The peace policy advocated in the platform of Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid party is full of twists, turns and qualifications.
"We see settlers living on [Israel's] outskirts as true Zionists and with a broken heart we ask some of them to sacrifice their lives' undertaking for peace and the state's continued existence," it says in the party's platform. Is this a step toward peace? Not exactly. These words come from a party that is right now negotiating with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, someone who isn’t willing to compromise one square inch and whose partners in the Likud Yisrael Beiteinu alliance appear to hold views on the peace process that are quite distant from Yesh Atid's.
But what exactly are the views of Yair Lapid and his colleagues – who stand speechless behind their party leader like prisoners before their jailer? Like Netanyahu, they talk about "two states for two peoples," but what will the borders of these two countries be? Regarding the status of Jerusalem, they mutter the same message as the far-right Oztma Leyisrael party. "Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Israel and its unity is a national symbol of the first order," the party's platform states. "Jerusalem will remain united and under Israeli sovereignty." On the issue of national security, Lapid also has a response: "Israel reserves the right to operate in the territory of a future Palestinian state as much as is needed to ensure its own national security. With respect to Hamas, Israel will not negotiate with the group until it changes its charter and recognizes the right of the Jewish people to exist in their own land."
This is the foundation upon which Lapid wants to build negotiations with the Palestinians? The question is rhetorical, because based on Yesh Atid's party platform Israel doesn't have a partner for peace negotiations anyway.
"We believe," the party's platform says, "that the Palestinians, in the famous words of [former Foreign Minister] Abba Eban, have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity and have rejected again and again Israel's outstretched hand of peace. This is how it was during the first intifada and during the second." If there's no partner, if a united Jerusalem will remain Israel's forever, if some of the true Zionist settlers will only be asked, not forced, to leave their homes and if Israel can choose at any moment to act in the territory of a Palestinian state, what exactly is there left to talk about with the Palestinians? Moreover, when there's no one on the Palestinian side to talk with, there's no need to ask the settlers to relinquish anything anyway. Thus, Yesh Atid's platform has wrapped Netanyahu's policy in colorful paper, tied it up with a bow and put it on sale as if it were an original idea that inspires hope.
It's no wonder, then, that the number of words Yesh Atid's platform dedicates to the peace process is almost identical to number it expends on the importance of "hasbara," or "public relations." Yes, a sentence buried deep in the platform states that without proper policies public relations won't be effective. But since good policy isn't the goal of the platform, public relations will end up taking precedence. Even Habayit Hayehudi leader Naftali Bennett, Yair Lapid's new bedmate, can agree with his position. When the two men have signed a blood pact only to join the coalition government together and Lapid's muscular arm rests on Bennett's shoulder like they are old chums, it's hard to take seriously the platform's hollow sentence declaring that peace is the most effective answer to all the threats Israel faces.
Considering the hollowness of Yesh Atid's platform regarding the peace process – with every sentence offsetting the one preceding it – it's possible to forgive Labor Party leader Shelly Yacimovich for thoroughly hiding her opinion on the issue. At least she didn't try to hide her aversion to dealing with the contemptible subject of making peace.
In the puppet theatre of formulating a party platform on the peace process, everyone is expected to say their lines, even though, or perhaps because, the audience knows the script by heart and recognizes that the whole performance is just for its entertainment. As Israeli journalist Ofer Shelah wrote in September 2012, former Prime Minister Golda Meir and former Defense Minister Moshe Dayan played their parts in the years before the Yom Kippur War, speaking of Israel's longing for peace while ensuring with their actions that there would be another war. These days, Shelah is actually No. 6 in Yesh Atid and one of its newly elected Knesset members. He is also largely responsible for the wording of the peace-process plank of the party's platform.
So the empty peace rhetoric soberly described by Shelah the journalist is now written into Yesh Atid's platform, thanks in part to Shelah the politician. It's safe to assume that if Lapid does not join the government, it won't be because of a disagreement over the peace process. After all, he is a centrist, for neither peace nor war.
Front Page Features