Netanyahu’s Government and Escaping Forward

Israeli minister of defense Ehud Barak is working in Washington these days to market an exit for the American demand for a complete cessation of Jewish settlement activity in the West Bank. He tried, on the eve of his talks in the American capital, to find a “legal” justification through the Israeli Supreme Court for his theory, which entails moving the settlers in the so-called “random” settlements to “legitimate” settlements, and thus expand the latter through the newcomers. He is thus reinforcing his political stance, which insists on continuing with the expansion of settlements, with a “legal” Israeli stance he can exploit in his talks with American officials.

In other words, Barak is trying to make Americans face the “legal” Israeli reality of the continuing efforts to expand the settlements and to highlight the contradiction between this reality and the American demand to stop these efforts. Thus, he is trying to shift the focus from the necessity of implementing the commitments of the “roadmap” and preparing the climate for the two-state solution, to a controversy about the Israeli “legal sovereignty” and the foreign interference in it.

At the same time, there is the issue of the ciriticism expressed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy a few days ago while receiving Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu about the extremism of foreign minister Avigdor Liebermann and the inability to cooperate with him. This issue was changed from a political stance that stresses on the necessity of stopping settlements and heading towards a two-state solution into a storm inside Israel that condemns foreign interference in Israeli affairs.

Sarkozy’s remarks were not diplomatic. He uttered them brusquely, perhaps to alert Netanyahu to the importance of Israel taking concrete steps towards peace, which can’t be possible as long as Liebermann holds the position of foreign minister. This is what Sarkozy expressed when the minister visited Paris, as he refused to receive him and advised him to bring back Tzipi Livni as foreign minister.

But the crux of the matter for Israel, and for Netanyahu who defended his minister, is not dealing with the international stance as pressure to commit to the requirements of peace, but rather dealing with it as foreign interference in domestic Israeli affairs. Thus they confront this with rejection and condemnation and resort to the primitive Zionist perspective that considers that the world stands against the Jews, who must hence depend only on themselves and decide on the course that serves their project regardless of any political process that asks them to commit to peace or that might lead to peace.

While the administration of President Barak Obama, along with the European Union and the members of the international quartet, insist that the first step must come from Israel in the form of stopping settlement activity, the Israeli press is starting to abound in articles by the writers of the government coalition and the settlers’ lobby condemning these international stances and their laxness towards the enemies of Israel, especially Syria, Iran, and their allies, and stressing that perseverance in this battle is a necessity for Israeli security.

This is practically akin to a prior rejection of the “roadmap” and its commitments and of the two-state solution and vision, and everything else is nothing but mere attempts to cover up this rejection. Neither the “two-state” concept suggested by Netanyahu nor the theory about stopping the settlement activity promoted by Barak contains any real change in the Israeli stance towards peace.

Sarkozy openly told Netanyahu concerning Liebermann: “I simply cannot meet him”, i.e. in direct terms, the French president known for his friendliness with Israel, is boycotting its foreign minister because of his extremism and stubbornness concerning the issue of peace and its conditions. The US Secretary of State responded to the same minister, after meeting him in Washington, with undiplomatic terms concerning his stance about settlements when she confirmed that the United States has never committed to approving the expansion of settlements.

Thus, we have the new international course endorsed by the Obama administration clashing with the current coalition government of Israel. While some international sides have concluded that there is no hope that this government might move towards peace, others are escalating their pressure on it. The question focuses on the ability of this formation to survive in light of this confrontation, on the possibility of heading towards early elections, and on its ability to save itself by escaping forward through resorting to primitive Zionism, i.e. going towards another adventure which, this time around, might not enjoy foreign political cover.