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Hard Questions, Tough Answers with Yossi Alpher - May 8, 2006

Q. How successful will the Olmert government be at achieving its principal objectives? Q. Is this pessimistic outlook regarding the Olmert government's capacity to deal with the Palestinian issue also a reflection of the structural drawbacks of the Israeli electoral and political system as a whole?

Q. How successful will the Olmert government be at achieving its principal objectives?

A. There is one objective this government will almost certainly attain: reducing the most painful manifestations of poverty and narrowing the income gap. This is because all of its component parties, as well as virtually all those in the opposition, are dedicated to undoing some of the worst socio-economic manifestations of the Netanyahu belt-tightening of the years 2001-2005, and because the economy is growing nicely, thereby producing surplus income that can be redistributed to the poor.

A second objective, countering terrorism and readying the country for a possible clash with Iran and its supporters, also appears to be readily attainable, again because it represents a virtual consensus, at least among the Jewish parties. While the new defense minister, Amir Peretz, comes to the job without any national security experience, he will be surrounded by capable security professionals with whom he is not likely to differ on these "bread and butter" issues.

Achievements relating to issues of religion and state, such as finding solutions to the urgent problem of tens of thousands of immigrants from the FSU who can't marry as Jews, are not likely to emerge from this government. It comprises no ministers who represent the immigrants; and virtually any coalition that PM Olmert forms will be dependent to some extent on ultra-orthodox votes.

That leaves the Palestinian issue, and more precisely "convergence". Sadly, the government's chances of actually implementing a major withdrawal of tens of thousands of settlers--its declared raison d'etre--are low. The nucleus of the government, Kadima, Labor and Gil (the retirees party), consists of only 55 members of Knesset. Even among their ranks it is possible that a stray member of Kadima and Gil--both ad hoc parties that brought together members from diverse ideological backgrounds--will balk when it comes to a crucial vote to physically remove settlers. That Shas, the fourth member of the coalition, will not vote for convergence is almost a given in view of its success in obtaining from Olmert a release from the government guidelines' commitment to unilateralism.

Moreover, Shas will be hard put to remain in the coalition unless and until its six fellow ultra-orthodox MKs from Torah Judaism join; meanwhile, the implicit threat of its defection confronts Olmert with the prospect of losing his majority. Hence he is continuing to negotiate with both Torah Judaism and Meretz. But Meretz' five MKs (whether in or out of the government) only increase to 60 the bloc of ostensibly solid parliamentary support for disengagement. Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party is also still a long shot to join the government, but his commitment to disengagement is in any event doubtful.

That brings us to the 10 Arab MKs. Olmert does not dare invite them into his coalition for fear of alienating large sectors of the Jewish public: all Arab parties ran on distinctly pro-Palestinian and a-Zionist or anti-Zionist platforms. Ostensibly, he should be able to count on them to support the dismantling of settlements. But this was not always the case during Ariel Sharon's tenure: the Arab MKs harbor considerable grudges against the Jewish establishment over its treatment of Israel's Arab minority. In the case before us, Olmert's Kadima party has no Arab MKs and the government no Arab minister, and it negotiated at length with the racist, anti-Arab Lieberman regarding a place in the government and might again do so in the near future.

As if all these factors were not enough to cast doubt on Olmert's chances of carrying out convergence, there is the issue of his judgment in selecting ministers and its consequences for the success of his coalition in general. The most senior positions in the cabinet--the prime minister himself, the foreign, defense and finance ministers--are all staffed by relatively untried personalities (respectively Olmert, Tsipi Livni, Amir Peretz and Avraham Hirshson) who have little if any experience in their assigned tasks. Logically, this factor too increases the likelihood of major blunders that could affect the Olmert government's capacity to deliver on its principal campaign promise of additional unilateral disengagement.

True, there will almost certainly be no settler representatives filling key settlement-related tasks in Olmert's ministries of defense and housing--for the first time since 1967. Yet in the very best case, no conceivable Israeli government could legislate, prepare and carry out the physical removal of some 60,000 settlers from the West Bank heartland in four years. We saw how long it took a determined PM Sharon to remove 7,000 settlers from Gaza, a region of considerably less historic and religious importance to the settler movement (and the Jewish people) than Shiloh, Bet El and Elon Moreh.

Q. Is this pessimistic outlook regarding the Olmert government's capacity to deal with the Palestinian issue also a reflection of the structural drawbacks of the Israeli electoral and political system as a whole?

A. Indeed, the most obvious, painful and long lasting trend in Israeli politics that is linked to the Palestinian issue is the linkage itself: the Palestinian question has been the specific catalyst of the downfall of every governing Israeli coalition for the past 18 years. Prime ministers Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu, Barak and Sharon all failed to convert their popular mandate regarding the Palestinian issue into a viable coalition for change. In the course of this period, one attempt to improve the political structure--direct election of the prime minister--had to be abandoned because it merely worsened the situation, while the overall quality of Israeli politics and politicians has deteriorated.

Israel's country-wide proportional voting system ensures that issues unrelated to the Palestinian problem (e.g., matters of religion and state) determine the voting patterns of adherents of some parties. In Israel's heterogeneous society this produces complex and fragile coalitions whose members are driven by diverse and often conflicting political agendas. As a result the Israeli political system, far from providing a mechanism for solving Israel's conflict with the Palestinians, has become a serious obstacle to a solution.

Sadly, this will almost certainly continue to be the case. In the coming decades, Palestinian citizens of Israel and the ultra-orthodox--the only rapidly growing sectors of the population, and with political agendas that differ radically from that of the Zionist mainstream--are likely to increase their Knesset representation. Israeli governments will, at best, succeed in dealing with the conflict in fits and starts, and piecemeal, before going the way of their predecessors. This means that any actor (e.g., the US government or a peace lobby) seeking to influence the course of an Israeli-Palestinian dialogue or peace process must take into account that at some early stage its efforts are likely to be thwarted by the vicissitudes of Israeli politics.

During the second half of 2004, for example, PM Sharon dissolved one coalition and put together another (with Labor) in order to carry out his disengagement plan in Gaza and the northern West Bank. Once disengagement was completed in the fall of 2005 that coalition dissolved, too, as Sharon, Labor, and the Likud hawks all moved in different directions on the Palestinian issue--toward additional disengagement, a renewed peace process, or no new initiatives at all. As a consequence, the Kadima Party was born and early elections were set, thereby postponing further movement and breaking whatever positive momentum had been achieved.

One key additional factor in the foundering of Israeli politics over the Palestinian issue that bears emphasis is the influence of the settlement movement. The religious-ideological settlers of the West Bank and Gaza have proven over recent decades to be the single most dynamic, highly motivated and astute political lobby in Israel. Even prime ministers intent on far-reaching territorial compromise, like Rabin and Barak, preferred to co-opt the settlers and facilitate settlement expansion, thereby not only postponing confrontation with them over the territorial issue but rendering the ultimate confrontation with this minority sector that much worse in quantitative terms. Olmert, too, insists on trying first to persuade the settlers to acquiesce in his plan, thereby arguably ignoring the hard lessons of the past year or so, and certainly delaying convergence, if only by a few more months.

But the ideological settlers' emphasis on land as a compelling Jewish value is increasingly contradicted by the strategic realities of demography and their territorial consequences, i.e., by Israeli state (as opposed to religious) considerations. From this standpoint, Sharon's disengagement effort generated a moment of truth in settler-government relations. While the settlement movement failed to thwart the Gaza/northern West Bank disengagement, it will still seek ways to threaten the viability of Israeli governments intent on dismantling additional settlements or even outposts like Amona and individual houses in Hebron. The settlers' strategy is to exact such a high price in national trauma and delegitimization of the government that, in the absence of Sharon-like determination, future governments will not dare try again to dismantle settlements in more sensitive areas like the West Bank mountain heartland. Thus far the settlers have failed; but the stakes are getting higher.

For a while, while Sharon was still prime minister, Kadima proposed once again to change the Israeli political system so as to rationalize decision-making on issues like disengagement. But the chances for success in this endeavor, which in any case is not mentioned in the new government's guidelines, do not look promising.

The new Israeli government appears to embody all the elements that have caused its predecessors to collapse after taking, at best, a single step toward dealing with the Palestinian issue: dependence on ultra-orthodox parties and, indirectly, on Arab parties, both of which have radically different political agendas; potentially poor internal party uniformity and discipline (in Kadima, Labor and Gil); and an initial agenda of conciliation with the settlers. In this government's favor is the fact that, because it does not seek agreement with the Palestinians, it is not dependent for success on their willingness to compromise. Accordingly, its prospects for putting in place a new disengagement framework are reasonable. But its prospects for implementing it to any great extent are not.