“Can’t anybody here play this game?” --Casey Stengel, New York Yankees’ manager
By Barry Rubin
Stengel’s
complaint is the precise description of Israeli politics nowadays. To a
remarkable extent—and this has nothing to do with his views or
policies—Bibi Netanyahu is the only functioning politician in Israel
today. No wonder he is prime minister, will finish his current term, and
will almost certainly be reelected in 2013.
Consider
the alternatives. The number one such option is Shaul Mofaz who is head
of Kadima. Mofaz was a competent general but is a dreadful politician.
He may be the least charismatic man I’ve ever met. Tsippi Livni, his
predecessor, was a disaster as leader of the self-described centrist
party. Here is a list of her major failures:
--She
did not take the opportunity to oust the smarmy party leader Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert when the corruption charges against him piled up.
--She mishandled the coalition negotiations when she did become acting prime minister, leading to the government’s fall.
--She barely beat Mofaz in the 2008 party primary.
--Although
her party had one seat more than
Netanyahu’s in the 2009 election, Livni bungled the chance for some
kind of coalition or rotation agreement. True, Netanyahu held the upper
hand and had no incentive to give up much but that was all the more
reason for her to offer him a good enough deal so she wouldn't be thrown
into fruitless opposition.
--As
leader of the opposition Livni was a total failure, never providing a
good counter to Netanyahu’s positions and showing signs of personal
panic that shocked people. Even the anti-Netanyahu media couldn’t rally
behind her.
So Livni was a catastrophe; Kadima, itself a merger of ex-Likud and ex-Labor party people, developed no personality of its own.
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Mofaz’s
record is quite bad, too. In fact, as
one Israeli joke puts it, Mofaz in the party leadership accomplished as
much self-inflicted damage in three months as Livni had in eighteen
months. Previously, he said he would never leave Likud for Kadima, and
then did so a few hours later. In 2012 he said he wouldn’t join
Netanyahu’s coalition, then did, and then announced he was leaving
within a few days over the issue of drafting yeshiva (Orthodox
religious studies) students.
Everyone
knows that if an election is held, Kadima will collapse. Where will
most of its voters go? Almost certainly to Netanyahu. So Mofaz is
bluffing and everybody knows it. He cannot afford to have elections. So
there’s another joke in Israel that the country will have “early
elections” when Netanyahu’s term comes to an end, just after the end of
2013.
Then
there’s the left. The Labor Party has split, with the smaller, more
national security-oriented faction led by Defense Minister Ehud Barak
sticking with Netanyahu’s coalition. That group should also disappear in
the next election.
The
remaining party has veered to the left and put the priority on domestic
social issues. That might well revive the party—especially with the
defection of lots of Kadima voters but it won’t win them an election.
The party is now led by Shelly Yachimovich whose career
experience consists of having been a radio journalist and has never
been a cabinet member.
Of
course, there were social protests in Israel last year about high
prices for some consumer goods and for apartments. There are genuine
problems. But these are the result of economic policies that also
brought Israel one of the best records of any developed country in the
world during the international recession.
And the fall-out from the “Arab Spring” puts national security issues once again front and center.
Alongside of this has been the collapse of the social protests. Last year the movement could mobilize hundreds of
thousands—though the media exaggerated its size—and had broad public sympathy across the political spectrum.
Now
it is reduced to hundreds or a few thousands at most. Why? Because the
loony leftists ousted the moderate leadership which had some realistic
proposed solutions.
Yachimovich
has no monopoly on picking up this support of the discontented.
Israelis are realists and know that, unfortunately, a lot of the money
intended to be used for social benefits now has to go to build a fence
along the border with Egypt and build up Israel’s defensive forces
there.
Then
there are various centrist good-government style
parties that are likely to take votes from Labor and from each other,
notably the one began Yair Lapid, whose father was also a journalist who
also started a failed centrist, good-government and secularist party.
As
I’ve often remarked, there is no country in the world about which
people think they know more and that they actually know less. We often
focus on bias but ignorance is equally important.
There are three key factors necessary to understand contemporary Israeli politics.
First,
Netanyahu is not seen by the electorate generally as being right-wing
and hawkish but as being centrist. He has successfully been developing
this posture now for about fifteen years without much of the Western
media appearing to notice.
Second,
Israelis don’t really see the likelihood that different policies are
going to make lots of Arabs and Muslims love Israel, or bring peace
with the Palestinians, or end the vilification of Israel in the left.
All of those things were tried by means of Israel taking high risks and
making big concessions during the 1992-2000 period. Israelis remember,
even if others don’t, that this strategy doesn’t work.
Third, there are no other politicians who are attractive as potential prime ministers.
We
now know that President Barack Obama’s administration thought that he
was going to overturn Netanyahu and bring Livni to power on a platform
of giving up a lot more to the Palestinians on the hope that this would
bring peace. The editorial pages of American newspapers and alleged
experts still advocate this basic strategy. They couldn’t possibly be
less connected to reality.
Barry
Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs
(GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International
Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His book, Israel: An Introduction, has just
been published by Yale University
Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan).
The website of the GLORIA Center and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His
original articles are published at PJMedia.
Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org
The Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org
Editor Turkish Studies,http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t713636933%22
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