The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, has tried to fly with the hawks and wing with the doves. Now he has fallen between two stools. And to mix metaphors more, he appears like losing his bread and butter.
Mr Netanyahu squeaked into office two and a half years ago, beating the then Prime Minister, Labour’s Shimon Peres, by just one per cent. Mr Peres, successor to assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was the architect of the Oslo agreement with the Palestinians. That agreement ultimately promised peace based upon withdrawal by Israel from the occupied West bank and Gaza and the creation of a Palestinian state with which Israel could co-exist. The Palestinians, in return, promised and end to terrorism and an end to a de-facto sate of war as encapsulated in a Palestine Liberation Organisation article of faith aimed at the destruction of Israel and a denial of its right to exist.
The Oslo agreement was an extraordinary breakthrough. It required a leap of faith by both sides. Alas, since the election of Mr Netanyahu its spirit has been broken. The main reason for this is that Mr Netanyahu came to office on a promise of never surrendering Jewish settlements of the West Bank. In effect it was a promise, in substance if not form, to repudiate the Oslo agreement. He did this because he saw it his only change of election.
That election in 1996 was the first to be held under a new electoral system which saw the Prime Minister directly elected by the people rather than under the old European-Westminster system of the Prime Minister being the person who commanded a majority in Knesset (Parliament). With a popular, direct election, Mr Netanyahu thought he needed to pander to populist demands from the far, religious right in Israel who demand to exercise a right to settle anywhere in Biblical Israel, irrespective of what hostility that might evoke in the Palestinian people there or what it might do to jeopardise peace between Israel and the Palestinian people. They made no concession to the fact that the vast majority of Israelis arrived after World War II and wanted to occupy land which was home to Palestinians for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
Historically, the central problem has been that the same piece of land was promised, in one way or another, to two different groups of people. In the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire collapsed at the end of World War I the British promised the Palestinians autonomy in their lands if only they would help against the Turks. And British Prime Minister…Balfour, seeking help against the Germans in Europe, also promise a homeland for the Jews in Palestine.
Those promises plus ancient occupations by their forbears founded claims over the same land by two peoples. Clearly, if there is ever to be peace in the Middle East, both groups have to accommodate each other within that land. The Oslo agreement came as close as one could hope to doing that.
But no. Rather than see the historic compromise for peace, Mr Netanyahu played the populist game in the pursuit of power. He portrayed Mr Peres as an appeaser and a sell-out.
There is an ironic counterpoint here. Just as the British had promised the same land to two different people, Mr Netanyahu promised the same land to two different people. He offered it to the orthodox Jews in return for supporting his government and he held it out (usually just beyond reach) to Palestinians in order to retain a hope for peace and to retain US support which was committed to a peace (ital) process (end italis) even if it could never deliver peace itself.
Incidentally, the Americans have shown either an astonishing naivete or astonishing arrogance in imagining it could set down deadlines and timetables for peace in terms of months while the land in question has been disputed by various peoples for thousands of years.
Oslo, though, was different. That agreement was reached by the parities in secret, away from the grueling domestic demands of American politics and its powerful Jewish lobby. There were no kudos sought by the Norwegians. No media opportunities or phony plays of statesmanship on the world stage. Only peace was on the agenda.
Tragically, the election of Mr Netanyahu derailed it. After his election there was no good faith by the Israeli side. Sure, Israel came under rogue terrorist attacks. By Mr Netanyahu seized them opportunities to justify further concessions to the religious right and to justify a harder stand against the Palestinians, even though it should have been clear that the Palestinian leadership under Yasser Arafat was not in control of the terrorists. His reaction then fuelled the radical anti-peace cause among the Palestinians. If Mr Netanyahu’s response had been to press on with peace, those terrorists would have been isolated.
But Mr Netanyahu had not long-term vision or commitment to peace. He fumbled. He delayed. He engaged the Americans in a cat and mouse game. He juggled the peace process hoping to retain the support of the religious right. Domestically, too, he appeased them with funds for their special schools and special religious laws.
Now the chameleon is exposed. The people he pandered to are as dissatisfied as his original opponents in the Labour Party.
Unfortunately, the new electoral system with a popularly elected Prime Minister and proportionately elected Knesset gives less guarantee for stability than having the Prime Minister emerge from the parliamentary majority. And as the first exercise of that system has shown, it gives no guarantee of yielding a better prime minister. To the contrary.
Israel, the Palestinians, and indeed, the world require a better Israeli Prime Minister — a Prime Minister committed to peace, not a chameleon who is content with an never-ending peace process so long as he stays in power.