Even in its third month, the Arab revolution fails to resonate positively in Israel. The Israeli news media devote a lot of space to dramatic events in the region, but our self-centered political discourse remains the same. It cannot see beyond the recent escalation across the Gaza border, or the approaching possibility of a Palestinian declaration of statehood in September. Israel's leaders are missing the old order in the Arab world, sensing only trouble in the unfolding and perhaps inevitable change.
Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, defence minister Ehud Barak, and the opposition leader, Tzipi Livni, have all reacted to the Arab revolution by reciting long-held positions. Netanyahu has warned of an "Iran next door" scenario in Egypt, pledging to fence off Israel's peaceful borders with Egypt and Jordan. Asked by CNN's Piers Morgan if he was sad to see Hosni Mubarak go, Netanyahu admitted that he was.
No serious political figure in Israel has reached out to the revolutionaries, celebrating their achievement or suggesting we need to know them better since they might share values and ambitions with secular, liberal Israelis. Barak, Israel's top strategic mind, was kind enough to tell Sky News last weekend that "in the long run, the shakeup in the Arab world is a positive and promising phenomenon". But the long run is an accumulation of short runs, in which Barak warns of "irresponsible popular opinion". And Livni, the peace process champion, published an article in the Washington Post calling for a western-imposed "code for new democracies".
There are obvious reasons for Israel's timidity towards the uprising in the Arab streets. Israel's foreign policy is focused on survival in an unfriendly neighbourhood, and favours the status quo. The collapsing dictatorships, residing on the same status quo, provided its necessary "stability". In his earlier days Netanyahu preached for regional democracy as the cornerstone of peace, but from the PM's office he sees things differently, praising democracy in principle while warning of its perils in practice. "Those leaderships," said Barak this month, "as much as they were unaccepted by their peoples, they were very responsible on regional stability … They're much more comfortable [to us] than the peoples or the streets in the same countries."
Following decades of "cold peace" with Egypt and Jordan, Israel's foreign policy establishment developed an instinctive fear of Arab public opinion. Mubarak was not always friendly, but he watched Israel's back when it fought wars on its eastern and northern fronts. Even adversaries like Syria's Assad regime have been predictable, and not prone to risky adventures. Dealing with open societies could be much more complicated than assessing an autocrat and his bunch of cronies.
But there's a deeper motive underlying the Israeli attitude. They see their country as a western bastion, a modern democracy that is unfortunately surrounded by less developed nations. Reflecting this, Barak coined the phrase "a villa in the jungle" to describe Israel's regional stance; recently he updated it to "an oasis fortress in the desert".
Beyond eating hummus in local Arab restaurants, the wider Middle Eastern culture is largely shunned by Israeli Jewish society. Arabic is not mandatory in Israeli Hebrew schools, and those who bother to learn the neighbours' language want to spend their military service in the intelligence corps. Otherwise Arabic is hardly a career-booster.
Israelis are so arrogant and ignorant about their vicinity that whenever we make comparisons, the benchmarks are always the US, western Europe, or countries of the OECD. It's never Egypt, Syria, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority or even Dubai.
The western self-perception affects political views, too. Mainstream support for the peace process saw it as a means of pleasing the west, rather than integrating in the east. Netanyahu and Barak treat the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a nuisance in Israel's relations with the US, not as a moral or legal issue that Israel needs to resolve on its merits. So much so that Netanyahu considers launching a new peace policy during a visit to Capitol Hill, rather than at home.
This attitude leads to a policy of self-isolation from neighbouring societies, along with complaints about western "ungratefulness" over Israel raising the lonely flag of liberal democracy in a sea of backwardness. That explains the narrow Israeli opinion of the Arab revolution, ranging from indifference to anxiety, if not rejection. Changes, schmanges, let us roll down the blinds and look westwards. After all, sunsets are way more beautiful and romantic than sunrises.
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