Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his colleagues are doing their best to put
a pretty face on an ugly situation. After nearly three weeks of deliberations,
Netanyahu and his government caved in to massive US pressure to ease, if not
end, Israel’s blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza.
On Sunday the government
announced that all economic sanctions on Gaza will be immediately lifted.
Henceforth, Hamas-controlled Gaza will have an effectively open economic border
with Israel. Israel will only prohibit the transfer of military material. Even
dual-use items, like cement, will be allowed in if international officials claim
that they are to be used in their humanitarian projects.
Netanyahu and
his colleagues argue that these new concessions have now given Israel
the
international legitimacy it needs to maintain its naval blockade of the
Gaza
coast. But this is untrue. Even as he welcomed Netanyahu’s latest
capitulation,
US President Barack Obama made clear that he expects Israel to continue
making
unreciprocated concessions to Hamas.
Following the government’s
announcement, the White House declared, “We will work with Israel, the
Palestinian Authority, the Quartet and other international partners to
ensure
these arrangements are implemented as quickly and effectively as
possible and to
explore additional ways to improve the situation in Gaza, including
greater
freedom of movement and commerce between Gaza and the West Bank.”
In
plain English that means that the administration doesn’t trust Israel.
It will
escalate its pressure on Israel by among other things, pressuring it to
provide
members of the illegal Hamas regime in Gaza greater access to Judea and
Samaria.
AS IF anticipating its next capitulation, government spokesmen
told the media that in addition to ending economic sanctions on Gaza,
Israel is
now considering permitting the EU to station inspectors at its land
crossings
into Gaza. That is, Israel is considering a move that will constitute a
first
step towards surrendering its sovereign control over its borders.
The
economic sanctions the government is now cancelling were not simply
legal, they
were required by international law. Binding UN Security Council
resolution 1373
requires states and non-state actors to deny support of any kind to
terrorist
organizations. And here, in a bid to win international “legitimacy” for
its
lawful blockade of Gaza, Israel has bowed to US pressure to unlawfully
facilitate the economic prosperity of an area controlled by an illegal
terrorist
organization.
There is something pathetic about the Prime Minister’s
office’s protestations that by bowing to White House pressure the
nations of the
world will now accept our right to defend ourselves from an
Iranian-controlled
terrorist organization committed to the genocide of the Jewish people.
After
all, we have heard these hollow words many times before.
This notion that
unilateral Israeli capitulation to terrorists would bring Israel
international
“legitimacy” is of course how former prime minister Ariel Sharon
justified his
strategically indefensible decision to cede Gaza – and the international
border
between Gaza and Egypt – to Palestinian terrorists.
If they attack us
after we leave, he claimed, we’ll have all the international support in
the
world to really destroy them.
Today, the government argues, all we have
to do is sell them spaghetti and cilantro and the international
community will
suddenly rally to our side.
According to sources close to the cabinet,
the main advocate for the latest capitulation was Defense Minister Ehud
Barak.
Barak is the serial bungler. Ten years ago, he argued that his decision
to
relinquish Israel’s security zone in south Lebanon to Hizbullah
guaranteed that
Israel would have international legitimacy to really take it to the
Iranian
proxy army if it dared to attack us after we left.
Barak is also the deep
strategic thinker who brought us the Palestinian terror war.
Barak
promised that if Yasser Arafat rejected his offer at Camp David and so
demonstrated that his commitment to destroy the Jewish state trumped his
interest in establishing a Palestinian state, that the international
community
would rally around Israel and we’d have all the international legitimacy
we
needed to defeat the PA.
And in the lead-up to the Mavi Marmara fiasco,
it was reportedly Barak who decided it would be a terrific idea to
outfit the
naval commandos with paintball guns. Doing so, he promised would
convince the
Obama administration to support Israel against Hamas.
A key question that
needs to be considered is what makes policymakers like Barak advance
such
colossally stupid and dangerous policies time after time. Israel’s
history since
1993, when then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and then foreign minister
Shimon
Peres opted to embrace Arafat and the PLO, bring thousands of PLO
terrorists to
the outskirts of Israel’s major cities and give them weapons and
international
legitimacy indicates that three factors come into play.
First there is
the fact that many of Israel’s leading politicians are simply not that
smart.
They are happy to be led by an ideologically radical media that
have insisted since the 1980s that Israel must withdraw to the
indefensible 1949
armistice lines.
Not only are they happy to be led by the media, they are
loath to dispute its misrepresentation of reality. And so the second
cause of
serial bungling on the part of politicians like Barak is that they are,
in the
end, sheep, not leaders.
THE FINAL major cause of Israel’s strategic
idiocy is corruption. On Monday morning, the police announced that they
recommend indicting Sharon’s sons Omri and Gilad Sharon for soliciting
bribes on
behalf of their father.
After an eight-year investigation, the police
said they believe that Sharon received $3 million in bribes from former
Stasi-aligned Austrian banker Martin Schlaff.
Schlaff, whose former
attorney Dov Weisglass served as Sharon’s chief of staff, was the
majority share
owner in the Jericho casino. He also reportedly intended to build
another casino
on the ruins of the destroyed Israeli community Elei Sinai in the
northern Gaza
Strip if and when Israel expelled its residents.
There can be no doubt
that Sharon’s alleged corruption and his fear of the far-left legal
fraternity
that investigated his alleged corruption played a significant role in
his
decision to abandon his campaign pledge to voters, toss strategic sanity
to the
seven winds, expel ten thousand Israelis from their homes and transfer
the Gaza
Strip lock, stock and barrel to Hamas and Fatah terrorists.
Like Sharon,
Barak has been the subject of several corruption probes. Barak is also
known to
have had strong indirect connections to Schlaff. For instance, during
his tenure
as prime minister, Barak sent shock waves through the country when, with
no
prior warning, he announced that he was ceding Israel’s rights to the
natural
gas deposits discovered off the Gaza shore. Barak’s move precipitated a
deal
between the PA and British Gas to develop the gas deposits.
Media reports
exposed that Schlaff and Arafat’s economic bag man Muhammed Rashid were
major
shareholders in British Gas.
During his stint as a private citizen, in
2006 Barak sought to lobby Shin Bet Director Yuval Diskin to permit
Orascom, the
Egyptian telecom provider, to expand its ten percent ownership share in
Partner,
Israel’s second-largest cellular telephone company.
Israeli law prohibits
foreign entities from owning more than a ten percent share in Israeli
telecommunications firms. Diskin refused to meet with him and banned the
deal.
Rashid and other Schlaff associates are reportedly major shareholders in
Orascom.
Barak and Sharon are only the tip of the
iceberg.
Schlaff’s connections to Israeli politicians run far and wide.
Most of the leading founders of Kadima, including Ehud Olmert and Haim
Ramon
have personal ties to Schlaff. So too does former Shas leader Aryeh
Deri. The
ongoing criminal probes against Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman
include,
among other things, investigations into his allegedly prolific business
ties to
Schlaff.
REGARDLESS OF whether these ties to agents of corruption are
criminal or not, it is obvious that they have influenced the policy
preferences
of more than one major politician in Israel. And regardless of what
stands
behind his poor judgment, the fact is that it is this judgment that is
driving
Israel’s strategic direction.
It is also apparent, that Barak is being
handsomely rewarded by the Obama administration for his actions.
Barak is
currently on yet another junket to Washington where he is being given
the red
carpet treatment. While the premier is forced to conduct international
diplomacy
with Quartet chairman Tony Blair, Barak is feted by the White House,
State
Department and Pentagon on a regular basis. It is hard to avoid the
conclusion
that the Obama administration agreed to end its public campaign to
overthrow the
Netanyahu government in exchange for Netanyahu’s effective concession of
control
over national policy to Barak.
Barak has used this control to force the
government to accede to every American demand. So far, he has convinced
Netanyahu to take a back seat to Obama on Iran; to end Jewish
construction in
Judea and Samaria at least until September; to effectively ban Jewish
construction in northern, southern and eastern Jerusalem; to embrace the
cause
of Palestinian statehood; to accept US mediated indirect negotiations
with
Fatah; and to pretend that the Obama administration is a credible ally
to
Israel.
Before heading to Washington, Barak reportedly gave Netanyahu an
ultimatum: Either make massive concessions to Fatah that will allow
Obama to
claim victory in the peace process, or Labor will bolt the coalition.
So
too, Barak is reportedly behind Netanyahu’s latest bid to bring Kadima,
led by
Tzipi Livni into his government.
Netanyahu and his spokesmen defend both
Barak’s primacy in the government, and their interest in bringing Kadima
into
the coalition by noting that the Left’s partnership ensures political
stability.
If Labor were to bolt from the coalition, the government would be less
likely to
survive until the next scheduled election in 2013.
There is certainly
truth to this assertion. With Labor inside the coalition, Kadima has no
relevance.
So too, rightist parties are unable to bring down the
coalition.
This would be a decisive argument if coalition stability
enabled Netanyahu to govern more effectively. But the opposite is
true.
Netanyahu knows the folly of his decisions.
He recognizes
Obama’s hostility to Israel. He also knows that the US president is not
going to
do a thing to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
Stability
should be a means to an end, not an end unto itself. Netanyahu did not
seek the
premiership to achieve the goal of overseeing a stable government. He
sought to
lead the country to secure and strengthen it. As his latest concession
to Barak
makes clear, the price of governing stability is the abandonment of his
leadership goals.
caroline@carolineglick.com