Israeli Elections
Ξ February 10th, 2009 | → Comments Off | ∇ Politics |
So it still looks like a tossup between Kadima and Likud. I have to admit, my sympathies like with Likud – I like the moral clarity they have. That being said, I believe Kadima’s agenda to be more realistic. My ambivalence actually makes me happy, for ever since Sharon left Likud, Labour has been marginalized much the way the Liberal-Democrats have in Britain. Gone is Israel bending over backwards to try and accommodate the Palestinians – now the two parties vying for control both understand the nature of the relationship with the Palestinians.
Israel is in an area claimed by two different people. Over time, such a situation can result in a melding – a creation of a new, distinct people out of the previous two. This process, however, takes centuries and generally involves much bloodshed and atrocity as one side dominates and assimilates the other, and is changed itself in the process. Being a student of British history, I can point to the cycle of violence and assimilation that resulted in the British people: first the Romans conquer and assimilate the southern tribes – the Iceni can attest to just how violent that process could be. Then the product of that assimilation – the Romano-British – fell victim to the Anglo-Saxons. They in turn were displaced and subjugated by the Danes. Then came the Normans with their French customs. Every cycle took centuries and was filled with much bloodshed.
Not every such conflict between cultures results in an eventual assimilation. Carthage was not assimilated – it was obliterated. Likewise with Dacia. The Turks did not assimilate the Byzantine Empire, but rather ground it into dust. The Jews are particularly familiar with the attempts to obliterate a people – and I’m not simply referring to the Holocaust. Jews have experienced pogroms throughout history and in most parts of the world. Perversely, that included an Arab riot in the 1920′s in Jerusalem. Indeed, since then, the relations between the Jews in the region and the Muslims have been icy at best.
I’m reciting this not to play the Holocaust card, but rather to highlight just how incompatible the two peoples in the region are, as well as just how much historical evidence there is for the Jews to have legitimate worries about regional extinction should they ever fall out of power. Whereas Israel has attempted for sixty years to live with their regional neighbors, the Arabs in the region have sought to destroy Israel, and I have little doubt that they would find a large group of Western-cultured Jews to be tolerable. The world would lament the massacre, sanctions would be put in place, but in the end Israel would be wiped out, and a good chunk of the Jews with it.
Now, about now, I assume you’re wondering, “what does this have to do with the elections”? Well, As Golda Meir said, the Jews know a lot about eulogies, but won’t just lay down and die so that people might speak well of them. Both of the main parties share this view – it’s just that the two are dealing with it in different ways.
Israel always hoped to have peaceful relations with their neighbors. Having just survived the Holocaust, they had little wish to exterminate another people in turn. However, with Israel’s war of independence in 1948, it was clear that the sentiment wasn’t returned. In 1967, however, the situation changed. With the six-day war, Israel captured vast areas of territories from the Arabs.
What was born from this was the policy of “land for peace”. The vast territory was full of Palestinians, and demographically shifted the the balance of power. Israel, if it incorporated all the Arabs, would be a Jew-minority country. This was unacceptable, and would have amounted to surrendering the nation to the Arabs. Maintaining the demographic integrity of Israel is of paramount concern to the Jews, and explains why the so-called “right of return” is always a deal-breaker for any peace deal between Israel and the Arabs.
Thus, Israel, originally, never intended to annex the majority of the territory it captured, but use it as a bargaining chip. This worked with Egypt, who signed a peace accord with Israel in 1979. And it was this policy that led Rabin to work with Arafat through the Oslo Accord. However, since then, it became apparent that the Palestinians were not capable of organizing themselves as partners. The penultimate moment in the train-wreck of the Oslo Accords was the meeting between Ehud Barak in 2000, in which Barak reported offered to split Jerusalem with the Palestinians in return for a finalized peace settlement. Following the collapse of the peace process, Labour’s appeasement strategy, and the party itself, was discredited.
Likud, however, disagreed with the “land-for-peace” strategy from the get-go. They felt that Israel had won the right to the lands they captured, and should annex them. It was Likud that fought hardest for settlements in “Palestinian territory”, as a means to breakup and eventually supplant Palestinian demographic centers.
Eventually, Kadima formed as a coalition of Labour and rebel Likud members to form a “centrist” party. While they appeared to be more moderate than Likud with the dismantling of a number of settlements (often over the strenuous objection of the Jewish settlers), in fact they too felt that reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians was unrealistic. However, unlike Likud, they also felt that it was unrealistic to attempt to absorb the West Bank and Gaza, that it took too many resources to defend the small settlements, and that they served as flashpoints for Israel’s critics. By dismantling over-exposed settlements, Israel could preserve it’s resources and impose boundaries on the Palestinians that would prevent them from ever forming a viable nation that could threaten Israel. It is a sneaker but still ruthless strategy.
And it is more realistic. Israel has always needed to be careful with it’s resources, and defending dozens of small enclaves in the middle of Palestinian communities was simply unrealistic. I appreciate Likud’s straight-forward assessment of the situation, but Kadima’s subtle strategy is the better one.
