AP Analysis: Israeli opposition paints Netanyahu as inadvertently destroying the Jewish state

By Associated Press,January 11, 2013

A strikingly apocalyptic tone has emerged in Israels hitherto muted election season, with opposition leaders and others desperately warning that a few more years of rule by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus heavily favored right wing might actually destroy the Jewish state. The idea is that by holding onto the lands Palestinians want for their state -- avoiding negotiations and continuing to sill them with Jewish settlers -- the Israeli right is marching blindly toward a future in which Arabs could outnumber Jews in the country and ultimately take over.


TEL AVIV, Israel — An apocalyptic tone has crept into Israel’s hitherto muted election season, with opposition leaders and others sounding increasingly desperate warnings that a few more years of rule by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s heavily favored right wing might well destroy the Jewish state.

The idea is that by holding onto the lands Palestinians want for their state — and continuing to settle them with Jews — the Israeli right is marching blindly toward a future in which Arabs could outnumber Jews in the country and ultimately take over.

Perhaps the most strident proponent of this message is former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who four years ago led peace talks with the Palestinians and recently founded a new party whose primary message is that the Zionist project is in danger. “Netanyahu is leading us toward the end of the Jewish state,” she said in a statement Friday. “Israelis must choose between extremism and Zionism. Israel is in great danger and everyone must wake up now.”

Outgoing opposition leader Shaul Mofaz, a former military chief and defense minister, warns at campaign appearances that Arabs will soon outnumber Jews in the Holy Land and the main strategic priority must be to partition the land to prevent the emergence of a “binational state.” Leaders of the main center-left Labor Party say much the same.

Netanyahu’s majority depends on his Likud party in coalition with other nationalist and religious groups known as the “right.” Despite all its bewildering complications, the political spectrum ultimately resembles something of a two-party system.

The prime minister and his supporters have argued that Israel must not act in haste and many on the right stridently oppose any territorial concessions on the lands Israel captured in 1967 — the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, where the Palestinians want to set up their state.

The author Amos Oz, who has long been viewed as an oracle of sorts in Israel, called the governing coalition “the most anti-Zionist in the history of Israel” for ignoring the demographic issue.

“If there will not be two states here, neither will it (even) be a binational state — it will be an Arab state,” he was quoted by Haaretz as saying on Friday. “They believe Jews can rule an Arab majority (but) no apartheid nation in the world survived without collapsing in a few years.”

Netanyahu himself has at times conceded the logic of the argument: Israel proper has 6 million Jews living alongside almost 2 million Arab citizens; with the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza thrown into the mix, the populations divide about evenly and the Arab birthrate is higher. Hence, if Israel insists on ruling the entire Holy Land, Jews will be in the minority.

Even as the tipping point approaches, Israel continues to add to the Jewish settler population in the West Bank, which together with the Israelis who live in adjacent east Jerusalem now number a half million. Israelis on the left fret that too many settlers will make a partition impossible in a few years. Under this narrative, partition is not an Israeli “concession,” which must await Palestinian promises of peace — but rather a life-saving surgery for the Zionist enterprise.

The demographic message resonates with many Jewish Israelis who — like the founding fathers of Zionism a century ago — view themselves as an ethnic group and consider Israel its nation-state. And it seems widely supported among the country’s secular elites — in academia, the business world, major media organizations and even in the senior echelons of the security establishment.

Israel’s security chiefs must generally clam up while in office, but outbursts by the recently retired have been striking: Yuval Diskin, who headed the Shin Bet security police, excoriated Netanyahu for missing a chance to pursue peace with the moderate Palestinian leadership of Mahmoud Abbas; Meir Dagan, who headed the Mossad spy agency, has portrayed the premier as a dangerous adventurer who might drag Israel into war with Iran; and former military chief Gabi Ashkenazi was so widely touted as a leader-in-waiting for the left that a law was passed freezing security officials out of politics for just long enough to keep him out of the current election season.

In an interview with the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, Diskin warned that the current lull in Palestinian violence was in danger because it depends on the Palestinian Authority’s security cooperation with Israel — and Palestinian leaders “will not be able to be seen over time as the protectors of the Israeli interests while Israel, from their perspective, every day steals more lands, builds more (Jewish) settlements, and pushes away their dream of a state, chopping up the territory into parts that it will be very difficult to connect.”



This article is now slightly out of date, since then the Israeli elections have come and gone, resulting in a somewhat worse showing for Netanyahu and the far right than expected, and a position as kingmaker for the new party Yesh Atid, which has a centrist reputation but seems somewhat unpredictable. See the Economist's article (although they make a rather confusing mistake - Yisrael Beitenu has joined forces with Netanyahu's Likud, the new party led by Bennett is called HaBeit HaYehudi).

Amos Oz' main point remains valid either way. For the past sixty years or so, Israel has been profiting from the other side's refusal to face the facts of its decisive defeat in 1948 (and subsequent wars) - every time that the negotiations failed to go anywhere (if they took place at all) since the Palestinians "never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity", Israel's position improved. The Palestinian terrorism is the obvious exception to that, but in recent years the building of the Wall has largely curbed that threat as well. But the demographic threat that has been coming for decades is coming ever closer, and it's high time Israel realized that the old strategy will no longer work, as time is moving against them now.

The main leaders of the left and centre, Labor's Yachimovich and Yesh Atid's Lapid, seem less interested in the peace process than in internal Israeli concerns, and understandably so - but they'll have to deal with it all the same, and the sooner the better. As for the leaders of the right, I really don't know whether they are actually as blind as they seem, or just reckon - rightly, so far - that they can keep winning votes by going on just like before. Netanyahu has been a leader in Israeli politics for twenty years now, and I can't remember a single time he displayed anything resembling leadership as far as the peace process is concerned (I don't remember it on any other issue either for that matter, but I'll admit I don't follow other issues too closely). It would be an understatement to say it's high time someone took his place.