| 04.18.2006 Tuesday - ISTANBUL
COMMENTARY
by Richard Falk It is too early to assess the real significance of the Israeli March 28th parliamentary elections. But it is not too early to reach some disturbing tentative conclusions. Although tentative, these lines of interpretations are more plausible in light of the reported agreement between Kadima (winning 29 of 120 Knesset seats) and Labor (winning 19) to work together in coalition. These two parties still need at least 13 more Knesset seats if they are to be able to form a new Israeli government, and that seems to make likely an alliance with one or more of the extreme right wing parties, such as Shas and Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiternu. Some mainstream commentators have hailed these electoral outcomes as a shift toward ‘peace’ and ‘realism’ on the part of the Israeli citizenry. Such a spin emphasizes the repudiation of Netanyahu’s Likud, and the party of the settlers, as a sign that the reactionary dream of ‘Greater Israel’ is effectively dead. Yes and No. It seems correct that for now the idea of absorbing all of the Palestinian territories has been repudiated, but not on behalf of a genuine peace between the two peoples that gives the Palestinians a viable state on their own territory and the promise of sovereign equality between Israel and an eventual Palestine.
What the majority of Israelis voted for, but not with any enthusiasm or consensus, as fewer Israelis voted than ever before (63 percent of registered voters) and no party received a higher proportion of the vote than Kadima (22 percent). This makes the outcome problematic and unstable as the coalition partners will outnumber the majority party, and some must be drawn from extremist ranks if there is to be a governing coalition at all. And what does this majority favor? It seems to be determined to proceed along the unilateralist lines of Sharon’s leadership, which means the continued construction of the security wall and access roads on occupied Palestinian territory, the incorporation of the large West Bank settlement blocs into Israel, the rigid insistence on a unified Jerusalem serving as the Israeli capital, and the unilateral determination of Israel’s new borders that would encroach upon somewhere between 20 and 40 percent of the West Bank, as well as violate the unanimously supported UN Security Council Resolution 242 that called for complete Israeli withdrawal way back in 1967. What is left behind would provide the Palestinians with what was called in the days of South African apartheid, “a Bantustan,” that is, a completely vulnerable, dependent, non-sovereign entity. Such a “Palestine” would not lead to peace, but to further Palestinian humiliation, resentment, and rage. To the extent that this vision of an Israeli future is implemented, as the Kadima leader Ehud Olmert promises, it will mean a rigid separation of the two peoples in a manner that violates not only the authority of the United Nations Security Council but also the most basic norms of international law.
And there are some even more negative consequences associated with this set of expectations. It is likely that the new coalition will include Israeli parties that are explicitly committed to ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Palestinians living as second class citizens within Israel. A recent public opinion poll in Israel revealed that 2/3s of Israelis would not live in the same building with a Palestinian, that 63 percent regard Palestinian Israelis as demographic and security threats, and that 40 percent believe that the Israeli government should subsidize and otherwise encourage Palestinian emigration from Israel. It is not a pretty picture that is made worse when it is realized that the Israel Our Home party now holds 11 Knesset seats. Its leader Lieberman has made statements so outrageous that if Palestinians were to make comparable allegations they would be labeled as Nazis. Lieberman has been quoted as saying “Let us drop an atomic bomb on Gaza and that’s all” and “Let us not send our troops to pursue the terrorists, let us bomb them with F-16s so that the terrorists will die with the others.” Even Israelis, such as journalist Gideon Levy, are calling the Israeli elections a victory for ‘racism.’
So one must wonder why the Israeli elections have been viewed so favorably in the West, while the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections in late January, have been so roundly denounced. Part of the double standards that has so infuriated grassroots opinion is the degree to which Israel’s elections are viewed as expressions of democratic sentiments that must be respected because they resulted from fair elections, while Palestinian elections are to be repudiated and the Palestinians punished because they voted for candidates that are not liked by Tel Aviv and Washington. President George W. Bush, without intending humor, endorsed such a dual approach recently: “We support the election process, we support the democratic process, but that doesn’t mean that we have to support governments that get elected as a result of democracy.”
Of course, some observers took heart because the Israeli elections did not disclose any impact of the Hamas win. Such an interpretation fails to understand that a Hamas victory helps the Kadima leadership insist that it has no Palestinian partner to negotiate with, and so it is reasonable to pursue peace on Israeli terms by unilateral fiat. This is what Sharon earlier did to avoid dealing with Arafat, thereby initiating this approach of shaping the future of Israel by attending exclusively to Israeli self-interest, and thus refusing to acknowledge Palestinian rights under international law, including the unrealized Palestinian right of self-determination. For the Israeli right to attempt such an approach is not surprising, but for the United States Government and even Europe, to endorse these moves as constructive is to show how hostile to reasonable Palestinian aspirations the West has become.
http://www.zaman.com/?bl=commentary&alt=&trh=20060418&hn=32202
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