Rightwing Competition And Settlements
December 20, 2012 § Leave a comment
I wrote a piece for the Atlantic yesterday about how Israel’s recent announcements on settlements in the West Bank and building in East Jerusalem is widely viewed as an effort to punish the Palestinians in the wake of their statehood bid at the UN, but that’s not the only thing driving Israeli policy. The sudden emergence of serious competitors on Bibi Netanyahu’s right flank accounts for much of what is going on as well. Here’s a teaser:
Over the past few weeks, the Israeli government has been on a building spree. First came word that planning and zoning would begin for E1, a controversial move that would further encircle East Jerusalem with settlements — cutting off from the West Bank the part of the city Palestinians demand to be the capital of their future state. As part of the same announcement, Israel said that it was going to build more housing in other parts of the West Bank as well.
This week, the government approved 1500 new housing units in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood in East Jerusalem — the same housing units whose initial announcement in 2010 during Vice President Biden’s visit to Israel caused a temporary rift between the United States and Israel and Hilary Clinton’s chewing-out of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The Interior Ministry and the Jerusalem Local Committee are also expected to approve plans to build in Givat Hamatos and Gilo this week, both of which are new Jerusalem neighborhoods that are also across the 1967 armistice line that divides East and West Jerusalem.
This is all taking place despite enormous pressure and condemnation from Western countries, who are not happy with the escalation of Israeli plans to expand settlements or to build up Jerusalem neighborhoods that challenge the viability of a future Palestinian state. Britain, France, Germany, and Portugal are about to formally condemn Israel over its East Jerusalem building plans, and the 14 non-American members of the United Nations Security Council are going to do the same. Even the United States seems to have lost its usual patience with the Israeli government, deeming the new building announcements part of a “pattern of provocative action” that endangers the peace process and the two-state solution. Israel seems hell-bent on isolating itself over the settlement issue, and appears determined to move ahead with plans for both the West Bank and East Jerusalem no matter the cost.
It is easy to chalk this up to Israel’s fury with the Palestinian Authority’s statehood bid at the United Nations, as the E1 announcement came the day after the vote, amidst stated determination on Israel’s part to punish the Palestinians for pursuing unilateral moves outside of the Oslo framework. “We felt if the Palestinians were taking unilateral action in the UN, we had to also send the message that we could take unilateral actions,” Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren said this week, making the connection explicit.
Yet, this does not account for the scope of the recent Israeli announcements, or for the seeming recklessness of drawing real anger and censure from Israel’s Western allies immediately following American and EU support during Operation Pillar of Cloud in Gaza. There is indeed something else going on here, and it has nothing to do with the Palestinians and everything to do with the political jockeying taking place on the right of Israel’s political spectrum before Israelis go to the polls on January 22 to elect their next government.
To read the article in its entirety, please click over to the Atlantic’s website.
Ulpana and Closing the Pandora’s Box
June 6, 2012 § 3 Comments
Apparently I take a few days off, and Israel descends into anarchy. I am not going to do a thorough rundown of the Ulpana vote and the events leading up to it; Amir Mizroch, Brent Sasley, and Allison Good all have some good thoughts on the subject that you should check out. Instead, I’d like to focus on one limited point, which is the fact that the settler movement has apparently lost all ability to think rationally or logically.
Let’s remember one simple and basic fact: Five homes are being transferred to another neighborhood rather than be demolished, and 300 new homes are being constructed in the settlement to which those five belong. In addition, the government is announcing a tender for 551 new homes in other settlements. With this in mind, here is a selection of some of my favorite rightwing quotes from the past few days. UTJ MK Yisrael Eichler, despite what is taking place right across Israel’s northern border in Syria, dubs Israel “the worst dictatorship ever.” National Union MK Yaakov Katz says that the government displays evil-heartedness in dealing with the settlers. National Union MK Aryeh Eldad said that Likud only pretends to support settlements but actually destroys them at their roots. Finally Likud MK Danny Danon proclaimed the 69-22 vote in the Knesset a travesty of democracy since voters chose Likud and said that the “extreme left” tries to win through the courts rather than by convincing the public come election time (never mind, of course, that Kadima got more votes than Likud at the last election, or that the Ulpana homes are being moved following a Knesset vote confirming the High Court’s order). Up is down. Day is night. Likud hates settlements, and settlers are treated like second class citizens.
As if the rhetorical nonsense was not enough, settlers have marched on Jerusalem, started hunger strikes, flooded MKs with phone calls and texts, and generally acted as if this is the most egregious affront to their existence since the forced evacuations of the Sinai and Gaza. That literally not one building is being demolished and that 850 more are being built is of completely no consequence to them. One would think that Ulpana was the Temple Mount and had some sort of special sacred significance, rather than being a completely random tract of land in a small and otherwise non-descript settlement. This puts an even greater sheen of ludicrousness on Eldad’s mind-blowing statement about how anti-settlement Likud is; the settler movement has become so accustomed to getting every single thing they want from various Likud governments that they have somehow come to believe that the Ulpana decision is an existential crisis. They have won so big, they don’t even realize what a regular win looks like anymore. This is the force that Likud, and Netanyahu in particular, has unleashed, and now the government has to deal with it.
Finally, take note of who voted to legalize Ulpana or did not show up to the vote following Netanyahu’s “vote with me or be fired from your ministerial post” ultimatum. All the usual Likud suspects such as Danon, Zeev Elkin, Yariv Levin, and Miri Regev voted against Netanyahu in favor of retroactively legalizing Ulpana, and Silvan Shalom did not show up to the vote. Danon has already threatened the ministers who voted with Netanyahu and said that they are mistaken to believe that Likud voters will have short memories, and settler leaders have been calling Netanyahu a liar and vowing political retaliation. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: a Likud split is coming, and it’s going to happen sooner rather than later. The hardline settlement supporters simply cannot remain together in a party with the leadership that they have denounced so forcefully and in such harsh terms. When Netanyahu wakes up to the fact that he cannot keep this ungainly ship together, Likud is going to fracture.
The Likud Maneuvering Begins In Earnest
May 11, 2012 § 2 Comments
For those who are not familiar with him, Silvan Shalom is Bibi Netanyahu’s political nemesis and constant foil. He is also somewhat inconveniently one of the vice prime ministers and Netanyahu’s erstwhile main challenger for the Likud leadership. I wrote this in March:
Netanyahu and vice premier Silvan Shalom are long time rivals who do not like each other. The two go out of their way to antagonize each other by scheduling conflicting events and trying to embarrass the other through tactical voting on legislation, and Netanyahu even made sure that Shalom’s face was blocked in the official picture from the Cabinet meeting in which the Gilad Shalit deal was approved. While Shalom often comes across in these confrontations as bumbling and hapless, his resentment of Netanyahu is at the boiling point and Bibi cannot afford to make any of the younger MKs unhappy and risk a genuine leadership challenge within Likud.
Shalom has formally challenged Bibi to be head of Likud twice and both times he has lost, but he is still constantly looking for an opening. Today, while speaking to Moshe Rosenbaum, who is the chairman of the Beit El regional community council which has jurisdiction over Ulpana, Shalom called for an authorization law that would retroactively legalize all settlements and outposts since he believes that fighting for individual hilltops on a case by case basis is not supportive enough of the settlement project at large. These comments came after a cabinet meeting of senior ministers (which did not include Shalom) in which no decision was taken on whether to comply with the High Court order to demolish Ulpana by July 1, and in the midst of pressure from Likud MKs for the government to pass a law bypassing the High Court entirely.
As I have said a couple of times this week, bringing Kadima into the government gives Netanyahu lots of room to maneuver within the larger coalition, but it does nothing to alleviate – and even intensifies – his problem within his own party. Shalom is naturally trying to seize upon this, knowing that Netanyahu needs to placate the hardline members of what is after all a pro-settlement party but that doing so will cause trouble for Netanyahu with Mofaz and Kadima. Likud’s fault lines are being exposed, and it is going to be a Herculean task to try and keep the party in one piece without causing a major political crisis between the Knesset and the High Court. I don’t know that doing so is feasible, and I remain convinced that Likud is going to fracture and that an official split is coming at some point. Meridor staked out his position yesterday and Shalom has staked out his position today – the question is, where does Netanyahu ultimately stand? The answer is not one that he is going to be able to avoid providing for too much longer.
