Israel’s minister of environmental protection, Gilad Erdan (Likud), has demanded that the government stop supplying power to the Gaza Strip in order to prevent power failure in Israeli cities this summer. In an official letter addressed to all government ministers (below), Erdan notes that 4.5 percent of Israel’s power supply is sold to Gaza.

Erdan writes (emphasis in the original):

The State of Israel is preparing itself for a power shortage during the summer of 2012. In order to continue the steady supply of power, we [the government] are presented with a decision which details measures for the prevention of a power shortage. Before the government discusses this option, I ask you to add a condition which states that prior to placing any limit on the power supply to Israeli citizens, power supply to all foreign elements will stop, most notably to the terror authority of Hamas in Gaza.

The collapse of the natural gas agreement between Egypt and Israel will probably lead to a power shortage in Israel – a temporary problem, which can be solved when Israel begins using its own huge natural gas resources in 2013. As a result, Israelis are likely to suffer a few hours of power shortage at the peak of this summer’s heat.

The 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza already suffer 12 hours of blackout a day on average. Israel bombed the Gaza power plant in 2006, and didn’t allow in the necessary materials needed for the reconstruction since. As a result, even Israel’s own Supreme Court recognized in 2007 that the survival of the people in Gaza depends on the Israeli power supply. Israel has declared before the court that power supply to the Strip would not be stopped.

According to the non-profit organization Gisha, the Israeli supply accounts for 35 percent of the power Gazans use. Due to the fuel shortage in the Strip, using power generators is also limited, and critical medical supplies is lost every year due to lack of proper storage conditions.

Israel’s minister of environmental protection, a senior member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, is now asking to leave 1.5 million people without the little they need to survive, so that Israeli citizens can enjoy their air-conditioning undisturbed this August.

A little over a year ago, the Israeli Knesset passed the Nakba Law, stating that institutions who receive state funding are not to permit any commemoration of the Palestinian catastrophe in 1948. During Israel’s War of Independence, 80 percent of the Arab population in what later became the State of Israel was displaced. Some of the Palestinians fled battle grounds, others were forcefully removed. None were allowed back, and their property was confiscated by the State of Israel. Palestinians mark their national catastrophe on May 15, the day following Israel’s declaration of independence.

A couple of years ago, the Knesset passed a bill aimed at limiting the discussion and commemoration of the Nakba entirely. The original bill ordered any person organizing a ceremony in memory of the Nakba to face criminal charges and a prison term of up to three years. The Knesset ended up passing a softer version of the bill, stating that any institution – even a Palestinian one – could lose state funding if it was to sponsor a Nakba-related event.

Tel Aviv University has permitted a Nakba memorial ceremony planned by Jewish and Palestinian students, but ordered it to take place just outside the university gates, in the main plaza. The university also forced the students to pay for the security expenses of the ceremony, contrary to the practice in all other events organized by students within the campus. The university cited the Nakba Law as the reason for this decision.

Haaretz reported today that Israel’s Minister of Education, Gidon Saar, urged Tel Aviv University to cancel the event altogether.

Needless to say, these developments cast a shadow on Israel’s self-perception as a democracy even within the Green Line. When mentioning an historical event at an academic institution is outlawed, one wonders what is truly left of freedom of speech.

Read More:
High Court rejects NGOs’ petition against Nakba law
High Court ruling on ‘Nakba Law’ reveals its waning power
Nakba Law: Inside Pandora’s Box
Why Jews need to talk about the Nakba

With 94 Knesset Members behind him, Benjamin Netanyhu is now the strongest prime minister in Israeli history since David Ben-Gurion, the founding father of the country. Netanyahu’s Likud party alone has more seats than all the opposition parties combined. The opposition’s 26 seats are not even enough to call an unscheduled Knesset session – and even this number is misleading, because it includes the far-right Ichud Leumi party, which is not part of the government but so far has supported it.

There have been slightly larger governments in Israeli history – the three national unity coalitions that ruled between ’84 and ’90 – but these governments were the result of a balance of power between Likud and Labor that forced the two sides to cooperate. Today’s mega-coalition is built around one man and one party – an unprecedented situation since the early days of the state. Netanyahu and the Likud are so strong, that Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin, himself a Likud member, expressed concern over the power of the executive branch and the lack of sufficient parliamentary supervision from now on.

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If one good thing can come out of this government, it’s the end of the myth according to which Israeli peace policy was hijacked by radical settlers. The settlements and the settlers almost never had major bargaining power in the Knesset – they are more the result of the occupation than the reason for it – and now they are weaker than ever. Netanyahu has no more excuses. Neither the settlers nor the left could get in his way. He is stronger than Ariel Sharon was during the disengagement from the Gaza Strip, stronger than Rabin was when he signed the Oslo Accord, stronger than Barak when he pulled out from South Lebanon and stronger than Begin was when he signed the peace treaty and handed back the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt.

Netanyahu can leave the West Bank or annex it. He can bypass the Supreme Court, change the system of government, come up with any voting reform he wants, change relations between the state and the religious establishment, recognize reform and conservative Rabbis or start a war. None of his coalition partners have any power over him, since he could get rid of any party and still keep his Knesset majority.

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This huge government is no political accident. It represents the current zeitgeist in Israel. Except for 12 Knesset members from three left wing parties, the entire Jewish public is united in support of the current status quo of occupation and settlements. In the Forward, J.J. Goldberg wrote that the new unity government is a victory for the peace camp, but it’s no more than extreme wishful thinking; a desire to see in Israel something that’s simply not there. In fact, the Palestinian issue is only mentioned briefly in the agreement between Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz and Netanyahu, in a line that even avoids mentioning a Palestinian state. Article 9 to the agreement (Hebrew, PDF) states that:

The government will work to renew the diplomatic process and to resume negotiations with the Palestinian authority. The two parties agree on the need to keep Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, and on the need to maintain defensible borders.

(The last sentence is Israeli code for a rejection of the ’67 borders.)

When it comes to the Palestinian issue, democracy in Israel is meaningless. There is no internal debate, no peace process and no peace camp.

Millions of Palestinians are living under Israeli control. Most of them have no voting rights and no say over their future. The million or so who can vote never had their parties take part in the government. The current coalition highlights the absurdity of the status quo: (Almost) the entire Jewish public is represented in the government, and none of the Palestinians have any say in the decision making process. Again and again Israelis make up their mind – with a huge majority – to withhold civil rights from the Palestinians under their control, and call it democracy.

Read more:
Did Mofaz sell himself short, or does he know something we don’t?
The irreparable damage of Netanayahu-Mofaz fiasco
Coalition deal’s bright side: Days numbered for rotten government
Through deal, Bibi buys ‘industrial peace’ for Iran war 

This was the shortest election cycle in history: On Sunday, Likud brought to a Knesset vote a bill moving elections up to September 4, officially launching a four-month campaign season. Less then 48 hours later, the elections were cancelled. Kadima, it was announced, will join Netanyahu’s coalition, and Israelis will only go to the polls a year and a half from now, in October 2013. Since the legislation of the elections bill wasn’t complete, there wasn’t even any need for a second and third Knesset vote.

According to the agreement between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Kadima’s newly elected leader, Shaul Mofaz, the 2013 elections will herald a different system of government – probably one giving more power to the executive branch, either in the form of a direct vote for prime minister, or securing the position of prime minister for the leader of the Knesset’s largest party.

The two sides also agreed to promote a new arrangement by the end of July regarding national service for the ultra-Orthodox and Palestinian citizens. In exchange, Mofaz will be given a ministerial post in the government, and Kadima’s 28 Knesset members will join the coalition.

Netanyahu is now the leader of a record-breaking coalition (*) of 94 MKs (out of the Knesset’s 120), a Putin-like support network that buffers him on both sides, left and right, enabling controversial moves that include a possible strike in Iran. As demonstrated by recent statements by the former heads of the Mossad and Shin Bet, there is strong opposition to an attack from within the security establishment, and being backed by such a huge Knesset majority could help Netanyahu and Barak secure political support if indeed they decide to launch an attack.

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This political maneuver will be remembered for years, like “the brilliant move” that led to the fall of Rabin in 1977, or Sharon’s split of the Likud that resulted in the forming of Kadima. The announcement on the national unity government came so late that Israel’s two biggest tabloids – the centrist Yedioth Ahronoth and the pro-Netanyahu Israel Hayom – ran a second morning edition. Yet while political pundits are praising Netanyahu this morning for his newfound political skills, it’s important to remember that elections are still not that far off, and that the political challenges facing the Israeli leadership – ranging from the Palestinians to the social protest – remain unchanged.

What made this move possible? In my opinion, there were two elements at play: Kadima crashed in the polls after Mofaz’s victory in the party’s primaries a couple of months ago, and the new party leader was under considerable pressure to give its 27 Knesset members another year in the parliament. Mofaz probably hopes that the coming months will help him position himself as a national leader, but I am not sure that the Israeli public will ever look favorably upon someone who changed his position so many times. Still, stopping the steady rise of other opposition leaders – most notably, former Channel 2 anchorman Yair Lapid – probably makes this move worthwhile for Mofaz.

Prime Minister Netanyahu for his part must have had second thoughts about elections, especially since all recent polls had him winning the exact same Knesset majority he has now. At the height of his popularity, Netanyahu seems unable to break the 30-something seat threshold; ultimately, he had more to lose than to gain in elections.

The final push for the new agreement was probably yesterday’s High Court ruling on the evacuation of the Ulpana neighborhood in the settlement of Beit El, built on private Palestinian land. With elections around the corner, this would have become for Netanyahu a public showdown with either the settlers or with the court – and possibly both. By postponing the elections, the prime minister has bought himself some time to deal with the crisis.

It remains to be seen what effect this political drama will have on Israeli policy. Except for the first Lebanon war, the Israeli right has never initiated large-scale military operations while ruling over a narrow coalition. With both Mofaz and Barak on his side, Netanyahu might be more comfortable with the use of military force against Iran’s nuclear facilities and elsewhere.

It’s true that Shaul Mofaz has expressed serious doubts regarding the strike in the past, but Kadima’s leader also said that he would never join Netanyahu’s “bad” government, and even called the prime minister “a liar.” Mofaz has demonstrated again and again that at any given moment, he prefers the immediate political interest, so he cannot really be trusted to lead the opposition to the attack, this time from the inside.

The new government also gives Netanyahu room to maneuver on the Palestinian issue, but developments on that front are not very likely. Nothing will happen before the U.S. elections in November, and right after those take place, Israel will finally enter its own elections year. This time, even Netanyahu won’t be able to postpone them.

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(*) UPDATE (following questions from readers): This is the largest coalition in the last couple of decades but not in Israeli history: a couple of unity governments in the eighties were even larger. 

Netanyahu’s coalition surprised the political system last week when it was made public that the the next elections would take place only four months from now, on September 4 (elections periods in Israel are usually much longer). By early November, when the U.S. elections take place, the new Israeli government will already be sworn in.

Caspit writes (my translation):

Netanyahu’s surprising announcement on the early primaries in the Likud, which fell on his party’s senior member like thunder on a cloudless day, came three days after a discrete meeting he held with the chiefs of AIPAC, that estimated, based on polls, that Barack Obama would also be the next president.

Bibi knew he can’t campaign when Obama is in his second term. This [would be] a dangerous gamble.

The Israeli elections, it should be noted, will take place during the Democratic National Convention. Instead of the U.S. president possibly playing a role - deliberately or not – in the Israeli elections, Netanyahu will get a chance to play a part in the American one.

It’s official: The coalition has decided to call early elections, which are to take place on September 4, 2012. The final confirmation of the date is expected next week, once the Likud’s bill on early elections acquires the necessary Knesset votes.

Benjamin Netanyahu enjoyed a rather stable coalition, yet the government expected major hurdles in the coming Knesset session – most notably, the need to come up with a new bill regarding the service of the ultra-Orthodox in the IDF – and the prime minister concluded that it would be better to control his political fate by choosing the earliest possible date for the coming elections.

By going to the polls sooner rather than later, Netanyahu wishes to capitalize on his high approval ratings and not let possible challengers gain momentum. The prime minister would also like to avoid discussion on the 2013-2014 budget, which will include calls for increased government spending at a time when tax revenues are going down, and might prove too hard to control during an election cycle.

The prime minister may also be hoping that the election cycle will overshadow grassroots efforts to reignite last year’s social protest. Activism around common goals is almost impossible during election campaigns, when different parties try to distinguish themselves from one another.

Additionally, a victory by U.S. President Barack Obama in November could also hurt Netanyahu locally. The prime minister is probably hoping that the GOP takes over the White House, but would like to be prepared for a second Obama term in case it doesn’t.

Early September is considered a favorable time for the right, since many in the upper middle class take their vacations abroad. Israel doesn’t allow voting absentee or by mail or internet. In close elections, a few thousand votes could go a very long way.

The elections to the 19th Knesset, however, are not expected to be that close. Netanyahu is considered a decent leader by a majority of Israeli Jews, and support for the main opposition party – Kadima – has collapsed. These elections will be a sort of referendum on Netanyahu and the pillars of his politics: maintaining the status quo of the occupation, increasing war threats against Iran and continuing his conservative fiscal policy. Most people in Israel can live with that, and those who can’t – mainly the Palestinians in the West Bank – don’t get to vote.

Game of blocs

In the coming weeks, I will post updates on new polls, as well as analyses of political trends, candidates and issues. I will try to combine basic explanations with more in-depth material, so that readers who don’t follow the Israeli political news cycle closely can also make some sense of these reports. It is something that even Israelis are finding harder and harder to do, since the local landscape is becoming increasingly fragmented.

The Israeli political system can be roughly divided into two blocs, each one comprised of several parties: The first bloc consists of the parties formally known as “centrist,” the left and the non-Zionist (*); the other bloc includes the religious and secular rightist parties.

In the current Knesset, the center-left bloc includes Kadima, Labor, Atzmaut (a Labor breakaway party), Meretz, Raam-Taal, Balad and Hadash. The religious and secular rightist bloc includes Likud, Israel Beitenu, Shas, Yahadut Hatorah, Habayit Hayehudi and HaIchud Haleumi (Shas and Yahadut Hatorah are Orthodox parties; Habayit Hayehudi and HaIchud Haleumi are national-religious).

Governments usually take one of the following forms: A narrow government, consisting of the bloc that enjoys a majority of the Knesset’s 120 seats, or a “national unity” government, which is a combination of the larger parties at the system’s center. Netanyahu’s current government, just like his previous one in the 1990s, is the perfect narrow, right-wing coalition, with two exceptions: the centrist Atzmaut party, headed by Ehud Barak, is in the government, while the ultra-right HaIchud Haleumi is, at least technically, in the opposition.

While there will be some adjustments in the allocation of seats within the blocs (more so on the left), recent polls suggest the current distribution between the two blocs will be maintained – roughly 65-55 in favor of the right (the most recent poll has this exact result). This is somewhat surprising, considering Netanyahu’s high approval ratings and the lack of a dominant opposition challenger. One explanation could be that Netanyahu still has difficulties breaking into new demographics, especially in the Jewish secular middle class.

Who’s who in the coming elections

Like most ruling powers, the right will bring forth the same faces as in the previous elections. There is, however, one wild card: criminal charges against Avigdor Lieberman might force the leader of Israel Beitenu to sit this cycle out, which could result in a flow of voters to Likud. Also, the two national religious parties might try to unite again, especially if they sense a danger of not passing the 2-percent threshold.

The Orthodox Shas party is at the center of many speculations: the party’s former leader, Aryeh Deri, is expected to announce soon whether he will head a more dovish Orthodox party. But Deri doesn’t have the support of the legendary Shas spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, and it’s not clear how strong his appeal is if not backed by the party’s powerful machine.

At the political center, Kadima’s newly elected leader, Shaul Mofaz, is struggling. Recent polls had him holding onto only 11 of the party’s current 28 seats. Most of the voters turning away from Kadima seem to be heading toward Yesh Atid (“There is a Future”), Yair Lapid’s new party. Labor, which got 13 seats in the last election, is polling well.

The problem is that no party but the Likud is expected to get more than 20 seats, and both Lapid and Mofaz have expressed in the past a desire to join Netanyahu’s government. This means that regardless of the actual results, the next government will be formed by the right, joined by a mid-size party to its left, which will shield it from the parliamentary opposition. This is exactly how the current Netanyahu government looked before the split in Labor. In short, the next government will be very similar to the current one.

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(*) Many Israelis group Hadash, Raam-Taal and Balad into one bloc of “Arab parties.” I prefer to use the term non-Zionist, since Hadash is an Arab-Jewish party. “Non-Zionist” is not an ideal term either, since the Orthodox parties don’t consider themselves Zionist; but I think this is becoming more of a formality, as the political behavior of the Orthodox places them solidly within the right.  

Ulpana Hill neighborhood in the settlement of Beit El (photo: Yaakov/wikimeida CC-3.0)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has until the end of the month to try and solve the political crisis over the evacuation of Ulpana Hill, a neighborhood built on private Palestinian land in the settlement of Beit El. Netanyahu has made it clear that he will do everything in his power to keep the settlers on site (though he didn’t rule out moving them to a nearby hill, to which there is no private claim).

The Supreme Court ordered the evacuation of Ulpana Hill several months ago, after the Israeli prosecution informed the court that it had issued orders for the houses to be destroyed and the land returned to its Palestinian owners. The government, however, is reluctant to evacuate Jewish settlers regardless of the land’s legal status. Over the weekend, several ministers attacked Defense Minister Ehud Barak for his intention to remove the settlers from Ulpana Hill and other “illegal” outposts.

While the international community doesn’t recognize the legality of the settlement project, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled in the late 70s that the defense minister can allow the construction of Jewish settlements on occupied land, as long as it is not privately owned by Palestinians. The verdict led to the construction of dozens of settlements, which are now home to more than 300,000 Israeli Jews.

In the last decade, several cases of settlements built on private Palestinian land led to Supreme Court rulings ordering the evacuation of the houses. Migron and Ulpana Hill are among the most well-known of those cases. In the case of Ulpana Hill, there wasn’t even much of a dispute, since the state itself ordered the evacuation of the houses. But as was the case with many other settlements, the state also provided the infrastructure for the construction it deemed illegal. Some settlers in Ulpana Hill even took mortgages in order to enter their homes.

Israeli governments have always treated settlements – regardless of their legal status – as though they are there to stay permanently.

In an attempt to avoid the evacuation of Ulpana Hill, Netanyahu has formed a committee led by former Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levy to try to find “legal solutions” to the problem. Levy was the only Supreme Court justice who, in June 2005, deemed in a minority verdict that the Gaza disengagement plan was illegal because of the the removal of Jewish settlers from their homes.

Today (Sunday) the right-wing daily paper Makor Rishon reported on an interesting testimony befor Levy’s committee. The attorney for the Defense Ministry, Ahaz Ben Ari, informed Justice Levy that evacuation orders issued for Jews in the occupied West Bank were never meant to be implemented.

Justice Levy asked Ben Ari how it is possible that the government builds a road or provides services to a settlement, while at the same time declaring the construction illegal. Attorney Ben Ari answers (my translation):

Due to the apparent contradiction between the fiscal policy [of supporting the construction] and the legal policy, it was decided to issue the evacuation orders but not carry them out.

The government’s attempts to bypass the legal system and avoid evacuating even those outposts and houses that Israel itself claims to be illegal says a lot about the chances that Israel will evacuate larger, more established settlements. Still, the confrontation over Ulpana Hill should be put in its political context: Netanyahu’s coalition partners are aware of the coming elections, and they are looking to create enough public recognition for their positions. By pushing the evacuation of settlers in the name of “the rule of law,” Defense Minister Barak is aiming at the Israeli center, while ministers attacking him are trying to establish their position as leaders of the Likud’s right flank.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) issued a letter to Justice Levy’s committee against the flawed distinction between “authorized” and “unauthorized” settlements, claiming that both types “constitute clear and blatant violations of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which concerns the protection of civilians during war.”

In his groundbreaking work, “Imagined Communities,” Benedict Andersen quotes French author Ernest Renan: “The essence of a nation is that all its individuals should have many things in common, and also that they all should have forgotten many things.” Forgotten them together, he meant. The debate on Israel in the American Jewish community centers around the issues that should be remembered or spoken about, and about the ones that need to be collectively forgotten or ignored, even when they are widely discussed outside the community. Opening up the conversation would shake the identity of many Jews, and challenge the power positions of a leading few. This is the reason for a strange phenomenon: many readers – especially ones less involved in the established community and its affiliated media – find deep meaning in “The Crisis of Zionism,” but the community’s “experts” on Israel greet it with unprecedented anger.

The book is part of a Jewish-American conversation. Palestinians wouldn’t find much meaning in it, and Israelis would only sense the echoes of an older debate, one that died with the Oslo process. But what is Israeli for American Jews, as opposed to the people living in Israel? Most of them don’t visit the country or speak its language. Many feel an attachment to Israel, but more often then not, it seems to be linked more to a mythical Israel, one that reflects their hopes and values, than to the actual country. Their kids might go on Birthright – but it is a program designed to deepen the fantasy and has very little to do with real Israel. It’s a bit like going to the Alamo and Disneyland: A foreign tourist can return home and feel that he “loves America,” but this America has little to do with real life and the real politics of present-day Americans.

All this might not have been such a problem, if there weren’t so many open questions regarding the nature of Israeli identity itself – regarding what this country is or what it should be – and if it wasn’t for the political use of the place Israel holds in Jewish-American identity. It might have not been a problem, if American Jews weren’t liberal. But they happen to be among the most liberal groups in America, and Israel happens to be engaging in the least liberal project there is – the occupation and colonization of the West Bank. Two central elements in the liberal Jewish identity are thus at odds with each other.

“The Crisis of Zionism” is trying to deal with, rather than walk away from, the identity crisis of liberal Zionism. For the most part, it does so more bravely and honestly than any other similar project within the Zionist world.

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The most common way to solve the identity crisis of Jewish-American liberal Zionists – or any other identity crisis, for that matter – is to deny its symptoms.

Whenever another unpleasant story breaks, and a kvetch of discomfort can be heard from Brooklyn to the Bay Area, the Jewish establishment and members of the Jewish media – the manufacturers of ideology – engage in an effort to deconstruct the affair, to rationalize it, to blur it, to “put it in context,” and so on; anything to relieve the pain of their community by blurring the existence of a problem. It is an ungrateful task, which will last as long as the occupation does.

When the effort to rationalize the internal crisis fails, giving up one of the two elements that are at odds becomes the likely answer. It seems that a whole part of the Jewish community is moving away from liberalism, while others are distancing themselves from Israel. In the last few years, I have gotten the undeniable feeling that while the general interest of Americans in the Middle East is growing, the interest of many American Jews in Israel is fading; still others keep their opinions to themselves and avoid talking about Israel in the name of Shlom Bayit.

This is not a real problem for the Israeli leadership or for Israeli interests. Those non-liberals in the community who support Israeli policies are a sufficient  substitute for the masses who walk away, especially when combined with the emerging power of Christian Zionists. The pro-Israeli lobby seems to be doing fine, and Washington remains a pretty hospitable place for Israeli leaders, even right-wing ones. But for those liberals for whom Israel is an essential part of their world, the problem is very real.

Peter Beinart is searching for a way to engage with Zionism and remain liberal. It is uncharted territory, and most of the people walking it stretch one of the terms, if not both, until they all but lose their meaning. Beinart himself tiptoes around the elephant in the room: the desire to combine particularist nationalism with a liberal democracy. (Could a Jewish state be anything but a state only for Jews? An Algerian in Paris can become French, but a Palestinian cannot be a Jew.) But Beinart does address the occupation, while his critics are busy rationalizing it.

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The best parts of “The Crisis of Zionism” come when Beinart looks the political reality in the eye. One point he makes is particularly important: That speaking about Israeli democracy is all but meaningless with regards to the Palestinian issue, since the Palestinians in the occupied territories don’t participate in the decision-making process concerning their future. In other words (in my words), Israelis could “democratically” choose to continue controlling the West Bank forever and not grant the Palestinians any rights – but the world shouldn’t respect this decision, for democracy is meaningless here.

Many Jews who express concern for Israel in their writing start by demonstrating the toll the occupation takes on Israelis, on the national character or on Israeli democracy. Beinart remembers that the real victims are the Palestinians. He opens his book with the story of a Palestinian farmer who was arrested for stealing water from a nearby settlement. This everyday affair captures something of the essence of the occupation: What’s so evil about it is not the supposedly murderous behavior of IDF soldiers – there are far worse regimes on this planet – but the enormous pressure, the oppression that every single Palestinian under Israeli control feels on a daily basis.

It is no surprise then that this exact choice made Tablet’s Bret Stephens so furious. In his angry review of Beinart’s book, Stephens condemns Beinart for not traveling to the West Bank to check whether the arrested farmer was a Fatah or Hamas voter (I’m serious – it’s in the text). Empathy for the Palestinians becomes taboo in the Jewish establishment. Israeli political interests are everything; one can only “criticize” Israel in the name of Jewish or Israeli interests.

Such was the general tone of every critique of Beinart’s book that I have seen in the Jewish and mainstream media – a repetition of Israeli Foreign Office talking points that somehow found their way from Stand with Us booklets for undergraduate students to the pages of leading publications. As if the never-ending argument over Camp David or the Annapolis summit can be turned into a moral defense of the occupation. Almost two generations after Golda Meir, the Jewish American establishment – more powerful and more self-righteous then ever – still cannot forgive the Palestinians “for what they made us do to them.”

The panic with which the “Crisis of Zionism” was met had nothing to do with the book’s not-so-new political message – that in order to stay a democracy, Israel needs to separate itself immediately from the West Bank – but rather from the thought that Beinart does represent something real, that the Jewish establishment is indeed failing, not in terms of political effectiveness, but on a much deeper level that has to do with the moral values and the self-perception of the people it claims to represent.

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I didn’t find Beinart’s distinction between “good” and “bad” Israel (bad being the one lying east of the Green Line, in the occupied territories) to be satisfying, especially in the way it was linked to the Israeli political system. Though Labor advocated a departure from the West Bank (at times), it was also the force that launched the settlement project, while the Likud had in the past a strong liberal tradition. Prime Minister Menachem Begin built settlements and placed limits on administrative arrests. This doesn’t sit well with the image of a clash between liberal forces and messianic-nationalist ones. The occupation is not the project of one party or another, but an Israeli project. It is not the work of the racist settlers – who were always a tiny minority that all prime ministers could have ignored – but the decision of the entire society. If anything, the power of the settlers is the result of the occupation, not vice versa.

The notion that Israel was a liberal democracy gone awry in the years following 1967 involves some wishful thinking; it is another myth, meant perhaps to satisfy the needs of today’s liberals, both here and in the United States. Israel was never a very liberal place, especially in the American sense of the term. Even before 1967, it had the entire Palestinian population (its own citizens) under military rule. The only “liberal” period in Israeli politics was probably in the mid-90s, around the time of the Rabin government (which itself was also far from liberal). And Rabin, it should be remembered, never enjoyed a majority among the Jewish public.

I found the chapters in “The Crisis of Zionism” dealing with American politics – the Jewish establishment and President Obama’s ideological roots – to be fascinating. The recent confrontation between the administration and Netanyahu’s government is brilliantly told, including some interesting revelations (I wrote about them here).

At times, I felt that Beinart is moving between leading the charge on the establishment and re-drawing the borders of the conversation himself. I kept wondering where his journey will end up. Will he become an outsider? Will he be able to be part of a genuine transformation of Jewish politics, or will he end up in his critics’ seat once the old guard is ousted, defending the walls of the Zionist castle and expelling the non-believers? I think it would be unfair to answer those questions now.

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It is an American book, written for American liberals. Yet this also should be said: I believe that the occupation is the greatest moral challenge of my generation. It is extremely hard to express this feeling in a way that would be both true to ones’ values and politically effective. Often, I go to sleep angry and frustrated by what seems like another failure to communicate to others what I know, what I think and what I have seen with my own eyes.

While reading “The Crisis of Zionism” I felt that the author shares this sense of urgency. Currently, this is what matters to me most.

Israeli activist Michal Vexler arrested at Ben Gurion airport while demonstrating in favor of the 'Welcome to Palestine' fly-in on April 15, 2012 (photo: Activestills.org)

Last week I posted here a criticism of Ambassador Michal Oren’s Foreign Policy piece, titled “Israel’s Resilient Democracy.” One of Ambassador Oren’s claims was that the fact that Palestinians in the West Bank are deprived of voting rights is not enough to question the nature of Israel as a democracy.

The existence of partially democratic enclaves within a democratic system does not necessarily discredit it. Residents of Washington, D.C., are taxed without representation, while those in the U.S. territories — Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands — cannot vote in presidential elections. Anomalies exist in every democracy, and Israel’s is not voided by the situation in the West Bank.

But voting is only part of the story; voting is a means, not an end in itself. Palestinians differ from American citizens in the U.S. territories in many ways: For example, they are tried in military courts, before of uniformed judges, and without the legal rights that defendants enjoy in Israel’s civilian courts. They are deprived of access to resources, of physical protection against violence and harassments, and much more.

Freedom – or lack – of travel is another major issue. Since the mid-90s, Palestinians have been unable to travel beyond the Green Line and into “Israel proper.” Nor can they travel abroad, unless they get a special permit from the military authorities. At times, they are even prevented from traveling between towns and villages in the West Bank.

People are also prevented from traveling into the West Bank: Israelis are prohibited by a military order from entering area A, and tourists, business travelers and diplomats must go through Israel’s international airport or through land crossings – all controlled by Israel – before entering the West Bank. Stating that your destination is a Palestinian town or village might lead to a refusal of a tourist visa by the Israeli authorities, so many visitors simply lie. This is the way most activists enter the West Bank today. The irony is that for some people it’s easier to enter to Gaza – which is officially still under blockade – than to reach “free” Ramallah, because Gaza has one land border that Israel doesn’t control.

The West Bank has become the Palestinian prison, and the PA is not much more than its guard. It’s very far from the reality that Ambassador Oren and other advocates of Israeli policy portray. Yet strangely enough, misconceptions regarding the real state of affairs are widespread, even in Israel. Yesterday, as the local media was reporting on the effort of international activists to travel to the West Bank without lying about their destination – the so-called “flytilla” – I came across several comments on Israeli news sites wondering why “those provocateurs” don’t travel from Jordan through the “Palestinian-controlled” Allenby crossing. I heard the same remarks last year; there was even a comment on this site justifying Israel’s refusal to have the internationals enter by commenting that a tourist to Palestine shouldn’t try to pass through Israel.

But there is no independent Palestine. The “Palestinian Authority” has no authority over any significant matter. Control over borders is considered among the important measures of sovereignty. The Palestinians are not sovereign, nor do they have any citizenship rights in Israel. They are neither here nor there, but prisoners of a system that views them as enemies and doesn’t offer them any future or hope.

By refusing to allow members of the flytilla entry into the West Bank, Israel actually proved right their original claim: that the level of control Israel exercises over the Palestinian population in the occupied territories for nearly half a century makes the occupation is a unique phenomenon, well deserving of the world’s attention.

Related news:
Activists reach Israel in new ‘flytilla’ bid; dozens refused entry
Who are the ‘Welcome to Palestine’ activists?
The first draft of the Flytilla letter

Of all the factual errors, omissions and half-truths in Ambassador Michael Oren’s piece at Foreign Policy, titled “Israel’s Resilient Democracy,” perhaps the most troubling was this paragraph, which regurgitates a long-debunked lie about the Deputy Speaker of Oren’s own parliament, MK Ahmad Tibi (Raam-Taal / United Arab List):

…In fact, Israel has tolerated acts that would be deemed treasonous in virtually any other democracy. Ahmed Tibi, who once advised PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat and recently praised Palestinian “martyrs” — a well-known euphemism for suicide bombers — serves as a member and deputy speaker of the Knesset.

As I wrote in my review of Ambassador Oren’s piece, the accusations against Tibi resulted from an edited video distributed by a rightwing watchdog group. Reporters in the Israeli daily papers that broke the story later retracted and apologized before Tibi; yet Ambassador Oren had no problem repeating those lies against his own deputy Knesset speaker. The irony is that Oren was trying to prove how well Israel treats its Palestinian citizens, but ended up doing just the opposite.

Today, Tibi sent a letter of complaint to the director general of the Foreign Ministry, Rafi Barak, demanding that Ambassador Oren retract the accusations. “Mr. Oren attacked me, distorted my words, and claims that I support suicide attacks against Israeli citizen, which is the absolute opposite of my position,” Tibi wrote. Oren’s response is yet to come.