Syrian President Bashar Assad was quoted recently as saying the Mavi Marmara
episode marked a turning point in the Middle East.
Assad, as is his wont,
was exaggerating. As bleak as things now seem for Israel – and they do indeed
seem bleak – there is a need here for perspective.
This isn’t the first
time that Scandinavian dock workers have refused to unload Israeli
goods, as
Swedish dock workers did this week; or that certain countries did not
want to
see a visit from a high profile Israeli personage, as was the case when
President Shimon Peres canceled a trip to Vietnam, and Foreign Minister
Avigdor
Lieberman postponed a trip to Costa Rica; or that rock groups have
canceled
appearances because of turmoil here.
We have gone through all of this
before. We went through it during the outbreak of the second intifada in
2000
and the pictures beamed around the world that appeared to show IDF
soldiers
shooting 12- year-old Muhammad al-Dura, during Operation Defensive
Shield and
the Jenin “massacre” in 2002, and during the Second Lebanon War in
2006.
And that was all during the past decade.
The international
censure, the threats and the isolation we have weathered before. We will
need to
weather them again.
The addition of an extremely problematic Turkish prime
minister throws a new, dangerous wrench into the works, but – as
Lieberman
rightly pointed out on the radio Sunday – Iran was also once a strategic
ally.
Will it be easy if Turkey is added to our list of enemies? Obviously
not. But will it bring about an end to the Zionist enterprise? Let’s all
keep
our heads about us.
But Assad was right in saying the event marked a
turning point, though not necessarily in the way he meant it. The
incident will
likely be a turning point for the make-up of the Netanyahu
government.
Just as the Second Lebanon War marked the beginning of the end
of Ehud Olmert’s term in office, so, too, the
Mavi Marmara incident will likely
come to be seen as the catalyst for changes that will likely take place
in the
current government.
The early-morning incident off the coast of Gaza,
where IDF soldiers were beaten and nine Turks were killed, has already
set off a
chain of events that will most likely end in a few months time with
opposition
leader Tzipi Livni – the same Livni who in the Knesset on Monday
denounced the
government – sitting with Netanyahu at the cabinet table.
The events of
last Monday morning have had a traumatic impact on the Israeli psyche on
two
different planes.
The first was seeing the pictures of soldiers – youth
with whom everyone here can identify – being lowered like guppies into a
pond of
sharks and then being beaten to within an inch of their lives.
Initially, there
was fury at the thugs for doing this to our boys, and then anger at the
Israeli
authorities for putting the soldiers in that nightmarish situation.
The
second plane was the embarrassment this caused. What happened to the
vaunted
Israeli ingenuity, guile, wisdom and creativity? We like to think of
ourselves
as smart, relying on our wits – rather than our numbers – to survive in
an
extremely difficult neighborhood. And when something like this happens,
something which on the face of it seems so stupid, there is bound to be a
public
backlash against the politicians who okayed the plan.
Which is where we
are right now. The predictable argument currently raging over the nature
of the
investigative committee is not merely over what role the international
community
will play, but also about what authority the committee will have, and
whether it
will be able to make recommendations that might cost some people their
careers.
Remember, the Winograd Committee that investigated the Second
Lebanon War did in the end lead to Amir Peretz’s ouster from the Defense
Ministry and his replacement by Ehud Barak. Then-prime minister Ehud
Olmert held
on, but his premiership was never the same.
Over the next few weeks there
will be intense pressure on Livni to enter the government, both public
pressure
and from within her own Kadima Party. With it clear that it is nearly
impossible
for her to bring down he government, even if the Labor Party bolts –
something
unlikely as long as Barak remains at its head – she will likely find a
way to
get into the government.
And Binyamin Netanyahu, under extreme pressure
from almost every quarter to take the initiative, will also likely find a
way to
bring her in. Almost every measured criticism of Netanyahu you read
these days
ends with a single suggestion: For Israel to end its isolation,
Netanyahu needs
to take the initiative and do something to throw the ball into the
Palestinian
court.
The problem is that it is difficult to take an initiative if the
other side – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas – has no
interest in
responding. It takes two hands to clap, and Abbas has no reason to want
to clap
with Netanyahu since he is probably thinking that all the pressure
piling up
against Israel will eventually bring the prime minister down. Why should
he want
to take Netanyahu’s coals out of the fire? Which means that if Netanyahu
wants
to initiate something, the only real place he can do so is domestically –
by
initiating a change of government, changing the coalition guidelines and
bringing Livni into the cabinet as foreign minister.
Such a move would
also likely improve Israel’s standing internationally, since Livni –
unlike
Netanyahu or Lieberman – is perceived as someone “committed to peace.”
There is
no little irony in the fact that the Olmert-Livni government was largely
seen in
the West as a government of peace, even though under Olmert’s watch
Israel waged
two wars: one in Lebanon and the other in Gaza. It was all a matter of
perception, with Livni and Olmert benefitting because twice a week Livni
met
with former PA prime minister Ahmed Qurei and Olmert met once a month
with
Abbas.
Netanyahu is not meeting with any Palestinians, though not because
he doesn’t want to, and the perception is that he does not want to move
the
diplomatic process forward and that the current stalemate is his doing.
Netanyahu may not be able to change the reality because he will need a
cooperative Abbas (something he won’t get). But a coalition change,
sparked by
the current crisis, might actually lead to a change of perception.