A diplomatic opportunity

The US and the EU must induce negotiations on the basis of a new UN Resolution.

By ILAN BARUCH
Meeting of the UN Security Council (photo credit: REUTERS)
Meeting of the UN Security Council
(photo credit: REUTERS)
WE HAVE just emerged from one of the ugliest and most heated Israeli election campaigns ever. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to cut short his third term after less than two years, despite the fact that he could have soldiered on until 2017. He dispersed the Knesset and precipitated early elections to the 20th Knesset on the grounds that ministers in his government were planning a “putsch.”
During the election campaign, rivals used the slogan “Anyone but Bibi.” It reflected a pervasive disgust with his style, his views and his politics. So much so that the results the morning after came as a shock: Netanyahu’s Likud had won a commanding majority of 30 seats and would likely head a narrow right-wing government. The putative coalition balance of power, overwhelmingly in Netanyahu’s favor, promises stability. The prime minister’s gamble paid off. He will now be able to form a government in his own image, without problems of governance, and keep it going for a full four years until 2019.
But the train of events can also be seen in a different light. In April last year, the American peace initiative led by US Secretary of State John Kerry, which had been forced on Netanyahu, ran aground, eroding the prime minister’s already shaky standing in the White House. The ensuing diplomatic vacuum undermined the relative security calm of the past few years.
Sporadic terrorist attacks peaked with the abduction and murder of three yeshiva students in the West Bank in June. Israelis followed the searches for the kidnapped youths with bated breath. After the bodies were found, the victims were buried amid a wave of national grief. The search for the victims and their captors was accompanied by a major crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank. This led to the eruption of a wider war in Gaza which ended in the deaths of dozens of Israelis, thousands of Palestinians and unprecedented destruction on the Palestinian side.
Although Netanyahu tried to market it as a great victory, the Israeli public was frustrated at the indecisive outcome of the military campaign and the absence of any diplomatic achievement. It left Israelis living close to the border area with a profound sense of vulnerability.
Moreover, the Netanyahu government found itself exposed to further strains on its foreign relations, undermining its capacity to block the Iranian nuclear program or the emergence of a Palestinian state. According to this narrative, it was the foisting of the Kerry initiative on Netanyahu that triggered the process leading to the curtailment of his government’s term.
Determined to hang onto power and to replenish his waning political capital, Netanyahu decided to reshuffle the deck. If the White House hoped that the collapse of the Kerry initiative would presage the end of Netanyahu’s rule and pave the way for a renewed peace initiative with Zionist Union/Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog at the helm, they were sorely disappointed. True, Netanyahu did risk his hold on power, but the manner of his reelection significantly strengthened his position.
Nevertheless, his election victory has created a new situation, with a unique diplomatic opportunity. Netanyahu’s post-election room for maneuver and evasion has significantly narrowed.
The old political masks have been ripped off – Herzog’s No. 2, Tzipi Livni, and Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, the members of the outgoing coalition who genuinely favored a two-state solution, will now almost certainly be in the opposition. In other words, Netanyahu’s chances of convincing world leaders with a vague commitment to a peace process designed to end the occupation have totally evaporated.
The new Netanyahu government will be pristinely rightwing.
All its component parties, bar Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu, are committed to eradicating any chance of establishing a Palestinian state. The test will be in the wording of the new government’s guidelines. Those of the outgoing administration made no mention of two states for two peoples.
Herein lies the diplomatic opportunity for the US and the European Union. They should abandon the bilateralism that led to Kerry’s failure and instead launch a robust diplomatic move aimed at the new Israeli government, inducing or even imposing negotiations on the basis of a new UN Security Council Resolution. It would define Israel’s rule east of the 1967 lines as occupation and provide a mandatory framework for bringing it to an end within a specified time frame.
 Ilan Baruch – a former Israeli ambassador to South Africa – is a member of the policy committee at the ‘Peace NGOs Forum,’ a coalition of over 80 Israeli and Palestinian peace organizations