In the last few diaries I've written there have been statements to the effect that newly appointed Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman of Yisrael Beiteinu, with his horrid opinions about Arabs and saber-rattling against Iran, represents the "mainstream" in Israel. Furthermore, it's been alleged that the Israeli populace voted against the two-state solution in the February 10 election. Is this actually true?
The second issue first: In two comments to two of my previous diaries, I did a breakdown of votes for parties that were on record as being for or against the two-state solution. I might as well do it again here.
Votes for parties advocating the two-state solution (or ending the occupation):
Kadima: 22.47%
Labor: 9.93%
United Arab List-Ta'al: 3.38%
Hadash: 3.32%
Meretz: 2.95%
Balad: 2.48%
Total: 44.53%
Votes for parties against the two-state solution:
Likud: 21.61%
Yisrael Beiteinu: 11.70%
National Union: 3.34%
Jewish Home: 2.87%
Total: 39.58%
So there's no "mandate" for the two-state solution, but there's also no mandate against it. In fact, it could be argued that, if you take Shas's portion of the votes (8.47%) and bear in mind that Shas's platform on peace is that it supports concessions to the Palestinians if they will save lives and that Shas was in both Yitzhak Rabin's and Ehud Barak's pro-Oslo governments, then the votes that favor concessions to the Palestinians are over half of the votes to be counted. Add United Torah Judaism, with its 4.39% of the vote, doesn't have a firm position on the peace process (and were also in Barak's 1999 government), you might say that the referendum on withdrawal from the Palestinian Territories was as high as 57.41%. Again, not exactly a landslide in favor of peace, but it does undercut the notion that the electorate voted against peace.
Now to the larger question: Does Lieberman represent the "mainstream" in Israeli political thought? One reader cited this article from the Electronic Intifada Web site. The author of that piece, Nimer Sultanty, makes six points about how Lieberman represents the Israeli mainstream. I'll deal with those presently, but first let's recognize that Lieberman's party received a little over 10% of the Israeli vote. The "far right" in Israel received less than 20%.
Now to the points:
First, one needs to be reminded that among Yisrael Beiteinu's elected members of the Knesset are men who come from the establishment, for example, a former ambassador to the US and a former senior commander in the police force.
Before anyone calls me on it, I'm going to willingly engage in a tu quoque response.
George Habash, onetime leader of the terrorist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was a medical doctor, as was Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi of Hamas. Arafat was trained as an engineer. Ismail Haniyeh has a literature degree. Khaled Meshal studied physics in Kuwait. Not exactly outsiders, these men.
More to the point: Hadem Rida is mayor of Jenin and Mahmoud al-Zahar served as foreign minister of the Palestinian National Authority. They are both members of the Palestinian establishment and both members of Hamas. Hamas is a terrorist organization. There are no two ways about this. When you kill innocent people for political ends, you are a terrorist. Lieberman, as awful as he is, hasn't strapped a bomb on a fifteen-year-old and put him on a bus in Tel-Aviv.
Second, in the negotiations that followed elections day there was a wide range of agreement not only between the Likud of Benjamin Netanyahu and Lieberman, but also the Kadima party of current Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Lieberman. Both sides were trying to convince him to join their own coalition. Needless to say, both Lieberman and Kadima emerged in the last decade as an offspring of the Likud.
Well that's significantly vague, isn't it? Yes, both Livni and Netanyahu courted Lieberman. That's what you do with the third largest party in the country. That's also what the rest of the world is asking Israel to do vis-à-vis Hamas, i.e., to legitimize them through engaging them in the political process.
As to what Kadima's leadership and Lieberman agree about, Sultany doesn't tell us. It could be something as harmless (from a Palestinian standpoint) as secularizing the State of Israel. Since Sultany doesn't say, it's impossible to tell. What's clear is that Livni differed with Netanyahu on backing a two-state solution and even Ehud Barak, while joining the government, has disagreed with Netanyahu on this point. In fact, Barak ran for Prime Minister and won against Netanyahu in 1999 on this issue.
Third, Ehud Barak of the Labor party rejected before the elections some of his senior party members' demand to promise not to join a coalition that would include Lieberman. Even worse, Barak claimed that Lieberman talks the talk but does not walk the walk as he never "shot anyone" thereby implying that he himself is the tough guy since he did actually kill Arabs in his past.
First, let's deal with the more inflammatory part of this. Has Ehud Barak killed Arabs with his bare hands? Yes, he has, and he's made no secret of this. What is left out here is that Barak did so as a high figure in Israel's military, particularly as a commando. Since Arab states were at war with Israel and, in particular, Beirut was harboring the PLO leadership in the 1970s, Barak went to Beirut after the Munich Olympics massacre and he personally killed Arabs while dressed as a woman. (True story.) Do I hold him somehow guilty for having done this? No, I don't. Does this mean I hate Arabs? No, it means I hate the people that saw fit to plan and carry out the murder of innocent Jews. Jews are funny that way: We don't like it when people kill us.
Still, the quote from Barak, like so much else in Sultany's article, is not sourced, so it may not even be true. What's definitely true is that Barak wavered significantly following the election, at first stating firmly that his party would sit in opposition. To be fair, he probably did not expect a coalition offer from Bibi. But no one ever said Barak wasn't an opportunist. It doesn't make Barak equivalent to Lieberman and doesn't make Lieberman mainstream.
Warning: The fourth point(s) is/are long.
Fourth, Lieberman's central idea of land swap or population swap that would include Palestinian citizens of Israel and his view of this minority as a demographic and strategic threat to the self-proclaimed Jewish state are actually not controversial among the major parties and elites in Israel.
No, it's actually quite controversial for any politician in Israel to suggest that Israel cede what is recognized as Israeli territory. That's why no other party has ever endorsed the so-called Lieberman plan.
The question of Palestinian citizenship in a Jewish state started long before Lieberman emerged on the scene and used incitement against the Palestinian citizens to gain more votes. Indeed, many prominent Israeli academics and politicians have expressed support of these ideas including Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu, Elie Yishai of the Shas party, Ephraim Sneh of Labor, journalist Dan Margalit and historian Benny Morris.
Well, now we're conflating. What "views" are being spoken of here, because they are not Lieberman's specific views on population transfer. Have Sharon and Netanyahu in particular suggested deportations? Absolutely. Yishai leads a party (Shas) that, as noted above, supports land for peace if it will save lives. I'm not aware of Sneh advocating deportation of "transfer," and again, there is no source given. I would assume Margalit's views would be easier to find than Sneh's, but I haven't found them.
Morris is an interesting case. A longstanding dove and one of the leading post-Zionist historians, Morris turned against the Palestinians thanks to terrorism. Want to blame someone for Morris's about-face? Blame Hamas.
To give one example, Ehud Barak said in his June 2002 interview with Benny Morris in The New York Review of Books that the Arab citizens will serve as the "spear point" of the Palestinian struggle, and that this would require changes in the rules of the "democratic game" to guarantee the "Jewishness" of the state. He also expressed support for a land swap that would include large Arab concentrations inside Israel because it makes "demographic sense."
Here is the interview mentioned above.
Here's Morris:
He raises the possibility that in a future deal, some areas with large Arab concentrations, such as the "Little Triangle" and Umm al-Fahm, bordering on the West Bank, could be transferred to the emergent Palestinian Arab state, along with their inhabitants:
But this could only be done by agreement—and I don't recommend that government spokesmen speak of it [openly]. But such an exchange makes demographic sense and is not inconceivable.
Is that "expressing support"? No, when you say that it's possible and "could only be done by agreement," that isn't exactly support. Lieberman would transfer this land unilaterally. That's a big difference.
Barak also makes the "spearpoint" remark prefaced with this: "If the conflict with the Palestinians continues..." Big omission. It is with this conditional phrase that Barak then makes the remark about the "democratic game."
Let's boil this down: Barak says that if the conflict with the Palestinians continues, it's a fair possibility that Israeli Arabs may turn against the State of Israel. If that were to happen, Barak said, it might cause a situation whereby Israeli Arabs' rights might be (further) infringed.
Did Sultany think that this wouldn't be checked?
To give another example, on 23 January 2002 Livni urged members of the Knesset to reject an "equal protection clause" according to which equality is the right of every citizen in the state regardless of his or her nationality or religion or views. Indeed, the proposed bill was rejected and formal equality remains outside the Israeli book of laws. She also supported "settlement and allocation of land for Jews only" bills in the Knesset. Finally, she repeatedly argued that Israel will never be the national home for its Palestinian citizens, and if they have a collective aspiration they should look for it somewhere else.
I did an extensive search of both Lexis-Nexis and the Jerusalem Post archive and could find no mention of any of this. He who alleges must prove is a chief rule of debate. The person who posted this quote in my comments yesterday was unable to provide any source either. Hmmmm...
Fifth, this is not the first time that Lieberman has become a cabinet minister in Israel. In fact he served as the minister of national infrastructure (2001-02), minister of transportation (2003-04), and then more recently as the minister for strategic affairs (2006-08).
Yeah, national infrastructure and transportation aren't exactly "big" portfolios. Yes, he was minister for strategic affairs, and that was a cabinet position that was created just for Lieberman in exchange for his support for Olmert's government. It deals pretty much with the Iran issue, an issue that concerns many Israelis. But it's not as if he didn't have to vet any "policy" he might have promoted through Livni as foreign minister, Barak as defense minister, and Olmert as Prime Minister.
As for why Lieberman has previously been a government minister, see above on engaging certain parties in hopes that they can be mainstreamed.
Sixth, Lieberman is not the first or only outspoken proponent of expulsion of the Palestinians to serve in the government. In fact, Rehavam Ze'evi of the racist Moledet party was a minister without portfolio (1991-92), and then again as a minister of tourism (2001) in the Sharon government until he was assassinated by Palestinians, only to be replaced by Benjamin Elon of the same party and with the same views. Ze'evi was more principled in this issue than Lieberman. Notable in this context is that the Israeli legislator enacted a law to commemorate Ze'evi's "legacy" after his assassination.
Yes, Moledet has always backed transfer. Here's how it has polled since its founding: 1.9% (1988); 2.4% (1992); 2.4% (1996); 3% (1999, in combination with two other parties on the National Union ticket; 5.52% (2003, in combination with another party); 7.14% (on a combined NU-Mafdal ticket with three other parties); and 3.34% (combined with three other parties on the NU ticket). So it never polled above 2.4% as a single party and its best showing in a bloc was with three other parties. Not exactly the mainstream.
So much for Sultany's unsourced and inaccurate article. Lieberman remains marginal, in my opinion. That he is marginal but powerful is more a testament to the idea that perhaps Israel needs to raise its electoral threshold rather than examine its national soul and character.