THIRTY years to the day after Egypt signed a peace deal with Israel, the Jewish state has demonstrated why that supposed first move in a resolution of its conflict with the Palestinians remains just that, a supposed first move. The anti-peace and uncompromising Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu is to form the next Israeli coalition. He has clinched a deal with the center-left Labor Party.
It was one of Netanyahu’s predecessors as Likud premier, the former terrorist Menachem Begin who signed the 1979 deal with Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat. Regardless of the political complexion of successive Israeli governments, the same uncompromising hard-line thread has since run through Israeli policy toward the Palestinians and the creation of an independent Palestinian state. That policy has had three main aspects: Keep talking peace without ever acting peacefully; keep building new settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank and whenever a peace deal seemed in danger of emerging, provoke Palestinian radicals into aggression and then refuse to continue talks on the self-serving grounds that Israel will not negotiate with “terrorists”.
Nothing in Netanyahu’s record nor his recent pronouncements suggest that he has any intention of breaking with this devious political thread. Indeed, he has reaffirmed his old conviction that there should be no separate Palestinian state. However, this time he has wrapped the stance up in a new and original piece of sophistry. Until the occupied territories have a stable and flourishing economy, no possible thought can be given to their independence. Since Israel has long grasped the pressure point on the jugular of the Palestinian economy, this is a no-risk policy stance. All Israel has to do is keep its crossing points virtually shut down to all but humanitarian aid, and the Palestinians can remain impoverished and angry and so will continue as any people under harsh occupation.
But Netanyahu has a problem. He needs to play up to the new US President Barack Obama who has said that a fresh start to the Middle East process is a key foreign policy goal. Even the Bush administration had called for a halt to illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and Obama has made this no less of an issue. Yet, news broke yesterday that as part of his coalition deal, Netanyahu agreed to a secret pact with the ultra nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, to permit the construction of some 3,000 new settler homes in the West Bank between Jerusalem and the existing illegal settlement of Maale Adumim. Yisrael Beiteinu’s leader Avigdor Lieberman, a racist who has called for the expulsion of all Israeli Arabs, will be Netanyahu’s foreign minister.
We hope this is not going to play well in Washington, however hard the US Zionist lobby tries to minimize them.
On the basis that history shows it is often the most uncompromising leaders who end up making the biggest compromises, Obama may choose to wait and see. Given his past, Netanyahu can never pretend that he really wants peace. But with partners like the overt bigot Lieberman, it will be even more difficult for him to do so. But the world community will continue to punish Hamas and the people it voted to power for not recognizing an Israel that has no intention of declaring its final borders.
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