Reflections on the Political Year Gone By
With the Jewish Year 5767 ending at sundown this evening, this
News Review directs its focus to the twelve months gone by so that we can
remember (and perhaps learn from) the events of the year past.
All of us at Meretz USA – Officers, Board, and Staff – send you heartfelt greetings for this New Year. May the New Year bring you health and happiness and may it bring us all – our brothers and sisters in Israel and throughout the world, and our cousins in Palestine and everywhere – peace, shalom, salaam.
Israel and Palestine – Can Palestinian disunity help the
peace process?
Perhaps the most
important factor this year in Israeli-Palestinian relations has been the
rivalry and conflict between Fatah and Hamas.
When 5767 began, Israel
was helping maintain the international boycott of the Hamas government, leaving
only the most meager room for contacts with the Palestinian Presidency of
Mahmoud Abbas. Internal Palestinian
tensions ran high, as Hamas and Fatah used their respective power bases to
jockey for control of the Palestinian Authority. The peace process was at a standstill.
Prodded and pushed by Saudi
Arabia, the two warring parties seemed to
end their power struggle in February when they signed the Mecca Accord and
entered into a power-sharing unity government.
Though some viewed the Accord as a way to restart Israeli-Palestinian
diplomacy (the unity government ambiguously agreed to respect the agreements
signed by the PLO), both Israel and
the US
maintained their refusal to deal with a government in which Hamas was the
senior member.
Unable to break the continued international boycott, the
Palestinian unity government began to implode, as the worst of the Hamas-Fatah
fighting erupted in Gaza in May and
June. When Fatah’s forces in Gaza
were routed in June by a surprise Hamas offensive, President Abbas used the
opportunity to disband the government and set up an interim emergency Cabinet
led by moderate Salam Fayyad, and devoid of Hamas members.
The Hamas victory in Gaza, and heightened concerned that
Hamas could soon take control on the West Bank as well, have recently propelled
the US, Israel and Abbas’ Fatah towards more concerted action. President Bush has called a peace conference,
scheduled to take place in mid-November, and US diplomats are trying to enlist
public Saudi support.
After ignoring Abbas at the beginning of his Presidency
(before Hamas’ election victory in legislative elections in January 2006), Israel
began exploring the possibility of dialogue, and Olmert and Abbas are now
trying to work up an agreed “declaration of principles” that would form the
backbone for a future peace agreement.
On the West Bank, the Fatah party has
gone on the offensive against Hamas, rounding up its operatives there and
shutting down many of its affiliated charities.
In Gaza, meanwhile, Fatah
supporters have begun waging a battle for public opinion, holding a series of
Friday protest prayers demonstratively outside the walls of the
Hamas-controlled mosques.
Israel and Syria – Moves for Peace, Rumbles of War:
The year 5767 once again taught us to take
the opinions of the pundits – even when a near-consensus reigns among them –
with more than a grain of salt. All
through the year, commentators in Israel
predicted a Syrian-Israeli war over this past summer as if were almost an
inevitability. Fortunately, however,
both the Israeli and Syrian governments showed a bit more sense and moderation
than what the prognosticators gave them credit for.
This is not to say, of course, that the leaders in Damascus
and Jerusalem
have fully embraced the peace option. As
always, the political reality is neither black nor white. The months gone by have seen a curious,
almost surreal combination, of sabers being rattled and olive branches being extended
– at one and same time. The speeches of Syrian
and Israeli officials have seemed well-nigh identical at times: We sincerely
seek peace, each country tells us, but we stand ready to repulse the other side
should it commit an act of aggression.
Nor has the US Administration lived up to its commitment to
advance the peace process. As Prime
Minister Olmert himself has indicated, the United States
had made it clear to Israel that America
is adamantly opposed to Israeli-Syrian peace talks – lest Damascus
find a way to wriggle out of the diplomatic isolation to which Washington
has committed it.
But 5767 also delivered some positive signs: It was revealed
in January that between September 2004 and July 2006, Israel
and Syria had been unofficially
negotiating a peace deal, employing unofficial negotiators Alon Liel and Abe
Suleiman to draft an unofficial, non-binding “non-paper”. Although the talks broke down amid last
year’s war and Israel’s reported
refusal to move these talks to an official level, the non-paper helped lay the
foundations for peace talks at a future time.
Israel’s Arab
Minority Pushes for Autonomy; Israel’s Right-Wing Pushes Segregation:
The most profound development in 5767 from
the standpoint of Jewish-Arab relations within Israel was the series of
documents produced by Israeli Arab think-tanks and NGOs that tried to energize
the debate over the unequal status of Israel’s Arab community. Foremost among these papers was “The Future
Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel,”
produced by The National Committee for the Heads of Arab Local Authorities in Israel.
The “Vision document” issued an important call for a
restructured Israeli polity in which all citizens were accorded full legal,
political and socioeconomic equality – in practice as well as in theory. Unfortunately, however, the document also
contained a provocative introduction that drew all public attention away from
this core message: Referring to the Palestinian Arabs as the only indigenous
people in the area, the document treated Zionism as an alien, colonialist
project and hinted at the illegitimacy of Israel’s
creation.
In the short term at least, the Vision document seems to
have boomeranged – creating increased suspicion of and hostility for Israeli
Arabs, even among centrist and left-of-center Israelis. It is perhaps this changed atmosphere that
gave right-wing Knesset Members (with support from some Labor and Kadima MKs)
the courage to push the “JNF bill”, which endorses state-sponsored discrimination in the sphere of land-leasing.
The bill is making its way through the legislative process
and is shaping up to be a major issue when the Knesset returns from its summer
recess. The question of Jewish-Arab
equality in Israel will certainly
remain a central challenge for Israel,
as it seeks to maintain the balance between its Jewish and democratic
characteristics.
Women in Israel – Sex Offenses in High Places:
The year 5767 was a year of shame in Israel
in terms of the treatment of women in the workplace. Remarkably, two of Israel’s
most senior politicians, outgoing President Moshe Katzav and Minister Haim
Ramon, were both found guilty of sexual offenses committed against their female
employees. And, much to the chagrin of
women’s organizations throughout the country, both politicians seem to have escaped
with less than maximal punishment.
Ramon was convicted in January of forcibly
kissing a female employee. However, an
appeals court later ruled that, due to his record of public service, Ramon
would serve no jail time, and his crime would not be considered one of “moral
turpitude”. The “absence of moral
turpitude” decree enabled Ramon to resume his work in government. In fact, Ramon even won a promotion, returning
to the Cabinet in the new role of Vice (no pun intended) Prime Minister.
Although Moshe Katzav was escorted out of
public life, suspending himself from the Presidency in midyear until his term
ended in July, he, too, managed to emerge relatively unscathed. Although the initial indictment sheet against
Katzav included counts of rape, blackmail and obstruction of justice, the now
ex-President managed to strike a plea bargain with the Attorney-General. Katzav agreed to plead guilty to lesser
counts of sexual harassment and acts of indecency, and to receive a suspended
jail sentence. Tens of thousands of
Israelis turned out to a rally in Rabin
Square to protest the deal.
Israeli
Politics:
To paraphrase Mark
Twain, “the reports of Ehud Olmert’s political death are greatly exaggerated.”
When 5767 began, Olmert was a failed Prime
Minister, who had mismanaged the war in Lebanon, and whose public-opinion
ratings were in the single digits. As
5767 ends, the situation is not entirely different. However, much to the surprise of the pundits
(once again), Olmert is still standing.
And, to a certain extent, he’s even managed to bounce back.
The interim report of the Winograd Committee
(late April), which looked into the handling of the Lebanon War II, managed to
rock Olmert’s boat, but not sink it. The
Committee accused Olmert of a “serious failure in exercising judgment, responsibility and prudence”;
newspapers called for Olmert’s immediate resignation. But Foreign
Minister Tsipi Livni’s brief attempted rebellion from within Kadima never got
off the ground. And the promises issued
back in May/June by the two rivals in the Labor Party primaries, Ehud Barak and
Ami Ayalon, to lead the party out of the Olmert government turned out to be empty
election slogans. Months later, both are
members of the same government – Barak as Defense Minister, and Ayalon as
Minister without Portfolio. Olmert’s
position seems solid for now.
Labor’s lack of enthusiasm to leave the
government should come as no surprise, though: Back in October, Olmert’s
addition of the far-right Avigdor Lieberman to his government drew no more than
the feeblest protests from his Labor colleagues.
As 5768 begins, we once again hold out the hope that the Israeli and Palestinian people will choose the path of
co-existence, not the path of mutual enmity, rejection and destruction offered
by extremists on both sides. And we look
forward to seeing an American administration that realizes the importance of
active US engagement for the sake of Middle East peace. We wish for
all of Israel a year of peace with its neighbors, and a year of civil
rights, without the scourges of sexism, racism, homophobia and religious
intolerance. Y’hi Ratzon!
Shana Tova!
