A few days ago I watched Tony Scott’s movie ‘Unstoppable,’ based on the true story of a train containing toxic materials that went out of control. In reality, as in the movie, the heroes of the train company succeeded in averting a disaster. I thought, ‘what an accurate metaphor for Israeli history of 2012 – too bad we don’t have Denzel Washington to save us from a train wreck!’ because it damn well looks as if Israel is heading for a historical calamity.
Since the elections have been announced, there has not been a single poll that doesn’t predict an absolute majority for the bloc composed of the right and the ultraorthodox. Netanyahu is likely to be in the comfortable position of having his job assured, and the only question is what kind of coalition he will lead.
His own party is now officially an extreme right-wing party with a majority against the two-state solution. Naftali Bennett from Habayit Hayehudi officially argues for annexing most of the West Bank [2]. Netanyahu has so far proven to be a very cautious politician who likes to play it safe and his instinct is certainly to go for his ‘natural’ partners; to put together a right-wing/ ultra-Orthodox coalition and then try to lure Yacimovich or Lapid into the government. As I wrote recently, I hope that both will refuse the offer and create a viable opposition together with Tzipi Livni.
In this scenario, Netanyahu will be stuck in a right-wing coalition even more extreme than the current one. We will see another term in which Israel expands settlements and wears down whatever support it still has from the free world. Such a right-wing coalition would be headed for a head-on collision with the international community: The UN recognized Palestine as a non-member observer state on November 29, 65 years after it approved of the partition plan in 1947.
Netanyahu’s stalling tactic will only work for so long. Once it becomes clear that the two-state solution is no longer feasible, it is only a matter of time until Israel will be in a position similar to that of South Africa in the last years of the Apartheid regime.
By then it may well be that the international community and the Palestinians will change course. They will no longer demand that Israel leave the West Bank, but that it give Palestinians full political rights. As I have endlessly argued along with many of my colleagues, I cannot see how such a bi-national state will function – and in any case this will be the end of the Zionist dream.
Netanyahu knows everything I am writing here, but he needs to realize that a right-wing coalition will lead him and the country to historical catastrophe. Will he surprise us all and change course? He certainly has the option to do so [3]: the center-left bloc composed of Labor, Livni’s new Hatnuah party, and Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid is bound to reap approximately thirty-five mandates. Together with Likud-Beitenu this could give Netanyahu a comfortable majority of seventy MKs according to the latest polls.
Such a coalition would require Netanyahu to change his whole outlook: Tzipi Livni has not excluded joining a Netanyahu government, but we can be sure that she will not do so if this government will not re-engage with the Palestinians in a serious peace process. She has proven in the past that she does not compromise on questions of principle.
Livni, Yacimovich and Lapid will not accept Lieberman as defense minister, and they might go for a creative move - demand that Ehud Barak be brought in as a professional minister (he is not running for the Knesset). They would also demand that Yaakov Ne’eman, the current minister of justice, who has been profoundly destructive for Israel’s democracy, be replaced with a figure committed to the principles of liberal democracy. A creative option would be Dan Meridor, who will not make it into the next Knesset, and could be appointed as a professional minister with impeccable credentials.
The choice is Netanyahu’s to make. If he will stick to his cautious tactician mentality, he can model himself on former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir whose main achievement was not to do anything at all. Then Netanyahu will go into history as Israel’s longest serving prime minister without having achieved anything except for running Israel into unprecedented isolation.
He can also opt for the statesman-like attitude of Menachem Begin, who signed the historic peace agreement with Egypt, as his model. He could engage with the Arab League peace Initiative, and move towards resolving the one hundred year old conflict with the Palestinians.
The latter option sounds very much unlike Netanyahu, who has functioned like Shamir so far. But he might do well to remember Theodor Herzl’s saying: “If you will it, it is not a dream.” Otherwise we are headed for a nightmare.
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