Israel’s Next Unity Government
December 18, 2012 § 8 Comments
In the time leading up to an Israeli election, one always gets the impression that Israel’s political system is the most fractured on Earth. Outrageous charges are hurled back and forth, and this year Kadima took things to a new level by adopting an anti-Bibi slogan superimposed on a picture of a nuclear mushroom cloud as its campaign poster. Nevertheless, as Israeli parties and politicians all jockey and maneuver before the January 22 election, it seems to me that if the poll numbers remain relatively stable, there is a good chance that Israel is headed toward a unity government comprised of Likud and Labor. While nobody will come right out and admit that while campaigning, the inter-party dynamics, Bibi Netanyahu’s past preferences, and Labor leader Shelley Yachimovich’s interview over the weekend are all pointing in that direction.
The latest polling – and the first to be released after Avigdor Lieberman’s resignation as foreign minister – confirms the trend that has been taking place for weeks, which is that the Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu joint list is polling in the mid to upper 30s range for Knesset seats and is likely to garner fewer seats than the two currently have now (and don’t forget where you first heard that this arrangement was going to backfire). In addition, the Habayit Hayehudi list under Naftali Bennett is holding steady at 11 seats, and is Netanyahu’s natural coalition partner given its rightwing stance. While there are rumors that Netanyahu would rather not deal with Bennett, he cannot afford to have Bennett constantly sniping at him from his right flank, particularly given how rightwing voters appear to be leaving Likud and flocking to Habayit Hayehudi. Including Bennett gets Netanyahu to just under 50 coalition seats, leaving him 10-12 short depending on how things precisely shake out. In the past, Netanyahu has turned to Shas and UTJ to fill this gap, and indeed together they are currently at 16 seats, which would get Netanyahu past the magic number of 60 seats and allow him to continue as prime minister. The problem is that Yisrael Beiteinu has been adamant about not wanting Haredi parties in the coalition, and Bennett last week demanded that Netanyahu take away the Interior and Housing ministries from Shas as part of his general argument that Haredi parties should be kept out of the next coalition. Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party might not get enough seats to fill the gap, and even if it does, it will still leave Netanyahu with a very narrow margin and no wiggle room. Tzipi Livni’s Hatnua party is probably out too, as Livni and Netanyahu do not like each other and Livni has turned down multiple opportunities to join with Netanyahu in the past. As demonstrated by his move to form a unity government with Kadima last spring, Netanyahu clearly likes to keep as many options open to him as possible, and his current narrow one has been a disaster, with infighting over the Tal Law and Haredi military service being a particular problem. This means constructing a coalition with as many seats as possible and without a big issue that will prove enormously divisive and impossible to overcome.
Enter Labor, which is second in the polls behind Likud Beiteinu, and Yachimovich, who has repeatedly declined to rule out joining a Likud-led coalition and who has insisted that Labor is not a leftwing party but a centrist party. Yachimovich wants to join the next coalition because she has never served as a minister and is relatively inexperienced and untested. Serving in the government will provide her with some more gravitas and do away with the impression that she isn’t quite ready for prime time, and lay the foundation for a future chance at expanding Labor’s seats and competing to be prime minister. In this vein, yesterday she gave an interview in which she said that the budget for settlements should remain untouched in the absence of a peace agreement with the Palestinians and stressed Labor’s history of building settlements when in government and that Labor has always had a hawkish element, including Yitzhak Rabin. This drew immediate responses from Lapid and Meretz chief Zahava Gal-On, but Yachimovich does not appear to be worried about Gal-On or other leftist parties damaging her credibility. Instead, she is clearly appealing to the fact that Israel’s electorate is far more hawkish on the Palestinians and the West Bank than in the past, and is laying the groundwork to be able to join a Likud-led coalition in which support for settlements is going to be a must. It is not accidental that Yachimovich broke her laser-like focus on economic and social issues to talk about settlements rather than Iran, the peace process, Gaza, etc. If there is one issue that will make it possible for Netanyahu to invite Labor into the coalition without risking a rightwing revolt it is support for the settlement budget, and Yachimovich’s interview was an attempt to forestall any criticism that might emerge on this front. While there will invariably be differences in opinion between her and Netanyahu on socioeconomic issues and on the peace process, there is now no daylight on the question of support for settlements. While I am loath to predict anything with certainly when it comes to coalition politics – particularly as I have been burned in the past – the signs as I read them point to a Likud-Labor unity government once the dust settles after the election.
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.
Bibi’s Bad Weekend
July 23, 2012 § Leave a comment
For anyone paying attention to the news this weekend, it appeared that Kadima was on the ropes. There were reports that a faction of Kadima MKs was set to leave and join Likud, while another group of more left-leaning Kadima members were plotting to leave and either form their own party or join up with Labor or Meretz. As of today, however, it seems that the rebels have been foiled for now. Finally, Shaul Mofaz shows why he was a top general! Instead of breaking away, the four Kadima MKs who had allegedly agreed to move over to Likud are now going to be referred to the Knesset House Committee as secessionists and if they are found to have tried to secede then they will not be able to run again under the Kadima banner.
The reason the four cannot just leave on their own is, in a bit of dark humor, a legacy of Likud trying to entice Mofaz to do the very same thing for which he is now denouncing his own members. Before 2009, if a faction of MKs wanted to break away from their party, they needed to have the votes of 1/3 of the party’s Knesset parliamentarians. In 2009, however, Bibi Netanyahu passed a bill through the Knesset that is known as the Mofaz Law, since its sole purpose was to entice Mofaz to leave Kadima, which at the time was controlled by Tzipi Livni. The Mofaz Law eliminated the 1/3 requirement and instead enabled a group of seven MKs to leave a party, which was coincidentally the number of Kadima members who were reputedly unhappy under Livni’s stewardship and considering joining Mofaz and returning to Likud. Mofaz himself denounced the law and did not end up jumping ship, but the law is still in force. Reports over the weekend were that a group of seven had been lined up, but this turned out to be premature, despite the fact that Likud members were reportedly bragging about having held discussions with half of the Kadima MKs.
Why did this gambit fail? For one, it was organized by the wrong person. Tzachi Hanegbi, who was trying to organize the group of Kadima rebels to jump ship and was going to be named Home Front Defense Minister in return, is not currently a member of the Knesset after having been convicted of perjury. For him, this is a cost-free action since he doesn’t have much to lose by incurring the wrath of Mofaz and the Kadima leadership, but that is not the case for the MKs. Either the larger group of seven got spooked by something or they did not like what they were hearing from Likud, but they were taking a bigger chance by attempting to leave than Hanegbi is and might have suspected that he was using them for no other reason than to get himself back into the cabinet. Had the move to Likud been organized by an MK, perhaps the story this morning might be different.
Second, it’s possible that Netanyahu himself fouled this up by inexplicably presenting his watered down Tal Law replacement plan to the cabinet yesterday. It is essentially a sellout to the Haredi parties that calls for only 6000 Haredim to be drafted annually and calls for a draft exemption age of 26, and does away with any personal sanctions for draft dodgers. After basically giving Haredim another free pass, it would have been tough for the Kadima MKs to go, as the Plesner plan was far more popular than the one that Netanyahu just announced and the optics would have been terrible for the Kadima rebels to join Likud the day after Bibi made it clear that he is putting his Haredi coalition partners’ interests above popular sentiment.
This appears to be Bibi’s first real strategic blunder to date. For whatever reason, the Kadima MKs are staying put for now and he still has to deal with his awkward coalition that contains Shas/UTJ and Yisrael Beiteinu, who are very much at odds. If the Kadima members had joined Likud, he would have been able to more or less ignore YB, but now he is stuck with the same problem he had before the Kadima unity deal. In addition, the polls on Likud are all over the place with some indicating that Likud is losing popularity over the Plesner Committee fiasco and others indicating that Likud will increase their margin in the next election. So as things currently stand, Netanyahu began the weekend with the prospect of picking up Knesset seats without having to call elections, and ended the weekend right back where he started but is now saddled with a Tal Law albatross around his neck of his own making. My hunch is that he thought the Kadima rebels jumping ship was a done deal and he then took the opportunity to shore up Shas and UTJ support with his Tal Law replacement bill. There have been rumors today that Netanyahu is now going to call an early election within 90 days, and then quick refutations from the prime minister’s office that these rumors are wrong. Elections would make sense if Bibi had expected to have a larger Likud this morning but now doesn’t and thinks he might reasonably pick up the majority of voters who cast their ballots for Kadima in 2009, but given the polls that show Likud dropping and the fact that he just signed on to what is sure to be a massively unpopular draft law, I think that the rumors of early elections are probably unwarranted. Whatever the case may be, this has not been one of Netanyahu’s better political sequences.
Back To The Drawing Board For Kadima (And For Me)
July 17, 2012 § 5 Comments
So remember when I predicted that Shaul Mofaz and Kadima were going to remain in the coalition? Turns out, not so much. According to reports, Kadima is officially out over the failure of Mofaz and Bibi Netanyahu to bridge the gap between their parties over what will replace the Tal Law. Specifically, the sticking point is the age until which Haredim can defer the draft, with Mofaz insisting that Netanyahu’s proposal of allowing Haredim to defer until age 23 is unacceptable. And so with that, the curtain closes on the grand unity government experiment.
Why did I get this wrong? I think I underestimated the humiliation and credibility factors for Mofaz. He has been threatening to pull out for weeks, and each time he issued a threat and Bibi called his bluff, it turned into a hollow one. There were only so many times Mofaz could allow that to happen, and my assumption that the overarching political considerations (more on that in a moment) would trump the more personal ones was pretty obviously faulty. I also underestimated the degree to which Netanyahu was going to remain in thrall to the Haredi parties, since the logic of creating the larger coalition was precisely so that he wouldn’t have to be held hostage to the demands of Shas and Eli Yishai. Unlike some others, I did not think that the Likud-Kadima agreement was about Iran, and unless Mofaz is actually leaving because a strike is imminent and he wants no part of it, the Iran factor was clearly overhyped by some. Given Netanyahu’s unwillingness to do what he could to keep Kadima in the coalition following his establishment of the Plesner Committee, which signaled his intention to let Kadima lead on the Tal Law, I am confused as to what his original intention was. It was obvious to me at the time that it was not about Iran or the peace process, and I assumed it was to give him maneuvering room for equalizing the burden of service and upsetting his Haredi coalition partners and for ignoring the extreme faction within Likud on his right. That he let the unity government fall apart like this is puzzling to me, since while Mofaz walks away from this looking weak and like a buffoon, so does Netanyahu to a lesser extent. Make no mistake, the Kadima position on this is a lot more popular with Israelis than the Likud/Shas position, and Netanyahu just lost an opportunity to score some very easy political points while at the same time doing the right thing by not letting Haredim avoid their duties to the state.
So, assuming that my analysis still carries some credibility, what comes next? To begin with, Kadima leaving does not alter the fact that Netanyahu still has a governing coalition that agrees on most rightwing issues. In fact, he is going to have a larger coalition than he did before the deal with Mofaz, because a bunch of Kadima MKs are now going to break off and join Likud. I thought this was going to happen both before the unity deal and after the unity deal, and the only difference now is that Mofaz himself will not be going with them. Netanyahu is still going to have to reconcile the fact that Shas and UTJ want to maintain the status quo on the draft and Yisrael Beiteinu does not, but this juggling act might be easier to manage depending on how many Kadima MKs break away from their current home and join their former home. I have seen early reports that it will be at least 7, and it might grow to more. So while Netanyahu’s life is more difficult today than it was yesterday, he is still in good shape and will head into elections in early 2013 in a strong position.
As for Kadima, this misguided move today is going to be the final nail in the coffin. Mofaz is first going to have to deal with a rump party following the MKs who break off and head for Likud, not to mention the other group of 7 that wanted to break away in May and start a new party to be headed by Tzipi Livni and Haim Ramon. Then there is the problem that Kadima has essentially transformed itself from one single issue party (disengagement from Gaza) to another single issue party (equalizing the burden of service), and while this is a popular issue, it is not enough to sustain a viable party (Kadima’s new slogan is apparently “Kadima L’Shareit” which means Kadima, To Serve, or more literally Forward, To Serve). Mofaz still has no real credibility on social justice issues, and what little benefit of the doubt anyone was willing to grant him vanished into thin air the day he joined forces with Bibi. So what’s left for him? There is no way that Netanyahu and Likud are now going to adopt any policy that even resembles what Kadima was proposing on the universal draft, and there might even be enough defections from Kadima one way or the other to knock Mofaz out of being leader of the opposition. Even if Kadima retains enough members to be the largest opposition party, Mofaz will be left shouting into the wind on this issue and does not have enough of a base or a coherent set of policies to prevent Kadima from getting decimated in the next election. The bottom line here is that this is an enormous loss for Mofaz; he was outmaneuvered by Bibi, made his situation much worse by issuing a stream of threats to leave despite his bluff being repeatedly called, and now his party is almost certainly fated to disappear and he has ruined his own chances of being welcomed back into Likud with open arms. No matter which way you view this, today was the most epic of fails for Shaul Mofaz, and Netanyahu gets to remain right where he was.
The Fate of Israel’s Unity Government
July 3, 2012 § 4 Comments
Two of my favorite Israel bloggers, Allison Good and The Camel’s Nose, are having an entertaining debate on Twitter and their respective blogs over the survival prospects of the Likud-Kadima coalition government. For those who haven’t been following along, Bibi Netanyahu disbanded the Kadima-led Plesner Committee charged with coming up with a solution to the problem of Haredi and Arab exemptions from military service following the resignations of Yisrael Beiteinu, Habayit Hayehudi, and the Haredi representative from the committee. AG thinks that this means that the coalition government is going to be gone by the end of the week because Bibi is ultimately going to stick with his more rightwing coalition partners and because Shaul Mofaz realizes that he is getting nowhere with Netanyahu and would rather resume his erstwhile role as opposition leader. In contrast, TCN thinks that the coalition will last because Bibi is a cunning politician and will be able to ride out the current storm and because Mofaz gains nothing by quitting the government.
I hate to pick sides here, but since I was planning on writing about this anyway before the two of them beat me to it, I have to go with The Camel’s Nose on this one. Allison’s logic is good, particularly on the issue of Bibi being a creature of habit with a long history of being risk-averse when it comes to big picture policies who tends to placate his rightwing base, but I will add a few reasons to the ones already set forth by TCN in explaining why I think the coalition holds.
First, Netanyahu issued a statement warning the Haredi parties that if a compromise is not reached, Haredim will be subject to the draft beginning August 1. This angered the Haredi parties to no end and they ripped him for issuing an ultimatum, and it seems like a strange move for Bibi to make if he is ultimately going to ditch Kadima and side with Shas and UTJ. Why warn them about coming back to the table if the intention is to back them to the hilt anyway? If the answer is that equalizing the burden of service is popular with the Israeli public and issuing the hardline statement is all public relations showmanship, then Netanyahu is setting himself for a severe backlash if he then goes and lets Haredim off the hook for military or national service. Furthermore, it bears noting that Haredi voters are not part of Netanyahu and Likud’s base – they historically have been willing to join any government, left or right, that has been willing to buy their support with subsidies and key ministries. Netanyahu’s base is the settler and religious Zionist movements, and they hold no water for Haredi draft dodgers. All of this reads to me like Bibi is gearing up to make Haredim subject to the draft, and only disbanded the Plesner Committee because it seemed like a futile exercise once YB and the Haredi rep had both quit and not because he is trying to protect the Haredi exemption.
Second, I don’t think that Mofaz has any intention of quitting the coalition. His threat to do so is an empty one since there is no reason for him to wait – if he was actually going to pull out of the government, he would have done so when Netanyahu pulled the plug on the Plesner Committee, which was Mofaz’s pet project. Mofaz has already been sufficiently embarrassed to justify leaving, and the fact that he hasn’t done so indicates to me that he is looking for excuses to stick around. That Mofaz brought Kadima into the government does not change the fact that Kadima’s poll numbers were badly sinking before the coalition deal was struck and that Kadima was increasingly looking like a party that would not survive more than one additional election. Leaving the coalition now, as TCN points out, probably dilutes Mofaz’s power since he is not by any means a natural leader of a left of center opposition, and that goes double now that he has tainted himself in the left’s eyes by joining hands with Bibi in a unity government.
Finally, there is the fact that Netanyahu created this monster of a coalition for a reason, and we need to think about what that reason might be. Sure, I think he liked the idea of presiding over a government with virtually no real opposition to speak of, but he also wasn’t accumulating numbers just for the sole sake of accumulating numbers. I think that creating such a large coalition was meant to give Netanyahu room to maneuver on precisely this issue – equalizing the burden of service and ending the Haredi military exemption – since it is a popular position and one that he could not pursue before without bringing down his government. The day after the news of the deal with Kadima broke, I wrote the following:
A newly stabilized government gives Netanyahu more time to quell the growing backbench rebellion within Likud as well, and he can expect Kadima to now back him full-tilt on settlements once he backs Mofaz’s Tal Law alternative. In sum, this is move to bring in Kadima and cancel the early elections is a no-brainer that eliminates potential rival parties, strengthens Likud internally, and probably increases its vote share over what it would have gotten in September.
This logic still holds. Putting Kadima in charge of the committee tasked with replacing the Tal Law was a high profile move and Netanyahu staked a lot on it, and the idea that after all that he would now just turn around, kill the committee and not allow its recommendation to see the light of day, and end the unity government, putting him right back where he started – namely, a coalition that is bound to break apart and bring down the government since Yisrael Beiteinu and Shas/UTJ cannot coexist for much longer – doesn’t make sense to me. Ultimately, the deal with Kadima was about Netanyahu’s survival as prime minister without having to call early elections, and so he needs Mofaz to stick around almost as much as Mofaz needs him in order to remain relevant. So, my prediction is that after everyone gets in their saber rattling, Netanyahu and Mofaz will work out some sort of arrangement, the Haredi parties will leave the coalition in a huff, and the unity government will remain in place. We should know by the end of the week if I am right or if I am wrong in a big way. And if it’s the latter, consider this my preemptive apology and huge tip of the hat to Allison Good.
Cracks Appearing In All Sorts Of Coalitions
June 29, 2012 § Leave a comment
Apparently Bibi Netanyahu’s strategy of expanding his governing coalition in an effort to deal with the crisis precipitated by the Tal Law’s expiration didn’t solve the problem but only kicked it down the road. Following the news that the Plesner Committee, which was charged with coming up with a viable plan to rectify the military and national service exemptions for Haredim and Israeli Arabs, has decided to essentially give Israeli Arabs a free pass, Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party quit the committee. The news that Haredim were going to be treated differently than Israeli Arabs obviously did not sit well with Shas and UTJ either, who were already upset that Shaul Mofaz and Kadima are insisting on severe penalties for draft dodgers that are squarely aimed at the Haredi sector. So in a nutshell, the two sides that were pulling on Netanyahu from opposite ends during the last coalition crisis are now both angry again, and this is all being driven by Kadima, Netanyahu’s new coalition partner that was supposed to give him room to maneuver and put an end to the constant worrying about the coalition breaking apart.
Netanyahu and Mofaz are meeting today in an effort to try and resolve the impasse after the prime minister made clear that he was not ok with the Plesner Committee plan (which is being pushed, if not outright dictated, by Mofaz), but this is just a reminder that Israeli coalitions are never fully stable no matter how large they are. This is not going to bring down the government, but if forced to choose between Mofaz and Kadima on the one hand and Lieberman and Yisrael Beiteinu on the other, Netanyahu is going to go with Mofaz, which will set off all sorts of problems with the settler community at the worst possible time for Bibi given that the Ulpana evacuation just went off shockingly smoothly.
Speaking of Ulpana, the events there this week revealed another important split, but this one has nothing to do with coalition politics. Instead, there seems to be a growing divide between the camp containing the majority of the settlement movement and the more extreme militant wing (often referred to by the shorthand “hilltop youth”), with some in the settler leadership waking up to the fact that violence turned outward almost always inevitably migrates inward as well. It began when Ze’ev Hever, who is in charge of the settlement movement’s building and construction, found his car tires slashed, prompting a set of mea culpas from him and from Yesha head Danny Dayan, who both admitted that they have stayed silent for years in the face of settler violence against Arabs. This acknowledgement and promise to begin cracking down on the violent extremists within their midst unfortunately came too late for the Defense Ministry subcontractors visiting Ulpana earlier this month in preparation for the evacuation who were pelted with rocks for their efforts to ensure that Ulpana’s residents would be moved out as painlessly and seamlessly as possible. Then if that weren’t enough, the Ulpana families – who were fully cooperative and left peacefully – had to spend their time skirmishing with hilltop youths who were trying to prevent those very families from evacuating by barring their way and then barricading themselves in one of the vacated apartments. If it wasn’t clear to the settler leadership that they have a serious problem within their midst while violent settler extremists were torching mosques and carrying out odious “price tag” attacks in the West Bank, it has become abundantly clear now. All of this is a useful reminder that, as Jeremy Pressman aptly put it yesterday, the term “settler” papers over the fact that settlers are not a monolithic group and the settlement movement is not a unified whole marching in lockstep. These divisions within Israeli politics and Israeli society bear close watching over the next few months as tensions that have been buried are now starting to bubble up to the surface.
