ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIANS:
FAR MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE
[Following is the talk by Activist Newsletter editor Jack A. Smith, at the Nov. 10 Israel/Palestine meeting at SUNY New Paltz, including paragraphs omitted from original draft to keep within time limits.]
Good evening. I'm going to discuss some of the geostrategic aspects of the Middle East situation.
Israel's oppression of the Palestinian people is the most daunting international issue confronting the world today, but the facts of the matter are not particularly complex.
Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian land that it invaded 43 years ago. The UN says Israel must withdraw, but it won't. Israel is supposed to be fulfilling a commitment to help pave the way for an independent, sustainable Palestinian state, but isn't.
The Tel-Aviv government treats the 4.2 million Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem like colonial subjects to be manipulated, deprived and punished at will.
These problems are compounded by several related factors:
First and foremost — because it influences all else — the United States exercises political and military hegemony throughout the Middle East. The reason is that the region is the repository of the world's largest reserves of petroleum and considerable natural gas, primarily in the Arabian Peninsula and the littoral states of the Persian Gulf.
Washington has ceaselessly intervened in the Middle East since collaborating with Great Britain to overthrow Iran's democratic government in 1953 after it nationalized its oil fields. Since then, in country after country, the U.S. has helped regional authoritarian governments impede social progress, destroyed left movements, and prolonged to this day the existence of undemocratic regimes.
The U.S. is Israel's political, military and economic protector, and Israel functions as Washington's pro-Western, nuclear-armed military surrogate in the region, but there's a contradiction in this relationship.
America's drive for regional domination is increasingly compromised by Israel's long subjugation of the Palestinian people. It's a major cause of anti-Americanism among the Arab masses, and for the rise of al-Qaeda for that matter. Washington seeks the creation of a weak and subordinate Palestinian state, legally independent of Israel, that will no longer be a detriment to U.S. geostrategic ambitions.
President Obama had to know from the start that the current peace talks would fail. But his goal is at least to convey the impression to the Muslim world that the U.S. wishes to alleviate the Palestinian plight, even as it rides roughshod over Muslim Iraq, Afghanistan, western Pakistan and Yemen.
Other problems include the following:
• Near paralyzing differences exist on many issues between the main ruling parties in the Israeli political system, virtually halting any progress on the Palestinian crisis.
• A debilitating split separates the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in the West Bank and the Hamas government in Gaza.
• Arab governments support the Palestinian cause, but most are now well within the U.S. sphere of influence, and are thus compromised.
These factors in combination impede a progressive resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict. But the actions of two non-Arab Muslim countries — Sunni Turkey and Shi'ite Iran — may make a difference in future developments.
Israeli politics has moved increasingly to the right in recent decades. The ruling parties and coalitions are center right, right and far right — with the latter imbued with racism. There are no ruling leftist parties.
The current ruling coalition, led by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of the right-wing Likud party, governs largely from the far right. This is due to the influence of smaller extreme right coalition partners and ultra-orthodox religionists, many of whom maintain that Palestinians have no right to any land within the alleged God-delineated boundaries of Biblical Israel.
The result is the government's refusal to withdraw from the occupied lands, and to continue building settlements in the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem and Syria's Golan Heights — which now accommodate about a half million Jews. It is against international laws to which the U.S. subscribes for an occupying power to resettle the territory with its own citizens.
Netanyahu even refused to order a brief moratorium on new settlements for the duration of his direct talks with PNA President Mahmoud Abbas, who then ended the talks until another suspension is declared. Just last week the government announced it would build another 1,300 new apartments for Jews in East Jerusalem, several months after revealing plans for 1,600 apartments.
Abbas said last week that if Netanyahu persists, "there are alternatives to negotiations," including seeking UN Security Council recognition of an independent Palestinian state, bypassing Israel and the U.S. The Obama Administration made it clear to Abbas his suggestion was "not helpful."
To keep the talks going, President Obama offered generous inducements to Netanyahu to extend the freeze for two more months. [Update: When the Israeli leader rejected the offer, Washington offered a second and more lucrative bribe for a three-month moratorium on building settlements, excluding East Jerusalem. This included a gift of $3 billion worth of advanced fighter planes, a promise to veto any UN Security Council resolution on the Palestine question that Tel-Aviv opposed, and a pledge not to request another halt in settlement building. Such an inducement —an act of public self-humiliation by the timorous Obama Administration — is still being "considered" by Netanyahu, who seems to play President Obama like a fiddle.]
Israel's center-right Kadima party, out of power and now headed by Tzipi Livni, a former foreign minister, is willing to form a less reactionary Likud-Kadima government, which probably would be joined by the opportunist center-right Labor party, now part of the governing Likud coalition.
Livni says that such a coalition government would accept the U.S. proposal for a temporary suspension of settlement building. She told Netanyahu that his coalition's intransigence is damaging Israel's interests and security.
Netanyahu hasn't budged so far, though it would free him from the far right fanatics practically paralyzing Israeli politics. Despite his obliging rhetoric the prime minister agrees with the far right's desire to keep as much of the Palestinian territories as possible. He also does not want to lose the leadership of the right wing to his foreign minister and rival, Avigdor Lieberman, an anti-Arab bigot with neofascist tendencies.
The U.S. subsidizes and manipulates the quasi government of the Palestine National Authority which is composed of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) coalition led by Fatah, a much weakened and far less popular organization in recent years than the resistance-minded force it was during most of the years it was led by the late Yasser Arafat. A dozen Palestinian organizations — mostly left but including Islamic Hamas — have been critical of Abbas and the PNA's relationship with Washington. They criticized the talks as a sham.
Neither Washington nor Tel-Aviv recognize or speak to the Hamas government in Gaza, including to Ismail Haniyeh who became the PNA's Prime Minister after the January 2006 democratic election for the Legislative Council, which previously was led by Fatah.
The next year, as a consequence of a virtual civil war between Fatah and Hamas, President Abbas dismissed Haniyeh as Prime Minister. The Hamas leader contested the firing as illegal and continues to function as Prime Minister in Gaza only, legally backed by the Legislative Council. The new Prime Minister Abbas named functions as such in the West Bank only, and is recognized by Obama and Netanyahu though not by the Palestinian Legislative Council.
Israel and the U.S. demonize the democratically elected Hamas government in Gaza, but it cannot be forgotten that in earlier years Israel encouraged the growth of Islamic Hamas as an alternative to the secular and then-leftist Fatah. Much to Tel-Aviv's regret, given its earlier hopes, Hamas turned out to be as dedicated to the national struggle as Fatah and the PLO.
One of the counts against Hamas is that it refuses to recognize Israel, but Hamas has let it be known it is not inflexible when it comes making a balanced and sustainable deal. Fatah, with which the U.S. and Israel are dealing through the Palestinian Authority, does not recognize Israel, either.
In reality, whether or not a political party "recognizes" a state has no legal significance. Recognition is a state to state affair, not party to state. It's fairly certain that an eventual Palestinian state would exchange mutual recognitions with Israel.
The two Palestinian factions remain far apart, but recognize the need for tactical unity. Talks between both sides began in September, broke down but resumed and made progress on three disputed questions. A tough remaining issue concerns the control of Palestinian security forces, which Fatah refuses to share with Hamas.
All the Arab countries support the Palestinians rhetorically, and some do so materially. But some also fear the impact of an independent, progressive, secular Palestinian state on their own undemocratic, conservative regimes, and would prefer a weak, dependent Palestine, as does Washington.
Only two Arab states maintain diplomatic relations with Israel — Egypt and Jordan — but most other Arab governments are no longer antagonistic and are expected to resume normal relations after a Palestinian state is organized.
Egypt is the most powerful Arab state. The authoritarian Cairo regime of President Hosni Mubarak is in Uncle Sam's pocket, extracting an annual subsidy of $1.3 billion a year. Cairo despises Hamas because it is ideologically associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, Mubarak's principal internal enemy.
The monarchy of Jordan, with its large Palestinian population, is in Uncle Sam's other pocket (collecting $540 million a year) because the Hashemite Kingdom is insecure about a possibly progressive Arab republic at its doorstep.
Syria supports the Palestinians and maintains cordial relations with both Fatah and Hamas, but it can't stand up to Washington. And Lebanon has too often been an Israeli battlefield for it to invite Tel-Aviv's ire.
Saudi Arabia and the oil-rich Arab Gulf States give a nod and some money to the Palestinian cause but genuflect to Washington's global power. The rest of the Arab countries, including former radical states such as Libya, rally for Palestinians at Arab League meetings, but do little else.
This leaves the two wild cards in the region — Turkey and Iran — both capable of complicating the U.S.-Israeli domination game in the Middle East.
Turkey, long a West-leaning NATO member and close ally of Israel and the United States, began seeking closer ties with some Arab nations a few years ago. Evidently the Ankara government has decided that circumstances dictate it is time for Turkey to assume the role of an influential Middle Eastern power, independent of Washington and Tel-Aviv.
In 2009 Prime Minister Erdogan condemned Israel's invasion of Gaza with a ferocity that made its old allies blanch. Earlier this year Turkey and Brazil unexpectedly announced they had obtained a nuclear fuel swap agreement with Iran, obviating additional U.S.-UN sanctions — an initiative Washington rejected. And then a few months ago Israeli commandoes interdicted the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, killing nine unarmed Turkish civilians. This provoked an extremely harsh outcry from the Turkish government and people.
Turkey retains diplomatic, economic and other relations with the U.S. and Israel, but its independent involvement in regional affairs, anger at Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, friendship with Iran and Syria, and willingness to confront both its old allies has generated deep suspicions in Washington and Tel-Aviv.
There have been suggestions Turkey is going to adopt the posture of a radical Islamic state, but this is incorrect. While it is true Turkey's strict secularity since its defeat in World War I has weakened in recent years, its secular tradition remains strong.
Iran has long been in U.S.-Israeli bomb sights. President Bush was planning regime change in Tehran until Iraq blew up in his face. Both Presidents Obama and Netanyahu preposterously charge that the Islamic republic seeks to construct nuclear weapons with which to threaten Israel and other countries.
Iran is surrounded by U.S.-Israeli military power, and is being strangled with sanctions. An honest appraisal shows that Tehran's military strategy is defensive, as President Obama — who retains an interest in regime change — is well aware.
Tehran is no military threat, much less the "existential" threat Tel-Aviv claims. Israel's only existential threat is if the U.S. withdraws political/military support and halts its annual $3 billion military subsidy and billions in other favors.
Israel's antagonism toward Iran is unrelated to a potential Iranian attack. It opposes Tehran because it is one of the very few governments that actively support and help finance Palestinian resistance, and because it backs the Hezbollah resistance movement in Lebanon.
America's antagonism is not based on fears of Iranian aggression or nuclear threats. Iran possesses immense oil deposits. The U.S. seeks to control the oil or at least grab priority rights before global oil shortages commence. Washington also regards the Tehran government's public opposition to U.S. imperialism as an obstacle to its long range geopolitical strategy. And if Iran ever teamed up with Turkey, Syria and even Shi'ite Iraq, that would be a game changer. These are the reasons for U.S.-Israeli threats against Iran.
The Middle East often looks static, with American power ruling the region, especially where the Palestinians are concerned. But that's deceptive. No one knows what is going to transpire in the next years. There are many possibilities for change germinating throughout the Middle East, especially as other world nations rise while the U.S. continues to engage in an historic decline.
Showing posts with label Netanyahu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Netanyahu. Show all posts
Monday, November 22, 2010
Saturday, October 9, 2010
10-09-10 Netanyahu
ISRAEL'S NETANYAHU — "HIS FATHER'S BOY"
[This article about right wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu is by Uri Avnery, the long time leader of Gush Shalom, the Israeli Peace Bloc, a frequent critic of his country's policies toward the Palestinians. It appeared on the organization's website Oct. 9, 2010.]
By Uri Avnery
WHICH IS the real Netanyahu?
• Bibi the weakling, the invertebrate, who always gives in to pressure, who zigzags to the left and to the right, depending whether the pressure comes from the U.S. or from his coalition partners?
• The tricky Likud chief, who is afraid that Avigdor Ivett Lieberman might succeed in pushing him towards the Center and displace him as the leader of the entire Right?
• Netanyahu, the man of principle, who is determined to prevent at any cost the setting up of the State of Palestine, and is therefore using every possible ruse to sabotage real negotiations?
The real Netanyahu - stand up!
Hey, wait a minute, what's going on here? Do I see all three of them rising?
THE FIRST Netanyahu is the one who meets the eye. A leaf in the wind. The con man without principles and with plenty of tricks, whose sole aim is to survive in power.
This Netanyahu practically invites pressure on himself.
Barack Obama pressured him, so he agreed to the settlement freeze - or the perceived settlement freeze. In order to avoid a crisis with the settlers, he promised them that after the agreed ten months, the construction boom would be resumed with full vigor.
The settlers pressured him, and he did indeed resume the building at the appointed time, in spite of the intense pressure from Obama, who pushed for an extension of the moratorium for another two months. Why two months? Because the congressional elections take place on November 2, and Obama desperately needs to avoid a crisis with the Jewish establishment before that. For this end, he is ready to sell Netanyahu the whole inventory - arms, money, political support, a set of guarantees about the outcome of the negotiations that have not yet even begun. Sixty days! sixty days! my kingdom for sixty days!
Netanyahu is now zigzagging between these pressures, trying to find out which is the stronger, which one to give in to, how much and when. In his dreams he probably feels like the Baron von Munchhausen, who found himself on a narrow path, with a lion behind him getting ready to spring and a crocodile in front of him opening its awesome jaws. (If I remember right, the baron ducked and the lion jumped straight into the jaws of the reptile.)
This is the great hope of Netanyahu. AIPAC will help to deliver Obama a crushing defeat in the elections, Obama will deliver a crushing blow to the settlers, and Baron von Netanyahu will rub his hands and survive to fight another day.
Is this the real Netanyahu? For sure.
BUT THE second Netanyahu is no less real. This is Tricky Bibi who is trying to out-fox Tricky Ivett.
Ivvett (Avigdor) Lieberman astounded the UN General Assembly, when, as the Foreign Minister of Israel, he addressed this august body from the rostrum.
Because our Foreign Minister did not rise to defend the policies of his country, as did his colorless colleagues. Quite the opposite: from the UN rostrum he vigorously attacked the policy of his own government, giving it short shrift.
The official policy of the Government of Israel is to conduct direct negotiations with the Palestinian leadership, in order to achieve a final peace treaty within one year.
Nonsense, said the Foreign Minister of that same government. Rubbish. There is no chance at all of a peace treaty, not within a year and not within a hundred years. What's needed is a Long-Term-Interim-Agreement. In other words, the continuation of the occupation without time limits.
Why did Lieberman give this performance? He was not addressing the few delegates who had remained in the UN assembly hall, but the Israeli public. He challenged Netanyahu: either dismiss me or pretend that the spittle on your face is rain.
But Netanyahu did not dismiss and did not react, except for a weak statement that Lieberman was not expressing his views. And this why? Clearly, if Netanyahu were to kick Lieberman's party out of the government and bring in Tzipi Livni's Kadima Party, Lieberman would do to Netanyahu what Netanyahu did to Yitzhak Rabin. He would declare him a traitor selling out the fatherland, an enemy of the settlements. His devotees would parade around with posters of Netanyahu in SS uniform or wearing a keffiyeh, while others performed arcane Kabbalah rituals to bring about his death.
Lieberman would raise the flag of the Right, split the Likud and take sole possession of the entire Israeli Right. He believes that this is the way to become Prime Minister.
Netanyahu understands this perfectly. That's why he is restraining himself. As a man who grew up in the United States he probably remembers what Lyndon Johnson said about J. Edgar Hoover: Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, then outside the tent pissing in.
AND PERHAPS this Netanyahu - the second one - does not really object to the plan outlined by Lieberman at the UN assembly.
The Foreign Minister was not content with rejecting peace and bringing up the idea of the Long-Term-Interim-Agreement. He described the solution he has in mind. Not surprisingly, it is the electoral platform of his party, Israel Beytenu ("Israel Our Home"). In essence: Israel, the "Nation-State-Of-The-Jewish-People", will be free of Arabs, or, translated into German, Araberrein.
But Lieberman is a humane person, and does not advocate (at least in public) ethnic cleansing. He does not propose a third Naqbah (after the 1948 Palestinian catastrophe and the 1967 expulsion). No, his solution is far more creative: he will separate from Israel the Arab towns and villages along the Eastern border, the so-called "triangle", from Umm al-Fahm in the North to Kufr Kassem in the South This area, together with its inhabitants and lands, would be joined to the territory of the Palestinian Authority, and in return Israel would annex the Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
That raises, of course, several questions. First, what about the Arab concentrations in Galilee, which include dozens of villages, towns like Nazareth and Shefa Amr, and the Arab population in the mixed towns, Haifa and Acre? Lieberman does not propose to transfer them too. Neither does he propose to give up East Jerusalem, with its quarter of a million Arab residents. If that is the case, is he prepared to leave in the "Nation-State-Of-The-Jewish-People" more than three quarters of a million Arabs? Or does he dream at night, lying in his bed, of conducting ethnic cleansing after all?
A second question: to whom will he transfer the Arab towns and villages of the 'triangle"? Without a peace treaty, there will be no Palestinian state. Instead, there will remain the Palestinian Authority, with its few small enclaves all subject to Israeli occupation. The Long-Term-Interim-Agreement would leave this situation, more or less, intact. Meaning that this area, now part of Israel, would become a territory under Israeli occupation. Its inhabitants would lose their status as Israeli citizens and become an occupied population, devoid of civil rights and human rights.
As far as is known, not a singe Arab leader in Israel agrees to that. Even in the past, when it seemed that Lieberman agreed to the establishment of a Palestinian state and wanted to transfer to it the Arab areas of Israel, not a single Arab leader in Israel agreed. The Arab citizens of Israel, a population approaching a million and a half, are indeed a part of the Palestinian people, but they are also a part of the Israeli population.
Netanyahu is certainly afraid of Lieberman, but can it be that he did not condemn Lieberman's UN speech because he secretly shares his views?
In any case, this week Netanyahu announced that he is adopting Lieberman's baby, the demand that non-Jewish (meaning Arab) people who wish to obtain Israeli citizenship swear allegiance not just to the State of Israel and its laws, as is usual, but to "Israel as a Jewish and democratic state". This is a nonsensical and meaningless addition, solely devised to provoke the 20% of Israelis who are Arabs. One might as well demand candidates for U.S. citizenship swear allegiance to the "United States as a White Anglo-Saxon Christian and democratic nation".
BUT IT is quite possible that there is a third Netanyahu, who stands taller than the others.
This is the Netanyahu who always believed in a Greater Israel, and who has never given up the ideology which he suckled with his mother's milk.
The veteran Israeli journalist Gideon Samet goes further: he believes that Binyamin Netanyahu's main motivation is his total obedience to his old father.
Ben-Zion Netanyahu is now 100 years old, and in full possession of his mental faculties. He is a professor of history, born in Warsaw, who came to Palestine in 1920 and changed his name from Mileikowsky to Netanyahu ("God has Given"). He has always been on the extreme right-wing fringe. Ben-Zion Netanyahu spent several periods of his life in the U.S., where his three sons grew up. When in 1947 the UN General Assembly adopted the plan to partition Palestine between a Jewish state and an Arab state, father Netanyahu signed a petition, published in the New York Times, condemning the resolution in the strongest terms. Returning to Israel, he was not accepted into the new Freedom Party (the forerunner of Likud), because his views were too extreme even for Menachem Begin's tastes. He claims that he was barred from a professorship in the Hebrew University because of his opinions, and his bitterness about this poisoned the atmosphere at home.
The professor's special field is Spanish Jewry, with the emphasis on the Spanish Inquisition. He condemns the Jews who were baptized (the Marranos) and says that the great majority of them were eager to be assimilated into Christian Spanish society, contrary to the official heroic myth, which says that they continued to practice the religion of their forefathers in secret.
When Netanyahu the son transferred a part of Hebron to the Palestinian Authority, his father rebuked him and stated publicly that he was unfit for the job of Prime Minister, fit at most to serve as Foreign Secretary. But the son made a huge effort to remain true to his father's views, and that is the main motivation for his policy. According to Samet, he would not dare to face his father and tell him that he had given away parts of Eretz Israel.
I tend to accept this version. Netanyahu will never agree to be responsible for the establishment of the State of Palestine, will never conduct serious peace negotiations - unless under extreme duress. That is all there is to it, everything else is hollow talk.
If the real Netanyahu were called to stand up, all three, and perhaps a few more, would rise. But the third one is the most real.
[This article about right wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu is by Uri Avnery, the long time leader of Gush Shalom, the Israeli Peace Bloc, a frequent critic of his country's policies toward the Palestinians. It appeared on the organization's website Oct. 9, 2010.]
By Uri Avnery
WHICH IS the real Netanyahu?
• Bibi the weakling, the invertebrate, who always gives in to pressure, who zigzags to the left and to the right, depending whether the pressure comes from the U.S. or from his coalition partners?
• The tricky Likud chief, who is afraid that Avigdor Ivett Lieberman might succeed in pushing him towards the Center and displace him as the leader of the entire Right?
• Netanyahu, the man of principle, who is determined to prevent at any cost the setting up of the State of Palestine, and is therefore using every possible ruse to sabotage real negotiations?
The real Netanyahu - stand up!
Hey, wait a minute, what's going on here? Do I see all three of them rising?
THE FIRST Netanyahu is the one who meets the eye. A leaf in the wind. The con man without principles and with plenty of tricks, whose sole aim is to survive in power.
This Netanyahu practically invites pressure on himself.
Barack Obama pressured him, so he agreed to the settlement freeze - or the perceived settlement freeze. In order to avoid a crisis with the settlers, he promised them that after the agreed ten months, the construction boom would be resumed with full vigor.
The settlers pressured him, and he did indeed resume the building at the appointed time, in spite of the intense pressure from Obama, who pushed for an extension of the moratorium for another two months. Why two months? Because the congressional elections take place on November 2, and Obama desperately needs to avoid a crisis with the Jewish establishment before that. For this end, he is ready to sell Netanyahu the whole inventory - arms, money, political support, a set of guarantees about the outcome of the negotiations that have not yet even begun. Sixty days! sixty days! my kingdom for sixty days!
Netanyahu is now zigzagging between these pressures, trying to find out which is the stronger, which one to give in to, how much and when. In his dreams he probably feels like the Baron von Munchhausen, who found himself on a narrow path, with a lion behind him getting ready to spring and a crocodile in front of him opening its awesome jaws. (If I remember right, the baron ducked and the lion jumped straight into the jaws of the reptile.)
This is the great hope of Netanyahu. AIPAC will help to deliver Obama a crushing defeat in the elections, Obama will deliver a crushing blow to the settlers, and Baron von Netanyahu will rub his hands and survive to fight another day.
Is this the real Netanyahu? For sure.
BUT THE second Netanyahu is no less real. This is Tricky Bibi who is trying to out-fox Tricky Ivett.
Ivvett (Avigdor) Lieberman astounded the UN General Assembly, when, as the Foreign Minister of Israel, he addressed this august body from the rostrum.
Because our Foreign Minister did not rise to defend the policies of his country, as did his colorless colleagues. Quite the opposite: from the UN rostrum he vigorously attacked the policy of his own government, giving it short shrift.
The official policy of the Government of Israel is to conduct direct negotiations with the Palestinian leadership, in order to achieve a final peace treaty within one year.
Nonsense, said the Foreign Minister of that same government. Rubbish. There is no chance at all of a peace treaty, not within a year and not within a hundred years. What's needed is a Long-Term-Interim-Agreement. In other words, the continuation of the occupation without time limits.
Why did Lieberman give this performance? He was not addressing the few delegates who had remained in the UN assembly hall, but the Israeli public. He challenged Netanyahu: either dismiss me or pretend that the spittle on your face is rain.
But Netanyahu did not dismiss and did not react, except for a weak statement that Lieberman was not expressing his views. And this why? Clearly, if Netanyahu were to kick Lieberman's party out of the government and bring in Tzipi Livni's Kadima Party, Lieberman would do to Netanyahu what Netanyahu did to Yitzhak Rabin. He would declare him a traitor selling out the fatherland, an enemy of the settlements. His devotees would parade around with posters of Netanyahu in SS uniform or wearing a keffiyeh, while others performed arcane Kabbalah rituals to bring about his death.
Lieberman would raise the flag of the Right, split the Likud and take sole possession of the entire Israeli Right. He believes that this is the way to become Prime Minister.
Netanyahu understands this perfectly. That's why he is restraining himself. As a man who grew up in the United States he probably remembers what Lyndon Johnson said about J. Edgar Hoover: Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, then outside the tent pissing in.
AND PERHAPS this Netanyahu - the second one - does not really object to the plan outlined by Lieberman at the UN assembly.
The Foreign Minister was not content with rejecting peace and bringing up the idea of the Long-Term-Interim-Agreement. He described the solution he has in mind. Not surprisingly, it is the electoral platform of his party, Israel Beytenu ("Israel Our Home"). In essence: Israel, the "Nation-State-Of-The-Jewish-People", will be free of Arabs, or, translated into German, Araberrein.
But Lieberman is a humane person, and does not advocate (at least in public) ethnic cleansing. He does not propose a third Naqbah (after the 1948 Palestinian catastrophe and the 1967 expulsion). No, his solution is far more creative: he will separate from Israel the Arab towns and villages along the Eastern border, the so-called "triangle", from Umm al-Fahm in the North to Kufr Kassem in the South This area, together with its inhabitants and lands, would be joined to the territory of the Palestinian Authority, and in return Israel would annex the Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
That raises, of course, several questions. First, what about the Arab concentrations in Galilee, which include dozens of villages, towns like Nazareth and Shefa Amr, and the Arab population in the mixed towns, Haifa and Acre? Lieberman does not propose to transfer them too. Neither does he propose to give up East Jerusalem, with its quarter of a million Arab residents. If that is the case, is he prepared to leave in the "Nation-State-Of-The-Jewish-People" more than three quarters of a million Arabs? Or does he dream at night, lying in his bed, of conducting ethnic cleansing after all?
A second question: to whom will he transfer the Arab towns and villages of the 'triangle"? Without a peace treaty, there will be no Palestinian state. Instead, there will remain the Palestinian Authority, with its few small enclaves all subject to Israeli occupation. The Long-Term-Interim-Agreement would leave this situation, more or less, intact. Meaning that this area, now part of Israel, would become a territory under Israeli occupation. Its inhabitants would lose their status as Israeli citizens and become an occupied population, devoid of civil rights and human rights.
As far as is known, not a singe Arab leader in Israel agrees to that. Even in the past, when it seemed that Lieberman agreed to the establishment of a Palestinian state and wanted to transfer to it the Arab areas of Israel, not a single Arab leader in Israel agreed. The Arab citizens of Israel, a population approaching a million and a half, are indeed a part of the Palestinian people, but they are also a part of the Israeli population.
Netanyahu is certainly afraid of Lieberman, but can it be that he did not condemn Lieberman's UN speech because he secretly shares his views?
In any case, this week Netanyahu announced that he is adopting Lieberman's baby, the demand that non-Jewish (meaning Arab) people who wish to obtain Israeli citizenship swear allegiance not just to the State of Israel and its laws, as is usual, but to "Israel as a Jewish and democratic state". This is a nonsensical and meaningless addition, solely devised to provoke the 20% of Israelis who are Arabs. One might as well demand candidates for U.S. citizenship swear allegiance to the "United States as a White Anglo-Saxon Christian and democratic nation".
BUT IT is quite possible that there is a third Netanyahu, who stands taller than the others.
This is the Netanyahu who always believed in a Greater Israel, and who has never given up the ideology which he suckled with his mother's milk.
The veteran Israeli journalist Gideon Samet goes further: he believes that Binyamin Netanyahu's main motivation is his total obedience to his old father.
Ben-Zion Netanyahu is now 100 years old, and in full possession of his mental faculties. He is a professor of history, born in Warsaw, who came to Palestine in 1920 and changed his name from Mileikowsky to Netanyahu ("God has Given"). He has always been on the extreme right-wing fringe. Ben-Zion Netanyahu spent several periods of his life in the U.S., where his three sons grew up. When in 1947 the UN General Assembly adopted the plan to partition Palestine between a Jewish state and an Arab state, father Netanyahu signed a petition, published in the New York Times, condemning the resolution in the strongest terms. Returning to Israel, he was not accepted into the new Freedom Party (the forerunner of Likud), because his views were too extreme even for Menachem Begin's tastes. He claims that he was barred from a professorship in the Hebrew University because of his opinions, and his bitterness about this poisoned the atmosphere at home.
The professor's special field is Spanish Jewry, with the emphasis on the Spanish Inquisition. He condemns the Jews who were baptized (the Marranos) and says that the great majority of them were eager to be assimilated into Christian Spanish society, contrary to the official heroic myth, which says that they continued to practice the religion of their forefathers in secret.
When Netanyahu the son transferred a part of Hebron to the Palestinian Authority, his father rebuked him and stated publicly that he was unfit for the job of Prime Minister, fit at most to serve as Foreign Secretary. But the son made a huge effort to remain true to his father's views, and that is the main motivation for his policy. According to Samet, he would not dare to face his father and tell him that he had given away parts of Eretz Israel.
I tend to accept this version. Netanyahu will never agree to be responsible for the establishment of the State of Palestine, will never conduct serious peace negotiations - unless under extreme duress. That is all there is to it, everything else is hollow talk.
If the real Netanyahu were called to stand up, all three, and perhaps a few more, would rise. But the third one is the most real.
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