To return to the new Peace Now website click here.

The New Republic's Leon Wieseltier on the "gross historical irresponsibility" of the Bibi-Barak Government

Important comments today from an unlikely source: Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic.  Writing about the very reasonable concerns Israel has over developments in Egypt, Wieseltier correctly connects the dots to the Israeli-Palestinian arena and proceeds to blast the Netanyahu-Barak government for its "gross historical irresponsibility" in their dealing with the Palestinians. Weiseltier writes:

"The collapse of the Mubarak regime cannot be attributed, obviously, to the failure of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Egypt has exploded for Egyptian reasons. The valiant people in Tahrir Square did not include Palestinian statehood among their demands. Their grievances were domestic, as Mubarak's outrages have been domestic. Yet the Egyptian repudiation of Mubarak will have consequences for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and so the analysis of Israel's new situation cannot be addressed solely in terms of vulnerability and vigilance.

"Here is where concern about Israel must be added to concern for Israel. For the Netanyahu-Barak government has displayed gross historical irresponsibility in recent years. It has, in its relations with the Palestinians, desired only stasis and the status quo.

"The Al Jazeera leaks and the Olmert memoirs have abundantly demonstrated that the Palestinian Authority has been capable of significant concessions in the pursuit of a deal. By all accounts the Palestinian security forces on the West Bank have worked assiduously, and effectively, to thwart terrorism and to cripple Hamas. But the momentous improvement of life on the West Bank--is this not what thoughtful Israelis have dreamed of for decades?--has not moved Netanyahu to any kind of creative diplomatic activity. Not at all.

"Instead of plans and initiatives, he offers platitudes and debaters' points. He bewails the fate of Palestinian moderation even as he does his best to seal its fate. He warns about the weakness of moderate Arab governments even as he makes them look weak. He worries about the waning influence of the United States in the region even as he helps to damage the influence of the United States in the region. Obama was mad to transform the issue of the settlements into a deal-breaker, when Israeli-Palestinian negotiations had already found an approach to the problem; but Netanyahu was mad--but also clever and consistent--to agree to let the issue be so transformed.

"Are rec rooms in Ariel really worth all this? Ground was broken last week for a massive new Israeli development in East Jerusalem as Tahrir Square was filling up with the evidence of a new Egypt. Do the Israelis have the right to build there? Let us say they have the right. But this is not a question of rights. It is a question of brains. Why in Herzl's name would Netanyahu wish to alienate the Palestinians in the West Bank now?

"The answer, of course, is that he wishes to alienate them always. 'Israel Digs in On Peace Process With Egypt in Turmoil,' The New York Times reported last week. But Netanyahu was dug in on the peace process also before Egypt was in turmoil.

"Whatever he says, his history shows that in his view the time is never right. 'We have to look around us with our eyes wide open,' Netanyahu told the Knesset. 'The basis for our stability, for our future, and for preserving the peace and widening it, lies in bolstering the might of the state of Israel.'

"But nobody ever suggested that in the name of peace he lessen the might of the state of Israel. The purpose of Israeli military power is not only military. It is also political. It can serve as the guarantor of diplomatic imagination and diplomatic progress.

"But there is no diplomatic imagination and there is no diplomatic progress. There is only a perverse surrender to the settlers, and a miasma of short-term (and self-interestedly political) thinking, and a general hunkering down. What Netanyahu has offered his country is a complacent immobilism, now followed by a mild panic.

"So with our eyes wide open, it is important to assert that Israel's vision of its future cannot be premised upon an eternity of Arab authoritarianism and an eternity of Palestinian statelessness. Such a vision is wrong, and it will not work. It is painful, for someone who admires the Jewish state for its democratic character, to see it emerge as an enemy of democratization. Jews should not rely on Pharaohs..."