Did Israelis Give The Center A Big Win?
January 24, 2013 § 9 Comments
Now that the final results of the Israeli election are in, everyone is rushing to declare that centrist parties were the big winners and that the Israeli electorate has made a surprising shift away from the right. This is understandable in light of the fact that Yair Lapid and his Yesh Atid party won 19 seats to become the second largest party in the Knesset and Bibi Netanyahu led the Likud-Beiteinu list to an extremely disappointing 31 seats, down from the 42 seats that Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu control in the current Knesset. Nevertheless, I think that this view of things is incorrect. As I argue in Foreign Affairs, this does not take into account that the other so-called centrist parties did poorly and finished well below expectations and that many Likud voters chose to move even farther to the right by giving Habayit Hayehudi 12 seats. In addition, Yesh Atid can be characterized as centrist in some ways but as pragmatically rightwing in others, and so dubbing yesterday’s results as an unabashed win for the center is misleading. In fact, the center controls 28 seats in the current Knesset, but will control 27 seats in the next one (19 for Yesh Atid, 6 for Hatnua, 2 for Kadima), so in reality the center actually lost ground. No doubt Lapid scored a big victory, but one centrist party doing well does not mean that Israel is now avowedly centrist, particularly when other centrist parties turned in disappointing performances and the banner rightwing nationalist party more than doubled its current Knesset representation. Here is a teaser from my piece in FA:
The problem with this narrative, however, is that Tuesday’s results were not really a victory for centrists and Yesh Atid is not really a centrist party. The largest vote-getter was still Likud-Beiteinu, made up of arguably the most right-wing version of Likud in the party’s history and the nationalist and pro-settlement Yisrael Beiteinu. Bayit Yehudi also did well, and it will be the fourth largest party in the Knesset with 11 seats. On the left, Labor underperformed and could not even garner enough votes to win second place as expected. Livni’s Hatnua, meanwhile, won fewer seats than even the parochial ultra-orthodox party, United Torah Judaism. Kadima, a real centrist party, has all but disappeared, plummeting from 28 seats to two. Even though the right-wing parties did not do quite as well as they had hoped, the larger picture does not support the claim that the center scored a great victory.
Furthermore, the grouping of Labor, Hatnua, and Yesh Atid under a centrist or center-left banner is analytically lazy. On economic issues, those three parties do indeed fall within the left and the center. On security and foreign policy issues, Labor and Hatnua are centrist as well. Yesh Atid, however, cannot be accurately described as centrist when it comes to the peace process. Lapid has stated that Jerusalem cannot be divided under any circumstances and insists that standing firm on this issue will force the Palestinians to recant their demand that East Jerusalem serve as the capital of a future Palestinian state. During the campaign, Lapid chose the West Bank settlement of Ariel as the place to give a major campaign speech calling for negotiations with the Palestinians, and declined to endorse a settlement freeze. None of this is enough to put him into the far-right camp, which rejects the two-state solution and calls for annexing the West Bank, but it also does not make him a centrist. In fact, Lapid’s views on security issues are close to those that Netanyahu has publicly staked out.
To read the rest please click over to Foreign Affairs, and comments and emails are welcome as always.
Following Up On E1 And A Unity Government
January 4, 2013 § 2 Comments
There are a couple of news items today related to two predictions I made last month – that Israel is not actually going to build in E1 and that there is a decent likelihood of a Likud-Labor unity government after the elections in a couple of weeks – so I figured I’d take the opportunity to revisit the topics and see where things currently stand.
In the E1 department, Netanyahu has delayed the plans for building despite the Defense Ministry approving the blueprints and the Civil Administration approving the plans. Predictably, this has raised rightwing ire as there is no word as to when the prime minister’s office is going to file the plans with the zoning committee or what is causing the delay. As you may recall, I argued that this is precisely what was going to happen:
The reason for this is that building homes in E1 has been a longstanding red line for both the United States and the European Union, and that line won’t dissipate just because the Palestinian Authority decided to defy Israeli and American wishes against pursuing a statehood claim at the U.N. The U.S. response to the E1 announcement was unambiguous, labeling it counterproductive and a threat to the two-state solution, and pointing out that settlement building in E1 makes direct negotiations harder, which is a not-so-subtle reminder that this is the exact charge Israel has leveled at the Palestinians over the U.N. strategy…
The U.N. vote came as a surprise to Jerusalem, and Netanyahu knows that actually sending construction crews and cement mixers into E1 will worsen Israel’s image problem. I also imagine that there have been some extremely unpleasant conversations with White House and State Department officials this past weekend given that the E1 announcement came on the heels of unwavering American support over Gaza and at the U.N. As dedicated as Netanyahu has been to the settlement project, even he must now realize that building Mevaseret Adumim is a bridge too far…
Following the embarrassingly lopsided U.N. vote and the criticism from his right that he did not go far enough during Operation Pillar of Cloud, Netanyahu needed to make a big gesture before the January 22 election to demonstrate that he is committed to settlements and that he will not take the PA’s new statehood status in stride. E1 is an enormous deal to the settler wing of Likud, and declaring a new planning and zoning stage is red meat to Israeli right-wing partisans in a variety of camps, whether they be pro-settlements or have a religious or nationalist attachment to an eternal undivided Jerusalem.
The fact that this—just like the Levy Report—is an announcement that will never be acted upon does not negate the fact that it is good politics for Netanyahu. He is going to perform a delicate balancing act, in which he doubles down on settlementsfor a domestic audience while assuring the U.S. and the EU that E1 will remain a barren tract of land.
What has changed since I wrote this is that Naftali Bennett’s Habayit Hayehudi party has skyrocketed in the polls while Likud-Beiteinu has plummeted. The latest poll of polls has LB at 34 Knesset seats and HH at 14.5, which is the continuation of the trend of HH gaining about one seat a week and LB losing about one seat a week in opinion polling. When Netanyahu decided to create the joint Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu list, the idea was to co-opt Lieberman from taking away votes on his right, but he did not foresee another rightwing party posing a serious challenge and siphoning away votes from the LB creation. Now he is dealing with a serious HH presence in the next Knesset, which might be enough of a scare to change his E1 decision. Despite this, I am holding to my original prediction, because while Likud-Beiteinu is going to be a lot weaker electorally than Netanyahu originally envisioned, it does not change the fact that E1 is still a much bigger deal for the U.S. and Europe than almost any other settlement in the West Bank. What I think we are likely to see is Netanyahu keep E1 on the back burner while fast tracking building in East Jerusalem neighborhoods such as Gilo and Har Homa, which will mollify rightwingers somewhat without risking an enormous clash with Western states.
On the unity government front, Labor leader Shelley Yachimovich yesterday indicated that she will not join a Likud government which at first glance seems to blow up my previous analysis. A few point to keep in mind, however, before deciding that Labor is definitively going to be in the opposition. First, Israeli opposition politicians are notorious for blasting the prime minister and making claims about never joining the government right before doing exactly that. For a recent example, go back and look at what Shaul Mofaz was saying about Netanyahu and Likud last spring literally just days before agreeing to form a unity government with Likud. Whatever Yachimovich says know in the heat of an election campaign should be taken with a grain of salt.
Second, in parsing what Yachimovich said, contrary to the reporting and the headlines she actually did not definitely rule out anything and gave herself lots of wiggle room. She said that she wants to be prime minister but that she will lead the opposition if she’s not, and explicitly made clear that she had decided not to join the coalition because of recent radical positions taken by Likud and because of Netanyahu’s embrace of Avigdor Lieberman. According to her, under the current circumstances she cannot work with Likud because “this is not the Likud we all know.” This formulation is expressly designed so that it can be walked back if needed. After the election, with Lieberman’s status uncertain and the electioneering over, Yachimovich can easily say that she has spoken with Netanyahu and that they have agreed on a set of broad principles, coupled with a statement or two from Netanyahu reaffirming his commitment to a two-state solution and finding a solution to the problem of social inequality. Framing her opposition to joining a Likud-led coalition in the terms that she has is not a categorical denial that she will ever agree to form a unity government, but rather a very temporary hurdle that she can dismantle anytime she wants. All that needs to be done is to declare that Likud is actually more reasonable than she originally thought and that she is joining the coalition because it is in the best interests of the country. A General Sherman type blanket denial this was not. Does this mean that a unity government is guaranteed to happen? Of course not, since the fact still remains that Likud and Labor have many sharp disagreements and the coalition politics might be tricky. All I’m saying is that yesterday’s statement does not rule out the possibility.
Israeli Politics Should Be Serialized on HBO
December 7, 2012 § 2 Comments
On many Fridays I highlight some of the more ridiculous things that I have read over the past week, but today there is no need to link to or comment on specific articles and op-eds because the most entertaining spectacle of the week has been the maneuvering, pettiness, backstabbing, and theater of the absurd that is Israeli politics. At the heart of all the shifting back and forth are a number of personal relationships characterized by deep animosity that are manifesting themselves as shifts in political loyalties, and it is all making for the most mesmerizing election season that I can remember, in Israel or anywhere else.
First up is the curious case of Danny Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister and previously the number two person behind Avigdor Lieberman on Yisrael Beiteinu’s party list. On Tuesday, while he was on his way to the press conference announcing YB’s party list and just two hours before it was scheduled to begin, Ayalon received a call from Lieberman informing him that he was leaving Ayalon off YB’s Knesset slate for the January 22 election. Leaving aside the Night of the Long Knives quality to all of this in terms of its suddenness, the move to sideline Ayalon is puzzling in the extreme. Not only is Ayalon a top Foreign Ministry official and a former ambassador to the U.S., there was little hint that relations between him and Lieberman were so bad as to warrant this type of excommunication. In fact, Ayalon’s increasingly extreme rhetoric and behavior, such as his purposeful humiliation of the Turkish ambassador in January 2010 by making him sit on a low chair before television cameras and not displaying the Turkish flag and for which Ayalon was later forced to publicly apologize, seemed to be driven by the need to placate his boss. While Ayalon has reverted to his former more diplomatic self and has refused to make a scene, his father did not take the news terribly well and gave an interview in which he called Lieberman a “little Stalin.” Rumors abound as to why Ayalon was dumped, and the most likely explanation seems to be that Lieberman thought Ayalon had a history of leaking to the press and that he might not have been a fan of Ayalon’s high public profile. In any event, it is difficult to see how this makes Yisrael Beiteinu any stronger or inspires much confidence in Lieberman’s leadership.
Next is the fallout between Labor leader Shelley Yachimovich and former party head Amir Peretz, who was third on Labor’s list until yesterday, when he announced that he was leaving Labor and joining up with Tzipi Livni and her new Hatnua party. Is Peretz leaving because he feels that Labor is no longer a suitable ideological home for him, or because he has a close and longstanding relationship with Livni, or because he thinks that boosting Hatnua is in his country’s best interests? If you guessed any of these options, you’d be wrong. Peretz is bolting from Labor at the last minute, and literally only one week after Labor’s members deemed him to be such an important member of the party that he got the second most votes in the party’s primary, because he is jealous of Yachimovich and felt that she wasn’t giving him, a former defense minister and the man who is in some ways the godfather of the Iron Dome missile defense system, the requisite amount of respect. To put this into perspective, the former head of Israel’s largest trade union and Israel’s largest and most prominent leftwing party has just left his longtime political home despite its current laserlike focus on social and economic issues – Peretz’s bread and butter – to join a party led by a former Likudnik and erstwhile Kadima head whose track record of commitment to liberal social causes is tenuous at best. The personal rivalry between Peretz and Yachimovich is so intense that he is actively hoping that Labor will go down in flames so that he can oust Yachimovich from the party leadership the next time around, and is willing to join up with a party and a politician with whom he shares no common cause other than a hatred of Bibi Netanyahu just so that he can punish Yachimovich. Isn’t it a shame that Shakespeare isn’t around to catalogue all of this?
Finally we have Tzipi Livni and her various hangups with her former allies and fellow travelers on the right. The relationship between her and Shaul Mofaz, who only months ago launched a palace coup and replaced her as head of Kadima, is obviously terrible, and so she undoubtedly took extra special joy in siphoning off seven members from Kadima on Monday. The reason this matters is that seven is the magic number that allows a faction to break off from a party and bring campaign funds with them, so now not only has Livni taken her revenge on Mofaz by guaranteeing Kadima’s electoral death, she is likely saddling him with debt as well by taking campaign money too. Then there is her longstanding refusal to join up with Netanyahu in a coalition following the elections no matter the outcome. While such declarations in Israeli politics obviously must be taken with a grain of salt – see Shaul Mofaz’s rhetoric right before banding together with Likud earlier this year as Exhibit A – Livni’s stance can probably be viewed as ironclad given the various opportunities she had to form a unity government following the 2009 elections that she turned down. She seems determined to spend the rest of her life trying to topple her former Likud buddy Bibi, and she doesn’t care how long or how many elections it takes. So we are left with the prospect of former Labor leaders Peretz and Amram Mitzna flocking to a party led by a right-winger claiming to be undergoing a conversion later in life, and the possible eventuality of the former Likud and Kadima official Livni refusing to join a coalition with Netanyahu after the elections while Labor under Yachimovich jumps at the chance. Is any of this logical? Nope, not really. But there’s Israeli politics for you, and if you’re not watching this drama as it unfolds, you’re missing the world’s greatest show.
Ehud Olmert Is The New Mario Cuomo
October 22, 2012 § 3 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.
Guest Post: An Alternate History of Israeli-Turkish Reconciliation
September 4, 2012 § 1 Comment
Dov Friedman (whose previous guest post can be found here) is taking over the reins of O&Z once again for an insightful counterfactual of what might have been had Shaul Mofaz used his time in the Israeli coalition to mend ties with Turkey. Dov thinks that Israel missed a golden opportunity with the release of the Lindenstrauss Report, and here’s why:
Though few realized it at the time, the day Israeli Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss released his highly critical report detailing the government’s mishandling of the Mavi Marmara raid—June 13th of this year—doubled as the best chance for Israel and Turkey to repair the countries’ damaged relations. Only four weeks prior, Shaul Mofaz had led Kadima into Netanyahu’s government. The expanded coalition had weakened the power of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, a chief opponent of an Israeli apology. The Lindenstrauss Report revealed new information that would have made an apology credible—and restored relations possible. But Netanyahu dismissed the report, the public discourse faded, and a key opportunity was missed, the effects of which are still being felt by Israel—and by Turkey.
Upon the grand coalition’s forming, analysts offered various explanations for the surprise Netanyahu-Mofaz partnership. Many observers—including Jeffrey Goldberg, Amir Oren of Ha’aretz, and Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin—viewed the deal as increasing the likelihood of an Iran strike. David Horovitz argued optimistically that Netanyahu could use the coalition to advance talks with the Palestinians. Here at O&Z, Michael saw the deal as motivated by domestic issues, specifically the unconstitutional Tal Law.
Frozen relations with Turkey were an afterthought. The most recent attempt to broker a deal between the recalcitrant sides had dissolved the previous summer. The Lindenstrauss Report created an opening. Netanyahu was still motivated to protect his expanded coalition, and Likud-Kadima unity on an apology could marginalize radical coalition opponents.
Yet, Mofaz exerted no pressure to reengage Turkey. Turkey had spent the previous six months going out of its way to needle Israel, reminding it that the freeze had costs. In February, Turkey demanded that Israel not receive data from the NATO missile defense system housed by Turkey. In late April, Turkey rejected Israel’s participation in NATO’s May summit in Chicago. Unquestionably, rapprochement with Turkey would eliminate a considerable—and unnecessary—headache for Israel.
If Mofaz had pressured Netanyahu to resume negotiations with Turkey, the outlines of a deal were clear. Netanyahu’s government would have said that in light of its own internal report, Israel regretted the poor planning and lack of preparation that contributed to the loss of life, and it recognizes that the circumstances could have—and should have—been prevented. Turkey could then have returned its ambassador and pledged aid ships to Gaza—ships that would conveniently dock in Ashqelon, tacitly reaffirming Israel’s security interest in managing the flow of aid into the Strip.
Of course, that deal never materialized. Not three months after entering the coalition, Mofaz led Kadima out ashen-faced. Netanyahu balked at confronting the religious parties over the Tal Law, refusing to implement Yohanan Plesner’s recommendations for haredi national service. Mofaz—having cried wolf one too many times—had no appealing options.
While analysis of the collapse focused on the domestic political implications, it overlooked lost international opportunities. Undoubtedly, Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan and Foreign Minister Davutoğlu will seek—and relish—further opportunities to poke Israel in the eye. Israel wisely refrains from comment, but that hardly means it doesn’t smart from the blows. Turkey is still a NATO member, and it can create problems for Israel indefinitely.
However, Erdoğan and Davutoğlu err if they believe the standoff has not detrimentally affected Turkey. If the Netanyahu-Mofaz coalition and Turkey had hammered out a deal, the downed Turkish F-4 jet may never have flown. As friend of O&Z Aaron Stein noted in an incisive piece in World Politics Review, Turkey’s intelligence capabilities are decidedly limited. Israel’s are significantly less so. Israel maintains a fleet of satellites with broad intelligence-gathering capabilities. The Mossad is active in Syria, and the IDF has experience flying aircraft in and out unscathed.
The theory prevails that Turkey’s jet was testing Syria’s air defenses. One need not theorize that Turkey was out of its depth. If Israel and Turkey had ended their superficial feud, Turkey’s pilots might never have been asked to broach Syrian airspace.
Israel has suffered publicly from the downgraded relationship; however, Turkey has lost out as well, albeit less obviously. Because trade relations between the countries remain strong, neither has felt pressure to alter the status quo. Nevertheless, the sides continue missing opportunities to collaborate to mutual benefit. This alternate history merely illustrates that the full extent of the shared loss may be continually underestimated.
