By Max Schindler

An injured Palestinian receives treatment during the Nakba day protest in support of the Palestinian prisoners, near Ofer Military Prison, May 15, 2012 (photo: Activestills)

RAMALLAH – Tuesday’s annual Nakba Day commemorations, marking the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948, focused largely on support for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Until an agreement reached on Monday night, more than 1,500 prisoners had fasted for weeks, demanding an end to administrative detention and for improving their prison conditions.

Yesterday, Israel announced that it would meet a few of the prisoners’ demands in exchange for an end to the hunger strike.

Nakba Day protest near Qalandia (photo: Brendan Browne)

Nearly 1,000 Palestinians and international supporters demonstrated outside the Ofer Military Prison near Ramallah, in the largest West Bank protest today.

Protesters brandished posters and t-shirts imprinted with the faces of two hunger strikers, Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahla, whose fasts lasted for 77 days before they indicated their hunger strike would end today, in accord with the recent agreement.

The two prisoners – alleged by Israel to be fundraisers for Hamas and Islamic Jihad – are held in administrative detention without trial or charge.

The crowd at Ofer – consisting largely of young people – pelted Israeli soldiers with stones from home-made slingshots, threw Molotov cocktails and burned car tires in an attempt to approach the prison, 300 meters away. Israeli soldiers shot plastic-coated steel bullets and tear gas canisters while spraying “skunk” liquid at the demonstrators.

According to Diaa Meysef, an EMT volunteer for the Palestine Red Crescent, as of 5 p.m., more than 200 demonstrators received medical treatment for injuries, 130 from tear gas and some 70 from plastic-coated steel bullets.

As ambulances careened, wafts of tear gas and smoke from burning rubber tires billowed in the air. Most protestors breathed through keffiyehs draped around their necks.

Dr. Sami Nahlka, a Civil Defense volunteer, said there were no central organizers for today’s protest at Ofer prison. Hamas and Fatah did not participate formally, although many activists affiliated with Fatah were in attendance. Rather, Palestinians gathered in a spontaneous demonstration.

One Palestinian-American born in Brooklyn, Ehad Khile, 18, said he and his university friends protested out of collective obligation. Calling himself “non-political,” Khile said, “I need to support what my people do today.”

Dahlia Hamayel, a high school student at the protest, said she was here “because we want to establish that despite many years passing, we are fed up.”

“We are here just to threaten the soldiers that you, you will not have a good life, as long as you occupy us,” she said.

Celebrations in Gaza following the announcement of a deal for the Palestinian hunger strikers, May 14, 2012 (photo: Anne Paq/Activestills.org)

In recent days, Israeli officials expressed fear that if a hunger striker were to die in Israeli custody, the occupied territories would erupt in spiraling unrest and mass outrage.

Last night, the Israeli authorities negotiated an accord with their Palestinian counterparts, promising to end solitary confinement and improve prison amenities. Yet the main issue that sparked the latest round of hunger strikes – the widespread practice of administrative detention by Israeli authorities – remains unresolved.

Several commemoration protests were held at other locations in the occupied West Bank, among them the Al-Manara Square in Ramallah, where thousands of Palestinians crowded into the square to listen to establishment figures and politicians give speeches; at Rachel’s tomb in Bethlehem; Issawiya neighborhood in East Jerusalem; and Gaza City.

In Israel proper, the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee of Israel announced a general strike in the Arab sector today, culminating in a rally in the Aljun area near Umm al-Fahm – the largest Arab city in the country.

During and after the war of 1948, some 700,000 Palestinians fled or were evicted, and 400 villages were destroyed. The Israeli government did not allow the Palestinians to return home and later confiscated their assets.

Palestinians annually mark Nakba Day on May 15, the day after Israel’s declaration of independence. Israelis rely on the Hebrew calendar, celebrating Independence Day on the 5th of Iyar, which was on April 26 this year.

UPDATE: Images from Nakbe day protests near Ramallah (all photos by Activestills.org)

Palestinians confront IDF soldiers during Nakba Day protest near Ofer Military Prison, May 15 2012 (photo: Activestills)

Nakba Day protest near Ofer Military Prison, May 15 2012 (photo: Activestills.org)

Nakba Day protest near Ramallah, May 15 2012 (photo: Activestills.org)

A young man takes shelter during the Nakba Day protest near Ofer Military Prison, May 15 2012 (photo: Activestills.org)

Official Nakba Day rally in al-Manara Square, Ramallah, May 15 2012 (photo: Activestills.org)

Nakba Day rally in Ramallah, May 15 2012 (photo: Activestills.org)

Nakba Day rally in Ramallah (photo: Activestills.org)

Max Schindler is a student at Cornell University who is spending the year volunteering on a kibbutz and writing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Read also:
This Nakba Day, peace is more urgent then ever
IMAGES: Protesters, IDF clash on Nakba Day at Ofer prison
Rightists disrupt Nakba ceremony at Tel Aviv University
Why the inconvenient truths of the Nakba must be recognized

Today, the Palestinian people in Palestine and in the Palestinian Diaspora are commemorating Nakba Day. Sixty four years ago, Israel was established and more than 800,000 (two-thirds of the Palestinians at the time) were expelled and uprooted from their homeland. Now, Israelis celebrate their independence day while the Palestinians are still struggling for freedom and independence. Fo us, it is a day of remembrance, agony, and identity-searching.

The Israeli narrative is that the armies of Arab countries invaded the newly established state and ordered the Palestinian people to evacuate the land so that they could liberate it. But this Israeli narrative has been revised by many brave Jewish historians who have admitted that Zionist terrorist organizations (such as the Hagana and the Stern Gang) were responsible for expelling Palestinian refugees. In spite of that, Israel has yet to acknowledge its political and moral responsibility for the Palestinian Nakba.

The purpose of this article is not to continue digging deeper into the Palestinian tragedy and to repeat the same Palestinian narrative over and over, but where we go from here. The continuation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will ill serve the interests of all parties, including Israel. It is about time the Israeli leadership reconsider the Palestinian and Arab initiatives to make peace and put an end to the endless killing and bloodshed.

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) recognized Israel in the letters exchanged between the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat in 1993, and accepted a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. President Mahmoud Abbas has gone further, during the Annapolis peace talks with then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. He accepted a land swap which would allow Israel to annex the large settlement blocs, and a just solution to the refugee problem which would be agreed upon between both parties.

The Arab countries have unanimously accepted and endorsed the Arab Peace Initiative (API), in their summit meeting in Beirut 2002, and have since reaffirmed their commitment to it. That plan includes a Palestinian sovereign state in the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital and a just solution to the refugee problem that will be agreed upon between the Palestinians and Israelis. In return, Israel will be recognized by all 22 Arab states and even all 54 Islamic states, there will be normalization with Israel, and historical reconciliation.

But Israel has chosen to ignore the API and instead has embarked on intensive settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Settler numbers have risen from 200,000 in 1993 to 600,000 in 2012. The expansion of Jewish settlement leaves no place for a contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The two-state solution adopted by the Quartet roadmap and the international community is drifting away day after day, as a result of Israel’s settlement expansion.

The failure of the two-state solution will leave the Palestinians with no other option but to ask for a bi-national state where Arabs and Jews have equal political rights. I don’t know how much longer Israel can avoid international pressure to put an end to the occupation of the 1967 territories, but I’m convinced that the international community is fed up with Prime Minister Netanyahu and the right-wing coalition in Israel.

In their recent meeting in Brussels, European foreign ministers condemned Israeli legalization of settlement outposts in the West Bank and reaffirmed Europe’s fundamental policy that the 1967 territories are occupied territories and they will not recognize any changes that are not be agreed upon between Palestinians and Israelis.

It is the responsibility of the Israeli peace camp to get out of its winter hibernation and start knocking on every door in Israel: the current Israeli policy is not serving the Zionist enterprise, and is leaving nothing but more frustration and despair among the Palestinians. Yes, the West Bank and Gaza seem to be quiet at present. But the previous Palestinian intifada erupted as a result of frustration and despair.

I’m a Palestinian refugee. My father was born in the village of Semsem, just northeast of the Gaza Strip, and my mother was born in the village of Beit Darass located between what is now Ashkelon and Ashdod. My generation is willing to make the historical compromise to live in peace and security with Israel, but I do not know how much longer we can wait. We live the Palestinian Nakba every day (refugee camps, poverty, unemployment, siege and blockade). We look forward to a better future for our children and grandchildren.

There is still hope, but we have to start soon, before it becomes too late.

Mkhaimar Abusada is a professor of political science at Al-Azhar University – Gaza.

Limor Livnat was furious. The minister of culture was speaking at a Knesset discussion about the Independence Day arrests in Tel Aviv, following an attempt by a small non-profit called Zochrot to commemorate the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948. The Israeli police surrounded the Zochrot office in central Tel Aviv, preventing the activists from exiting. One person spent a night in jail for reading aloud the names of destroyed Palestinian villages from a history book. But Livnat’s anger wasn’t directed at the police, but rather at those arrested:

I went in with my iPhone to the Zochrot association [website], and there it was. There are some details there, including places. What are the Arab villages that the Zochrot association is talking about, that it tries to present to the public? The public should know what this is about. They present a map, and the map has dots. Dots, dots, dots […] from the north of the country to its south, south of Be’er Sheva. And these dots, which are the villages we’re talking about, the points are in all the State of Israel! Not in Judea and Samaria, not in the Gaza region, not in what you call the Occupied Territories […] Here, inside Tel Aviv! I found some like that in the Tel Aviv area, dozens of dots.

During and around the 1948 war, over 400 Palestinian villages and towns were destroyed by Israeli forces. Over 80 percent of the Arab population of what became the State of Israel was either expelled or banned from returning. Many of those who managed to stay were internally displaced, their village lands were given to Jewish communities or turned into parks. These are all documented historical facts, yet their discussion is considered so outrageous that the minister of culture didn’t need to explain what was wrong: for her, it was self-evident that a website mentioning destroyed Palestinian villages inside Israel (even inside Tel Aviv!) is an abomination.

Israelis, especially younger generations, approach the history of 1948 through a number of well-trodden formulas: the UN decided on a partition creating a Jewish and Arab state, the Arabs refused, neighboring Arab countries intervened, and at the end of a bloody war, some Palestinians found themselves on the other side of the border. These things, we are told, happen in wars.

I remember hearing for the first time about the expulsion of Majdal, today Ashkelon. The town had been known as the “Arab Manchester,” and several of its textile workers were affiliated with the Histadrut labor union. Despite protests from the Histadrut, the town’s inhabitants were loaded onto trucks and dumped in the nearby Gaza Strip. But this didn’t “happen in war.” It happened in 1950, after the ceasefire. When I heard this for the first time, I thought it must be a mistake: how could this have happened after the war? What was the security reason?

Israeli historian Benny Morris found a communique from the previous year by Yigal Allon, one of the senior commanders, who urged the army to transfer the town’s Arabs. For him, the Palestinian population was too close to the Egyptian front lines, and their presence could serve as a base for enemy infiltration. In June 1948, Allon thought the Arabs of Ramle would also be a threat, and gave orders to expel them. In April of that year, according to his own testimony, he used threats to push the Palestinians of the eastern Galilee to flee: their villages could have served as bases for the Syrian army. And, according to a letter he wrote to Ben-Gurion, he would also have liked to have conquered the West Bank to eliminate the security risk posed by the Jordanian army. This letter mentions a potential problem, the presence of a civilian population, but Allon reassures Ben-Gurion that “a large part, especially the refugees, will retreat eastwards as a result of the military operations… The plan for the offensive must take into account leaving an opening for the retreat of the enemy army, and the refugees following it.”  Had Ben-Gurion resumed the offensive, the West Bank could have been emptied too.

When you dive into the history of 1948, certain features become familiar. Some Palestinians used violence against Jews; some generals stretched the definition of security risk to its widest possible interpretation. There were Israelis who protested: Ben Dunkelman, the commander who conquered Nazareth refused to expel its inhabitants; Rabin recalls how soldiers instructed to drive out Lydda’s population had to undergo “extensive propaganda activities.” But most Israelis didn’t object: they trusted their security forces that had successfully repelled the incoming Arab armies, and they often benefited from the vast properties the refugees left behind.

Remaining unaware of this history is a form of illiteracy: it has deeply influenced anyone living in the country or connected to it in any way. The simplistic formulas that most Israelis believe leave them incapable of understanding Palestinian experiences and expectations, and are a major barrier to reconciliation. And ignorance of the systematic expulsions enable them to continue in different forms – see, for example,  current plans to displace tens of thousands of Bedouins in the Negev.

Jewish Israeli history will remain intertwined with the fate of Palestinians. Genuine awareness of our shared history is essential. Zochrot is holding another event to commemorate the Nakba: this time they invited Livnat. Perhaps one day she, or another minister of culture, will attend.

Tom Pessah is an Israeli sociology student, currently studying the Nakba as part of his PhD

By Michal Vexler

Source:
Machsom Watch: Invisible prisoners

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Michal Vexler is a designer and an activist. This work – a part of a series of infographics regarding the effect of the occupation on the Palestinian civilian population – is presented here with her permission.

Previous posts in this series:
Visualizing Occupation: Palestinian Prisoners’ Day – the numbers
Visualizing Occupation: Ethnic cleansing
Visualizing Occupation: The right (or privilege) to protest?

Eli Valley, Artist in Residence at The Jewish Daily Forward, is a writer and artist whose work has been published in New York Magazine, The Daily Beast, Gawker, Saveur, Haaretz and elsewhere. Eli is currently finishing his first novel. His website is www.EVComics.com and he tweets at @elivalley.

Via Holes in the Net

UPDATE: A video showing protesters expose and confront an undercover policeman was added to this piece.

Tel Aviv rally for social justice, May 12 2012 (photo: Activestills)

Around 5,000 protesters in Rabin Square. took part yesterday (Saturday) night in what was labeled “the first social justice demonstration of the summer.” Smaller events took place in other Israeli cities. The protest was part of the international May 12 protest movement, and a live feed from similar rallies around the world was displayed in the square.

The demonstration was organized by a network of local activists, and not by the leaders of last year’s J14 movement. It also did not feature any speeches from politicians, though many of the activists who spoke denounced the recent unity deal between Kadima and the Likud. One of the popular slogans in the rally was “the entire nation is the opposition.”

At least 10 protesters were detained by police after the rally. According to the police, protesters were trying to block central roads in Tel Aviv.

UPDATE: During the demonstration in Tel Aviv, one of the protesters exposed an undercover policeman in the crowd. After following him for several minutes, the protester was approached by another plainclothesman who threatened him with arrest. You can see the entire exchange (in Hebrew) in This video:

Here are some more images from the rally.

Protesters march in Tel Aviv, May 12 2012 (photo: Oren Ziv/Activestills)

Social justice protest in Tel Aviv (photo: Oren Ziv/Activestills)

A sign in social protest rally in Tel Aviv, May 12 2012. Hebrew text - "free papers = brain wash" refers to the freebie Israel Hayom, which is known for its support for Prime Minister Netanyahu (photo: Oren Ziv, Activestiils)

Protesters confront police in Tel Aviv, May 12 2012 (photo: Yotam Ronen/Activestills.org)

Protester arrested following May 12 rally in Tel Aviv (photo: Oren Ziv/Activestills)

Recently, Prof. Efraim Karsh gave a talk at my university, in which he claimed that contrary to received wisdom, the Arab-Israeli conflict was not inevitable, that the Palestinian Arab masses were willing to live in peace among the Zionists, that they were betrayed by their leadership, the Arab states and the British.

Part of what he said made sense, especially the betrayal business, since it is pretty close to what Rashid Khalidi says in the Iron Cage. But, of course, the Zionists indeed made the conflict inevitable when they came, as settlers, to a country and conspired with the mandate authorities to carve out a state for themselves. That many of the natives were fellahin who weren’t particularly nationalistic, or did not have a Palestinian national identity is irrelevant, just as it was irrelevant for the millions across Africa and the Middle East where colonial regions become states.

But the best refutation of Karsh (which he dismissed as “bullshit”) was provided by Hans Kohn in 1929, after the first Arab disturbances against the Jews. Kohn, a Zionist who had emigrated from Germany to Jerusalem, broke with Zionism after the riots. Here is some of what he wrote.

I cannot concur with [official Zionist policy] when the Arab national movement is being portrayed as the wanton agitation of a few big landowners. I know all too well that frequently the most reactionary imperialist press in England and France portrays the national movements in India, Egypt, and China in a similar fashion – in short, wherever the national movements of oppressed peoples threaten the interest of the colonial power. I know how false and hypocritical this portrayal is. We pretend to be innocent victims…

Of course the Arabs attacked us in August. Since they have no armies the could not obey the rules of war. They perpetrated all the barbaric acts that are characteristic of a colonial revolt. But we are obliged to look into the deeper cause of this revolt. We have been in Palestine for twelve years [since the British mandate] without having even once made a serious attempt at seeking through negotiations the consent of the indigenous people. We have been relying exclusively upon Great Britain’s military might. We have set ourselves goals which by their very nature had to lead to conflict with Arabs…We ought to have recognized that these goals would be the cause, the just cause, of a national uprising against us. ..Having come to this country [as immigrants], we were duty bound to come up with constitutional proposals which, without doing serious harm to Arabs right and liberty, would have also allowed for our free cultural and social development. But for twelve years we pretended that the Arabs did not exist and were glad when we were not reminded of their existence

-Hans Kohn, Letter to Dr. Feiwel, Jerusalem, 21 November 1929, cited in Paul Mendes-Flohr, ed. Martin Buber, A Land of Two Peoples.

So Karsh was refuted already in 1929 by a far-seeing Zionist. Needless to say, when I confronted him with the passage, he dismissed it as “bullshit”. The more things change….

Jeremiah (Jerry) Haber is the nom de plume of an Orthodox Jewish studies and philosophy professor, who divides his time between Israel and the United States. This post was originally published on his blog, The Magnes Zionist, on May 4, 2012.

How did you get involved in the project?

I was in downtown Ramallah on March 15, 2011, photographing Palestinian demonstrations calling for unity between disparate political factions. I noticed that many of the protest leaders were, in fact, women. Though I did take note of this unusual fact, it initially remained filed somewhere in the back of my head. As the following weeks passed and I continued to photograph Palestinian protests in the West Bank, I realized I was seeing the same women – week after week – that I had seen at that protest in Ramallah.

I began talking to them, trying to get a grasp of this new and unusual image (at least new and unusual to me) of women leading men in Palestinian street protests. Eventually described by the international media as the “March 15th” group, these women (together with their male colleagues) were a very loose coalition of like-minded individuals, non-violent in their strategy and totally independent in their political affiliations. In parallel with photographing their political actions, I also sat and listened to them, attempting to educate myself and understand their approach and objectives: eliminating the Israeli occupation, confronting the totalitarian nature of the Palestinian Authority, altering their own place as women in a patriarchal Middle Eastern society.

I was intrigued and quite soon realized that this was something unique in our region that I wanted to document.

What do the pictures convey in your eyes?

The Israel-Palestinian conflict is dominated by a very specific sort of visual images: armed soldiers shooting guns, young men throwing stones, tanks, warplanes, flags, suffering. These images are dictated by an accepted and assumed paradigm that dramatically influences our perception of the conflict, of each side party to the conflict, and of the nature of “acceptable” interaction and communication. You rarely see conflict-related images of women – Palestinian or Israeli – unless they are mourning the loss of a loved one or themselves suffering in one way or another. You almost never see strong women, in control of and making decisions about their own fate.

My meeting with this subject matter came, coincidentally, just after reading an analysis by Gila Danino-Yona of photographic news coverage depicting the presumed role and place of women in the Arab Spring revolutions in North Africa. I realized that right here at home, I was witnessing women taking an outspoken and proactive approach to political activity that runs directly counter to the West’s dominant perception of Arab women.

I also realized that I could document Palestinian protests in one of two ways. I could choose to reinforce and maintain the current, ego- and male-dominated paradigm of conflict: you shoot, I shoot back. My gun is bigger than your gun. Or I could choose to allow my own perception to be altered and evolve – starting at the immediate, visual level – and attempt to honestly and accurately capture images of this new paradigm and new approach now being written by Palestinian women.

You are exhibiting at an art gallery – is this a political or artistic project? 

I have chosen to photograph a subject that is clearly political in nature. But this is an art exhibition. I leave it up to the women to make their own political statements. I am creating art. My intention was to capture and present visual images that cause people to stop and think and, hopefully, reconsider the manner in which they view their world. I want my photographs to shake things up. The West is used to seeing images of Arab women concealed beneath amorphous religious Muslim garb, or otherwise hidden at home, making food and producing babies while their men are out leading the fight. I’d bet most Western audiences aren’t used to seeing Palestinian women (or Arab women, in general, for that matter) dressed in skinny jeans, designer hi-top sneakers, Ray Bans and matching keffiyehs. And I think most audiences might be even more confused to see these same women going head to head with heavily-armed infantry troops and paramilitary police forces.

This incongruity is one of the things that grants the women a certain element of power on the ground. And I think it’s also what grants power to my images. I’m very curious to see how this will be received by a Western audience, when we open in June.

How did you choose your subjects?

I didn’t. They chose me. I don’t like to push myself on subjects. If someone doesn’t want to be a subject, if they don’t want to be photographed, then I won’t force them. The more you push yourself on someone, the more the resulting images have to do with you and the less they have to do with your subject. I try to keep myself out of the picture as much as possible. I simply spent time with them. Those individuals who wanted to talk with me, who were happy to be photographed, I obliged. And those who didn’t, I let them be. I am not the subject. They are.

Have you encountered difficulties making this project happen?

As a Jewish Israeli working in Palestine, I have never faced any discrimination from Palestinians. I have never felt threatened. The greatest difficulties I encountered over the past 14 months were, unfortunately, the result of Israeli military actions. Conflict photographers, due to the very nature of their work, often find themselves in the line of fire, caught between opposing sides. This is an accepted risk. However, press photographers – be they Palestinian, Israeli or international – working in the West Bank are frequently targeted directly by Israeli troops. We have been threatened with arrest and shot at with tear gas grenades and various types of rubber and plastic-coated steel bullets. This, clearly, makes it harder to work.

Was your position as an Israeli male an obstacle to the project? Has it informed your perspective? 

I am an Israeli Jewish man, with all that means in terms of my upbringing, my socialization and my personal history. There is nothing I can do about that. But this needn’t be a deficit. It can be a distinct advantage. I am, for all intents and purposes, the polar opposite of the Palestinian women upon whom this project is focusing. Due to the extreme disparity of our life experiences, I could have condemned this project from the start. But that would be buying into the dominant approach I mentioned earlier that dictates nearly aspect of this conflict, down even to our visual perception of it. Or – and this is what I chose to do – I could simply wipe the slate clean: shut my mouth and open my mind. I had to start from scratch. I didn’t come to argue or to debate. I didn’t come to talk at all. I came to listen and to take pictures. And the best pictures come when you stop looking inward and start looking outward.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What does the name of your project mean? 

Project curator Saher Saman and I decided to discard the project’s initial working title – “Palestine: Women First” – as we preferred something in the language of the women activists whose work I have been documenting in photographs for the past 14 months. We wanted Arabic but we weren’t looking for a title necessarily easy for a non-Arabic speaking audience to wrap its tongue around. The project name was the subject of prolonged discussion and debate and numerous options were considered and eliminated for one reason or another. Either the meaning wasn’t exactly right, or the sound of the word itself was not pleasing to the ear. I felt like I was choosing the name for a child about to be born. Throughout this process, we consulted with many of the women whose images appear in the exhibit, seeking their thoughts and suggestions. Time was running short and the options simply weren’t what we wanted. One evening earlier this week, hopeless and at the point where I was prepared to simply give in and stick with the original English working title, I was driving with a friend from Ramallah to Jerusalem. I laid bare to her my desperation, hoping for – at least – some words of comfort. But she turned to me and said “How about nesa’iyeh?” Nesa’iyeh means “feminist” or “a woman thing.” It was love at first sight. I knew, immediately, that this was the project name. It is a name that respects and honors those portrayed in the exhibition’s images, and one that is in line with the cultural and linguistic context in which it was created.

“Nesa’iyéh (a woman thing),” will open on June 15 at marji gallery & contemporary projects in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Congratulations to Benjamin Netanyahu and Shaul Mofaz. I’ve been fond of Mofaz for a while now. Ever since he served as defense minister in Ariel Sharon’s government during the disengagement from Gaza, Mofaz has been building himself up as a serious politician and perhaps even a statesman. It was during the disengagement that Mofaz morphed into a political dove, and despite the takeover of Israeli politics by the right-wing settler movement, he has stood his ground.

Then in 2009, during a period of political stagnation, he introduced a gutsy plan for a peace process and when asked, did not rule out negotiating with Hamas. In his plan, Mofaz emphasized that “our control over another people, and the burden of responsibility and occupation, will come to an end in a clear and concrete way…” The plan also contains that magic number, the one that terrorizes Israeli politicians: ’67.

Shaul Mofaz, as a former IDF chief of staff, could have placed himself comfortably within the ideological zone of typical generals-cum-politicians – like Ehud Barak, Moshe (Bogi) Ya’alon and others – but he opted not to. In early 2011, even before the social protests, Mofaz began developing a plan for social-economic reforms with a team of eight young researchers from the economic, legal, and public policy spheres, led by Yishai Mishor. The plan called to increase in the employment of Israeli Arabs and the ultra-Orthodox, make higher education more accessible, offer housing solutions and a more equal health plan, and more.

In that plan, Mofaz did not shy away from slaughtering one of the most (un)sacred cows in Israel’s history: the defense budget. “As head of planning in the IDF, Chief of Staff, and Defense Minister, I have resolved that we can effectively decrease the defense budget by NIS 4 billion per year, without damaging the IDF’s readiness,” he said in an interview to TheMarker (Hebrew), an economic daily newspaper.

Quietly, step-by-step, Mofaz has also proved himself skilled at politics. In his first campaign for the leadership of his party, he lost the internal Kadima elections to Tzipi Livni by a slim margin. In the second recent round, he claimed victory in a knockout. While everyone eulogized him as the tragic future loser of the 2012 elections, he saved Kadima and himself, and prevented – together with Netanyahu – unnecessary elections, which ultimately would have maintained the status quo.

All the frustrated political opponents and journalists who feel “tricked” into believing that elections were around the corner are left with little to do but obsess about Mofaz’s “credibility” problem. He said he wouldn’t leave the Likud party, and he left. He said he wouldn’t join the Netanyahu government, and he joined.

But so what? Who cares if Mofaz is in Kadima or in Likud? What exactly is the difference between them anyway? What matters is policy, not politics, and Mofaz deserves credit as a politician with a clear-cut agenda. It’s only beneficial that as of today his agenda is now part of the coalition.

Up to now, former Kadima leader Tzipi Livni got the credit for being credible – because she did not join the Netanyahu government, refusing to give billions of shekels to the ultra-Orthodox. But Livni is the one who stole votes from the left with the Kadima campaign “Either Tzipi or Bibi” then did little as opposition; under her leadership Kadima was among the initiators of the “Boycott Law”; under her watch, Kadima initiated and helped pass a draconian amendment to the libel law and the selection committees law (which de facto prevents Arabs from living in certain communities) and let’s not forget the Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People. After repeatedly abusing and neglecting her role as opposition leader and misguiding her supporters, her bitter response to the Netanyahu-Mofaz move, would be outrageous, if it hadn’t been so insignificant.

Shelly Yacimovich and Yair Lapid are considered the two big losers from the coalition deal.  But neither has a sincere or bold agenda anyway. As an MK, Yacimovich has not touched upon the occupation, nor the peace process, the anti-democratic legislation, nor the Arab minority in Israel. She is a social-democrat whose emphasis on the democratic side of the equation is marginal. It’s not clear how she will promote significant economic changes, since she is unwilling to confront her stronghold of support, the Histadrut.  On the other hand, Yair Lapid brought no message at all to the table. Lapid is waning, without leaving a trace of policy or ideology on any issue.

Netanyahu and Mofaz can do great things in the coming year, ranging from legislating an alternative to the unsuccessful Tal Law for drafting Haredim into the army, through to the peace process, to which I believe Mofaz is sincerely committed. Yet the most significant change this duo can undertake is to break away from the suffocating grasp of the settler right, which is threatening to destroy Israeli democracy. This will be the real test for Netanyahu and Mofaz. The rest doesn’t matter nearly as much.

Roni Schocken is a candidate in the Tel Aviv-Berkeley LL.M. program (2012) and in the Harvard Business School MBA program (2014). He has clerked for the Supreme Court and served as the director of the government relations department in The Abraham Fund Initiatives.