Netanyahu has nothing to offer except empty rhetoric and diplomatic stagnation.
By JEFF BARAKbibi netanyahu frank 224(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
If the opinion polls are right, Israel and the United States are on a collision course. The predicted election victories of Barack Obama for the US presidency and Binyamin Netanyahu in next February's elections here promise a return of the frosty relations when Bill Clinton was in the White House and Netanyahu had his disastrous first term in the Prime Minister's Office.
For our American readers, let me stress that this is not a reason not to vote Obama. The problem is not with the young Democratic senator; the issue is the likelihood that an unreconstructed Netanyahu will form the next government despite having nothing to offer the country except for empty rhetoric and diplomatic stagnation.
Should Obama win, it's fair to assume he will follow in the footsteps of previous new presidents and first of all attempt to distinguish himself from his predecessor by doing the opposite of the man he is replacing.
George W. Bush did exactly that upon taking office. The Clinton years were marked by an almost unprecedented American involvement in Middle East peacekeeping, culminating in the Camp David summit of the summer of 2000 and the Taba talks a few months later.
Although Clinton clearly stated that the outline of the deal he tried to negotiate - in which Israel would cede 95 percent of the West Bank but maintain three settlement blocs; Jerusalem would be divided with Israel keeping control of the Jewish Quarter and Western Wall; and the Palestinians would give up their demand for a right of return - would be taken off the table when he left, this plan, as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert noted recently in a Rosh Hashana interview, still remains the only hope for Israel if it wants to survive as a Jewish and democratic country.
BUT WHEN Bush moved into the White House, his initial instincts were to ignore the Israel-Palestinian crisis and let the two sides flounder in their low-intensity conflict. Although many here view the outgoing US president as one of the best friends Israel has ever had, his immediate failure to follow through on Clinton's hard work at the beginning of his first term condemned Israel and the Palestinians to a number of wasted years.
True, in 2002, Bush outlined his vision of "two states, living side by side in peace and security" but he did little to impose this vision, even though he did stress at the time that "Israel also has a large stake in the success of a democratic Palestine." Indeed, those on the right of the Israeli political spectrum should remember that Bush also insisted: "Permanent occupation threatens Israel's identity and democracy. A stable, peaceful Palestinian state is necessary to achieve the security that Israel longs for. So I challenge Israel to take concrete steps to support the emergence of a viable, credible Palestinian state."
Two years later, in the exchange of letters between Bush and then prime minister Ariel Sharon in 2004, Bush repeated his commitment to the two-state solution, while Sharon, in return, aside from the disengagement from the Gaza Strip, promised "limitations on the growth of settlements; [and the] removal of unauthorized outposts." But Bush never held Israel to this commitment and Israel continued to ignore it. In 2005, the Sasson Report accused Israeli governments of "blatant violations of the law" and complicity in helping settlers construct illegal outposts in violation of stated government policy.
SINCE THEN, nothing has changed. The settlers have continued to thumb their noses at official policy and the government's response has been weak-kneed in the extreme. Last week's despicable behavior by settlers near Kiryat Arba, in which an Arab cemetery was desecrated in response to the demolition of an illegal outpost, was further proof as to how a small minority of Jewish hooligans have been allowed to create a virtual state within a state inside the West Bank.
Sunday's cabinet decision to cut off government funding to these illegal outposts is a case of too little, too late. As Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz pointedly noted, the government has sent a mixed message over the years concerning these outposts: condemning them verbally on the one hand, but allowing different ministries to fund their infrastructure on the other.
While Bush has remained silent on such blatant abuses of human rights and the failure of Israel's government to respect its commitments, it is reasonable to assume that Obama, seeking to distance himself from his predecessor and aiming to strike a new tone in American foreign policy, will, rightly, take a less forgiving attitude to such behavior.
And if Netanyahu's past irresponsible performance is anything to go by - remember the opening of the Western Wall tunnel and the resultant loss of life or the establishment of Har Homa despite overwhelming international opposition - the failure to honor past commitments to remove illegal settlement outposts will be just one of a number of flashpoints, should he triumph in February, between a new Israeli government and the new American administration.
The prospect of a right-wing government headed by Netanyahu, in an era of global financial crisis in which there is little patience for unsettling events in the Middle East, combined with a new American president determined to follow a different path from George W. Bush, is a depressing thought. It is no reason for Americans not to vote Obama, but Israelis should think carefully before choosing Netanyahu.
The writer is a former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.
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