A War to Fill the Vacuum?

As if our region needed any more madness from the likes of Avigdor Lieberman, who was imported by Israel from his job as a bouncer in Moldavia to lead its “diplomatic” corps with such unmatched skilfulness. In less than a month, this man, who heads the Israeli Foreign Ministry, has angered two states in the country’s vicinity. One is Turkey, which has preserved strong ties with Israel since its establishment, despite the constant criticisms by Turkey’s neighbors. The other is Syria, about which Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said a few days ago that if there is no peace with Damascus, the region will be swept into a full scale and total war.

When there are, in the same region, two people like Lieberman and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, what can follow except an unknown future, and a situation that is always on the edge? This is not the only problem, however. There are some people in these two countries who continue to call for reason and a bit of wisdom in dealing with the future of their peoples, who are usually the ones who pay for wars with their lives and their futures. However, these calls remain faint when compared to those who live off the fanaticism on both sides.

In Israel, Lieberman’s statements which were directed at the Syrian leadership have been met with only condemnation and rebuke. Just as he was sharply reprimanded after his rude treatment of the Turkish ambassador, he found himself obliged to apologize after his recent threats against Damascus. He and his prime minister, Netanyahu, affirmed once again that Israel still wanted peace and negotiations with the Syrians, without prior conditions.

However, what peace can ever be reached, and how, with a government of which half are going to the settlements, and which members ministers like Lieberman, who makes threats to bring down regimes in the region? This is while the other half, represented by Netanyahu’s partners from the Labor Party, talk about peace and do not hesitate to describe Israel’s future as being analogous to the notorious regime in Rhodesia, or call Salam Fayyad the “Palestinian Ben Gurion.”

No Israeli official has ever painted such a dark picture of the future that threatens Israel if it fails to conclude a peace with the Palestinians, as Barak did before the Herzliya Conference last week. He called the system of repression against the Palestinians an “apartheid,” a comparison that used to spur the anger of Israel’s leaders against those of the rest of the world, when the latter would make this criticism, such as the former US President Jimmy Carter and the South African Reverend Desmond Tutu, who personally suffered from racist policies in his country and found similar conditions during his visit to the occupied Palestinian territories.

Barak made his comments about an apartheid regime while talking about two suicidal options that awaited Israel if it rejected the establishment of a Palestinian state next to Israel. He said, “as long as in this territory west of the Jordan River there is only one political entity called Israel, it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic. If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot participate in the vote, that entity will be an apartheid state.”

Can Barak today be called a sane man among madmen, while the policy of the government in which he is a minister is eliminating all hope of the establishment of a viable Palestinian state? It is destroying the conditions necessary for this promised state to be established, namely land, by continuing to create settlements. If he believes what he says, does he dare propose it to the Cabinet, so that it can build a policy that is more responsive to the requirements of peace?

Yoel Marcus at Ha’aretz says that Israel’s problem is a leadership vacuum, as no one knows how to take the bold steps that are required by the state. He gives the examples of Menachem Begin (Camp David) and Yitzhak Rabin (Oslo and the White House handshake) and even Yitzhak Shamir, who was forced to go to the Madrid Conference.

This “leadership vacuum” is not only an Israeli problem. Look around you and fill in the blanks with other leaders who fit the profile!

In a leadership vacuum and a political vacuum, the laws of nature require the filling of this vacuum. Here lies the danger of the possibility that an unwanted and unexpected war will perform this very task.