YK Halevi: Bibi, The Surprising Uniter

Halevi makes some important points in this WSJ piece, perhaps most intriguing, his suggestion that the long conceded territories should be redefined again as part of Israel's patrimony. The psychology here is compelling: why are we giving up something without even an acknowledgement of our competing, and arguably stronger claim?
david in seattle

The ability to achieve a credible agreement with the Palestinians depends on Israel asserting—and only then reluctantly ceding—its historic claim to the whole land of Israel, including Judea and Samaria. That's because even moderate Palestinians insist on their historic claim to the whole land of Palestine, including what is today the state of Israel. The moral logic of partition depends on each side sacrificing a precious part of its patrimony. That logic works only if Hebron and Jericho belong to the Jews—just as Palestinians say that Haifa and Jaffa belong to them.



Netanyahu the Surprising Uniter
The prime minister has pretty much ended serious debate over whether a Palestinian state should be created. Israelis now await a credible peace partner.


BY YOSSI KLEIN HALEVI
Jerusalem
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a remarkable speech to the Knesset on Monday outlining future Israeli concessions to a Palestinian state. In doing so, he essentially ended the ideological debate within mainstream Israeli politics over the so-called two-state solution.

Mr. Netanyahu's historic achievement has been to position his Likud Party within the centrist majority that seeks to end the occupation of the Palestinians but is wary of the security consequences. There is no longer any major Israeli party that rejects a West Bank withdrawal on ideological grounds. Instead, the debate is now focused where most Israelis want it to be: on how to ensure that a Palestinian state won't pose an existential threat to their country.

Mr. Netanyahu began this process two years ago when he accepted the principle of a two-state solution. That was followed by a nine-month freeze in housing starts in West Bank settlements—an unprecedented concession that was spurned by the Palestinian leadership and squandered by the Obama administration.

In Mr. Netanyahu's latest speech, the implicit was no less important than the explicit. Israel, he said, would insist on retaining the large settlement blocs near the 1967 border—and not, therefore, the smaller, isolated settlements outside the blocs. Israel, he added, would also insist on a military presence in the Jordan Valley—and not, therefore, on retaining settlements there.

None of this is likely to happen anytime soon. Mr. Netanyahu's concessions aren't enough to meet minimal Palestinian demands—and for now at least that hardly matters. Conditions for a resumption of negotiations, let alone for an agreement, couldn't be worse. With the genocidal Hamas now aligned with the Palestinian Authority, and with PA head Mahmoud Abbas insisting on some form of return of Palestinian refugees to Israel, not even Israel's opposition party, Kadima, would be able to reach a deal.

Israelis are willing to take risks for peace when they feel safe and accepted. Israel's secret peace initiative to the Palestinian Liberation Organization in the early 1990s that became known as the Oslo Accords was preceded by an unprecedented rise in the number of countries establishing diplomatic relations with the Jewish state, a result of the fall of the Soviet Union.

The situation today is exactly the opposite. In the past year Israel lost its closest regional ally, Turkey, and there are growing doubts about its peace agreement with Egypt. Not since May 1967, when Arab armies pressed against its borders, has Israel felt more threatened and alone. This past Sunday's breaching of Israel's northern border, when hundreds of Palestinians crossed into Israeli territory, only intensified the sense of siege.

And yet if conditions change within the Palestinian national movement and in the region generally, the Likud could be positioned to negotiate an agreement. Given the transformation of the Israeli electorate—like the rise of the hawkish Russian immigrant community—the right is likely to remain in power for a long time to come.


Israeli voters will only trust territorial concessions offered by a government that shares their fear of and anguish toward withdrawal. Not only will tens of thousands of Israeli citizens be displaced, but Israel will be ceding territory that is the heart of the Jewish nation—territory legitimately won, moreover, in a war of defense against the Arab attempt to destroy Israel in 1967.

The Israeli left is incapable of conveying those national sentiments. Its historic mistake was to emotionally withdraw from Judea and Samaria—the biblical West Bank—ceding any claim to the disputed territories.

The ability to achieve a credible agreement with the Palestinians depends on Israel asserting—and only then reluctantly ceding—its historic claim to the whole land of Israel, including Judea and Samaria. That's because even moderate Palestinians insist on their historic claim to the whole land of Palestine, including what is today the state of Israel. The moral logic of partition depends on each side sacrificing a precious part of its patrimony. That logic works only if Hebron and Jericho belong to the Jews—just as Palestinians say that Haifa and Jaffa belong to them.

Palestinian moderates never shared the enthusiasm of the Israeli left for partition. For Palestinians, partition is at best an historic tragedy that will extricate them from an even greater tragedy. Their counterparts within the Israeli debate aren't left-wing dreamers like President Shimon Peres, but right-wing pragmatists like Mr. Netanyahu.

Under Mr. Netanyahu, then, the Likud's commitment to the Jewish people's right to the whole land of Israel has shifted from being an obstacle to an agreement to an asset. That agreement would be based on this trade-off: ceding the Jewish right of return to greater Israel for the Palestinian right of return to greater Palestine.

Mr. Netanyahu has drawn a clear line between the security-minded right led by the Likud and the religious right of the settlement movement, which rejects territorial compromise under any circumstances.

The mistrust between the religious right and the security right dates back to 1982, when Menachem Begin, the first Likud leader to become prime minister, became the first Israeli leader to dismantle settlements (in Sinai, as part of the Egyptian-Israeli peace accord). One of the unsurprising ironies of Israeli politics is that the only prime ministers who have managed to uproot settlements—Begin and then Ariel Sharon, who dismantled 21 settlements in 2005—were both pragmatic hawks.

The hope for a future land-for-peace agreement will not come from the shattered Israeli left, which is not trusted by the electorate to ensure the nation's security and to uphold the integrity of its history. Instead, it will be the Likud that may once again, on its own terms, fulfill the vision of the left.

That depends on deepening the rift between the pragmatic and the theological right—precisely the process that Mr. Netanyahu, who meets with President Obama on Friday, has set in motion. The more the Obama administration embraces Mr. Netanyahu, the more the rift within the Israeli right is likely to grow.

Mr. Halevi is a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and a contributing editor to the New Republic.