the State Department. Were I the president, however, knowing that Israeli politics and public opinion are where they are and understanding that some construction is nearly innocuous while other construction is deeply deleterious, I would criticize the new units in Kiryat Arba, keep my mouth shut about Ramot and Ma’ale Adumim, project concern over Har Homa with a call not to expound the boundaries of the neighborhood in any way, and make it clear that any moves in Givat Hamatos will be treated as the equivalent of a nuclear option. Yes, this is much more complicated than just criticizing any and all new building, but it would be a policy designed to prevent Israel from doing harm in places where it really matters and get to a two-state solution that both sides will be able to live with.
