Ariel Sharon
One Friday evening last November, Mahmoud Abbas made a rare appearance on the popular Israeli TV station, Channel 2. In his boxy suit and tie, the Palestinian president looked every bit his 77 years, his olive skin tinged with gray, his voice soft and whispery. He shifted in his seat with every answer. READ MORE >>
Benjamin Netanyahu's Not Worried About an Agenda. He's Worried About His Coalition.
Anyone waiting to know the agenda of Israel’s new government on the morning of January 23 is likely to be sorely disappointed, and not only because it will likely take weeks before we know the coalition's composition. Few overarching debates on policy have materialized during this election campaign. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not seem to be seeking any new mandate for action, despite being widely expected to win in most surveys with his right-of-center bloc retaining 65 of 120 seats, a slight drop from previous polls. It is curious that an incumbent, who understands the rough and tumble of policy fights, is not seeking a public mandate for specific policies. In the past decade Israel has had several consequential elections. In 1992, Yitzhak Rabin called for a reallocating funds away from constructing West Bank settlements for the purpose of peace with the Palestinians. In 1999, his protégé Ehud Barak campaigned on the platform of a final status agreement with the Palestinians. In 2001, after the outbreak of the second intifada, Ariel Sharon made clear that he would end the terror and violence. In 2006, Ehud Olmert explicitly campaigned on the idea of an Israeli pullback in the West Bank.By contrast, this election has seen no great debate. In part this is because between the five larger parties, only one – Likud Beitenu – is likely to get more than a quarter of the votes and even the Likud will not get much more than that. This is certainly not the stuff of great mandates. Even more critical perhaps is the lack of a common agenda between the parties: one seems to play soccer while another plays football, even as a third plays basketball. Labor, for instance, has focused on income inequality. Yair Lapid’s “There Is a Future” party has advocated for greater educational opportunities among the middle class and rejects exemption of the ultra-orthodox from military service. Meanwhile, Tzipi Livni’s party has sought to revive the peace process with the Palestinians.Unlike the other parties, Netanyahu has avoided largely specifics. It is striking how few critical issues he has raised in the course of the campaign. This is the first election in Israel since the Arab upheaval began, but he has mentioned neither the shifting regional landscape nor future relations with Egypt in the post-Mubarak era. He has not raised Israel becoming a de facto bilateral state in absence of peace talks with the Palestinians, even when Israeli President Shimon Peres makes statements that the absence of negotiations will lead to a return to Palestinian terror. Surprisingly, he has not even mentioned the Iranian nuclear threat—his signature issue during his current tenure as prime minister. READ MORE >>
Netanyahu's New Headache: Avigdor Lieberman Is Dragging Him Down
The Visionary
How Abbas’s U.N. Gambit Empowered Hamas
Only once before has a U.S. President applied overt diplomatic pressure on Palestinians the way President Obama did this week at the United Nations, as he pressured Palestine to rescind its request from the U.N. Security Council for immediate full membership status. Unfortunately, the precedent for this type of overt pressure is not particularly encouraging, neither for Israel, nor for the United States. READ MORE >>
Forget Negotiations
The reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas is certainly bad news for peace. But this does not mean it is bad news as such. Because the most urgent need for the future survival of both Israel and Palestine is not peace. It is partition. And the reconciliation may actually be good news for the prospect of partition. READ MORE >>
A Separate Peace
The TNR EXCHANGE: Trust Fall
James Risen, a Washington-based writer, and Yossi Klein Halevi, a Jerusalem-based writer, have been friends since they both crashed the Nazi Party headquarters in Chicago as student reporters 30 years ago. They have been joking and arguing about news and politics ever since, especially when it comes to Israel and the Middle East. READ MORE >>
Housing Bust
Derisionist History
Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations By Avi Shlaim (Verso, 392 pp., $34.95) READ MORE >>
