Israel: The Morning After
By Gideon Levy
March 25, 2015 "ICH"
- "MEE"
- The morning after the elections in Israel
brings no optimism. With a little effort,
however, even the pessimists can find some
comfort. Benjamin Netanyahu’s victory,
unexpected and unequivocal, will usher in
another coalition of right wing zealots,
nationalists, and the religious - resembling
its predecessors but more uniform and sans
fig leaf. We’ve already seen what such a
government can do to Palestinians and
Israelis: another war in Gaza, more mass
arrests in the West Bank, additional
anti-democratic legislation and more
incitement against Arabs and other
minorities in Israel.
But the fourth Netanyahu
government will have more self-confidence
and fewer constraints than prior ones.
They’ve seen what works for them, and now
they’ll be looking for greater returns from
the same formula. They’ve seen that they can
dispense with listening to US president
Barack Obama and with doing as he wishes;
that they can shamelessly disdain his
positions and subvert his policies, stage
nasty and unprecedented confrontations with
him, humiliate and insult him - and stay
afloat. Stay afloat? Not really - but rather
be reelected with flying colours.
They’ve seen that they can
pass legislation designed to weaken, or even
destroy, the agents of democracy in Israel,
from the High Court to the civil society
nonprofits to the media – while enjoying
increasing popular acclaim domestically.
They’ve seen that the right wing can do
pretty much as it pleases and popular
acclaim only grows.
The outgoing government
will be the tailwind pushing the incoming
government onward, with fewer restraints or
boundaries than its predecessors. From that
standpoint, Palestinians, peace seekers and
civil rights defenders around the world, and
Israelis anxious about the image of their
country, can look forward to an even darker
and less promising reality. There’s no light
at the end of this tunnel – for what light
could make headway now against the gloom
chosen by Israelis who wanted another
Netanyahu administration.
Gaza can expect another
cruel assault by Israel. The Palestinian
Authority’s tax monies will certainly not be
transferred to them promptly and maybe the
Palestinians will be pushed one more time
into rebellion’s corner, as doubtful a
proposition as that may be - factoring in
their internal rifts and the unhealed,
still-bleeding wounds from the second
Intifada.
Evil tidings, of course,
also have an upside. One need not be a
Marxist to understand that once all
disguises are ripped apart, they are ripped
apart on both sides: maybe that could
presage something good. Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, in announcing on
election eve that no Palestinian state would
happen, did a good turn for Palestinians as
well as for those Israelis and those abroad
who strive for justice here. The false front
fell away, and having dispensed with the
artificial tableau we can now address the
reality that was there all along: Israel has
no intention of allowing the establishment
of a Palestinian state. Israel has no
intention of ending the occupation. Israel
has no intention of heeding America,
international law, or global public opinion.
The relevant conclusion can and must be
drawn: let us end this masquerade, this
aimless and useless “peace process,” and
begin anew in a different mode.
If the Palestinian State
is dead, as the outcome of this election
clearly shows, then the broader discourse is
ripe for an overhaul. Henceforth we must
speak only of civil rights for Palestinians.
The settlements will remain - the outcome of
that battle has already been decided - but
in this 21st Century the world
cannot stand by and see inaugurated, in any
country, an apartheid regime like the one
that now unmasks itself in the West Bank and
Gaza. Now, there must be decisive and
uncompromising intervention. There can be no
argument, and no compromise, regarding basic
civil rights. There will be a democracy of
equals for all who live under Israeli rule,
or there will be an apartheid state that can
expect to be treated accordingly, as history
has treated such regimes, like South
Africa’s, in the past. If it’s going to be
apartheid in the ring, then the padded
gloves will be unlaced now, and laid aside.
It would seem appropriate,
in that case, to be grateful for the results
of Israel’s latest elections: they’ve left
no room for hope regarding the old path
pursued for the last quarter century, when
the two-state solution was the agreed-on
goal, while Israel sabotaged it beyond
repair and the entire world, including the
USA and the EU, stood aside without lifting
a finger, apart from the lip service paid to
the ostensible goal as it receded into the
distance.
So that’s it, then. No
more photo ops for Abbas and Netanyahu. No
more floating those pitiful, old-school
peace plans that Israel never really meant
anyway. The Israeli government has destroyed
the last prospects for ever bringing them to
fruition. Now a new discourse will emerge, a
new attitude, a new way of relating. The
fifty-year-old occupation, whose architects
never intended to end it, remained untouched
by the world’s feeble attempts to remove it.
Now the world must direct its concerns to
the rights and freedoms of the people living
under that occupation. The Palestinians
don’t have another fifty years to wait;
generations of young people without
prospects for any reasonable future must
have hope restored and the doorway to a
decent future opened at last. They deserve
it no less than their neighbours, the young
Israelis who are living comparatively
prosperous lives. Young Palestinians deserve
what any young people do: civil rights and
basic liberty.
Yes, the road is long and
the obstacles many. But the new government
whose leaders were just elected in Israel
has at least brought the real picture into
painfully clear focus: The two-state
solution is clinically dead. It’s time to
think about the alternative. Does anyone
know of an alternative to the two-state idea
other than one state? Does anyone really
believe that Israel will be able to go on
with the status quo, which has never been a
real status quo, for another fifty years?
Another fifty years of cruel, brutal,
illegal occupation, without counterpart
anywhere in the world, including Micronesia,
which recognises its legitimacy? Another
fifty years of Jewish settlements and
Palestinian disinheritance? Is it
conceivable that the entire world - rallying
around the one subject that unites the
global community more than any other issue,
as there is no global consensus like the
shared opposition to a continuation of the
Israeli occupation - would face off against
one tiny country and fall to its global
knees? The coming days will enlighten us as
to whether the new government taking office
in Israel will be a government of
catastrophe, or whether its election might
now provide, even against its will, the
motivation for a fresh start in the Middle
East.
- Gideon
Levy is a Haaretz columnist and a
member of the newspaper's editorial board.
Levy joined Haaretz in 1982, and spent four
years as the newspaper's deputy editor. He
was the recipient of the Euro-Med Journalist
Prize for 2008; the Leipzig Freedom Prize in
2001; the Israeli Journalists’ Union Prize
in 1997; and The Association of Human Rights
in Israel Award for 1996. His new book, The
Punishment of Gaza, has just been published
by Verso.