Tag Archives: Likud

The Election Season

12 Fri Apr 2019

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Israel went to the polls on April 9 and India followed it two days later in its multi-phase, five-week-long format. Though the dates are an interesting coincidence, the two demonstrations of universal adult suffrage have a powerful common theme running through them – in Israel as well as in India, the central issue in these elections is the personality and character of the incumbent prime minister.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared early elections after his ruling coalition collapsed at the end of December 2018 over disagreements on a bill that would abolish the exemption and require haredim to serve in the Israel Defence Forces like all other citizens. An electoral campaign this year, however, was inevitable as the Netanyahu administration’s term was set to expire in November anyway.

What also surrounded the announcement of elections was the shadow of corruption charges against the prime minister – Netanyahu is facing indictment in three corruption cases on charges of fraud, bribery, and breach of trust. If convicted on all counts, he could face up to 13 years in prison and a fine.

Additionally, Israel is no stranger to the global backlash against liberalism. The country has for long been at odds with the international – American – Jewish Diaspora over several issues of identity such as women at the Kotel, the Orthodox Rabbinate’s monopoly in the personal sphere (marriage, divorce, burial, conversion, kashrut, olim, etc.), as well as over policy such as towards the Iranian nuclear programme, Gaza, and the Arab inhabitants of Judea & Samaria. However, these differences over identity with the Diaspora go back much further than the Netanyahu administration or even the foundation of the State of Israel.

The key question for Israel’s elections, therefore, was the personality and character of the prime minister. Even critics of the current administration agree that the economy is doing well, tourism is booming, and Netanyahu has handled his relations world leaders admirably, balancing ties with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, reaching out to some of the Arab states in the region, and opening up more of the world to Israel. Most importantly, no one in Israel, Left or Right, has a better solution to the intractable problem of Palestinian intransigence on the peace process or Iranian ambitions towards regional hegemony.

Predictably, the Opposition’s core message during their campaign was that they were not Netanyahu; on everything else, they closely echoed existing policies. Ultimately, this was not enough to swing the Israeli voter away from a known figure to a coalition of, at best, imitators, and at worst, unknowns.

India’s elections indicate a similar stamp. As in Israel, India’s economic and security indicators are generally as healthy as can be expected though things can always be better. For all the arguments around the policies of the Narendra Modi government, the core issue most people are voting on is identity. Modi is seen, rightly or wrongly, as the face of a resurgent Hindu nationalist identity that could transform the Indian republic. To his detractors, pace all the courts in the land, Modi will never escape the ghosts of the riots in the aftermath of the Godhra train burning incident in 2002.

Interestingly, many of the prime minister’s supporters are lukewarm about his identity agenda – because they only see symbolism in place of action over the past five years – than his critics are vociferous in denouncing it. Regardless, although conversations in India are ostensibly about economics, security, and other issues, most soon collapse to the Sangh Parivar’s idea of India. The battle for India’s soul, like in Israel, goes back much before the current administration. Yet the Modi government has been by far the most powerful voice for an alternative vision of the India republic.

The Indian Opposition, as in Israel, has little by way of new ideas to challenge the incumbent’s narrative of development or security. The platforms of the various parties seem to be largely lifted from socialist tracts of the 1960s that have failed several times before, interspersed with a dose of the contemporary politics of victimhood. There is little clarity on India’s greatest security threats – cybersecurity, intellectual property lawfare, terrorism, China, or Pakistan – except to say more of the same. While the Modi government has not necessarily distinguished itself on these fronts, the alternative offered is a recipe that has been tried before and found wanting.

The victory of the religious Right coalition was a foregone conclusion in the Israeli elections though how well Likud would fare, especially if the attorney general issued the indictments against Netanyahu, was up for debate. In the final outcome, the Likud emerged the largest party and increased its tally in the Knesset though overcame its rival, the new agglomeration Kahol Lavan, by the skin of its teeth. Similarly, most polling pundits seem convinced that May 23 – the day the results of the Indian elections are announced – will still see Modi in power but the fortunes of his party and coalition are in question.

One advantage Netanyahu had is that Israel’s population and politics have shifted to the Right in recent years and are broadly centre-right. In terms of the broader view of peace in the Middle East, Left and Right are mostly aligned, which is why neither the Palestinian Authority nor Hamas expressed any interest in the democratic ritual. India’s population, however, is more mercantile. A weak nation held together by a beleaguered state machinery, the majority of Indians are more concerned with quotidian social and material hurdles in their lives. Hence, Modi’s success cannot be as confidently foretold as observers could with Netanyahu.

Pretend as you will, India will vote over the next five weeks on Modi as Israel voted on Netanyahu. Securing his fifth term in office, the Israeli prime minister is on track to be not only the country’s longest-serving prime minister but in all probability the one with one of the strongest legacies. Only time will tell if a similar fate awaits Modi.

Reclaiming David’s Kingdom

02 Tue Jan 2018

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לְזַרְעֲךָ֗ נָתַ֙תִּי֙ אֶת־הָאָ֣רֶץ הַזֹּ֔את מִנְּהַ֣ר מִצְרַ֔יִם עַד־הַנָּהָ֥ר הַגָּדֹ֖ל נְהַר־פְּרָֽת׃ – בְּרֵאשִׁית‬‬ 15:18
To your descendants have I given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates – Bereshit 15:18

In its last major act of 2017, the Likud’s Central Committee voted unanimously to propose a resolution in the Knesset that would extend Israeli civilian jurisdiction to all Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, or what is also known as the West Bank. The vote comes barely three weeks after US president Donald Trump declared that the United States recognises Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and would be soon moving its embassy to the city from its present location in Tel Aviv. Trump’s declaration caused a minor crisis in the United Nations with the overwhelming majority of the world’s nation-states condemning the US decision.

Although many see the Central Committee’s decision as a ripple effect of Trump’s Jerusalem declaration, the item had been tabled for discussion in May but was delayed by seven months. Neither is the desire to annex the West Bank new – the sentiment goes back to at least 1967 and several of Israel’s first generation had been opposed to the partition plan in November 1947 that created yet another Arab state in the British Palestinian mandate.

It would be wrong, however, to see the Central Committee’s vote in purely ideological terms. In an interesting recent study of the motives behind settlements, several scholars have argued that the majority of settlers do not share the ideology of the Gush Emunim or its descendants. Rather, they are preoccupied with quotidian socioeconomic concerns such as affordable housing, office commute, and a lower cost of living. This is not to deny the ideological attraction to the entirety of the land among certain segments of Israeli society.

There are also mundane, logistical issues that an extension of Israeli sovereignty over all settlements will solve. Judea and Samaria, or YOSH as their Hebrew acronym goes, is presently run by a military administration that has the jurisdiction of all territory that Israel has not officially claimed. No matter how well-intentioned such a bureaucracy is, it is simply not trained to handle the complexities of civilian demands and the duty is an unnecessary burden on the military. Furthermore, it is odious to democracies that the military rule over civilians. Handing over the settlements to the civilian authority makes much more sense.

The common counter-argument to extending Israeli sovereignty over the settlements in YOSH – it should be remembered that this is just a proposal by the Likud’s Central Committee to its members in the Knesset to introduce a resolution to the effect and that such a resolution must pass to become law – is that it violates Art. 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which Israel ratified in 1951. Yet there are several legal complications involved in applying the said piece of international law to the territory in question. The first is if the West Bank can even be considered occupied territory for the question immediately arises, occupied from whom? The San Remo Resolution (1920) and the Mandate for Palestine (1922) both saw YOSH, Gaza, and East Jerusalem as part of a Jewish state. Israeli control over the territory, however, came only after the Six-Day War in June 1967 when YOSH was taken from Jordan – which had itself annexed it in April 1950. Even before the Jordanian annexation, the Arabs had rejected UN Resolution 181 that proposed a separate Jewish state and yet another Arab state in the British mandatory territory of Palestine; an independent country called Palestine has never existed in all of history even for a day. Whether the Geneva Conventions govern relations between state parties and non-state entities is a legal debate of its own.

Although the international consensus is that Art 49 does apply to Jewish settlements, Morris Abram, part of the US team at the Nuremburg Trials and later one of the drafters of the Fourth Geneva Convention, clarified in 1990 that the Article “was not designed to cover situations like Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, but rather the forcible transfer, deportation or resettlement of large numbers of people.” This is because the language speaks in terms of government coercion to transfer people which is not the case in YOSH. Jewish settlements have mostly occurred on open land rather than in urban settings and Israeli law clearly states that privately held land may not be confiscated.

It is by virtue of negotiations with Israel that any recognition of Palestinian political rights come into existence. The series of talks, agreements, and memoranda between Israel and its interlocutors have created an entire unique and particular framework – a lex specialis – by which the question of settlements must be adjudicated.

What is interesting about the Central Committee vote is that Benjamin Netanyahu was not present for it; the Israeli prime minister has in the past voiced his support for a separate Palestinian state although his critics point out that Netanyahu has in fact taken steps in the other direction. At a time when his tenure is being rocked by a corruption investigation, allowing such a resolution to pass might win him easy support with the Right.

In concert with the law the Knesset just passed that has made the ceding of any part of Jerusalem to the Palestinians in an eventual peace settlement more difficult by raising the number of votes required to pass such a bill from a simple majority to an absolute majority, critics are fuming that the Likud Central Committee’s resolution is clear proof that the Israeli Right was never interested in a just peace and Trump’s declaration emboldened them to make an overt land grab that had so far at least had the decency to be conducted on the sly.

Beyond the cynicism, however, there could be a strategic reason behind the demand to annex Jewish settlements in the West Bank. As Trump did three weeks ago with his Jerusalem declaration, the Likud has raised the price of delaying genuine peace talks for the Palestinians. Moderate Israelis to this day smart at the failure of Camp David Summit in July 2000 when Yasser Arafat was offered almost everything he could hope for and yet walked away from the table. The tortuous negotiating process during Oslo that ultimately had little effect in curbing terrorism has also soured many on peace. The Likud’s proposal is not yet law but allowing it to pass might be a signal by Netanyahu to the Palestinians that Israel is still holding some cards and the Palestinians do have more to lose.

Turning the screws on the Palestinians may not yield any results but then, nothing else has either. Israel has no room to manoeuvre with a foe that still declares in its charter that the Jewish state has no right to exist and calls for its destruction. Until Jerusalem has a partner for peace in the Arabs – as Egypt and then Jordan have demonstrated – the guns will not fall silent in the Holy Land. Between Trump and the Likud’s new playbook, it is just possible that they shake loose the peace process from its ossified status quo.

Israel’s Day At The Ballot Box

18 Wed Mar 2015

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March 17 is an important day for many reasons, but it is known primarily for being the death anniversary of Patrick, one of the patron saints of Ireland. On this day in 180, Marcus Aurelius died, very unwisely, leaving the Empire to Commodus; in 1861, the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed, perhaps equally unwisely; and in 2015, Israel went to the polls and elected Binyamin Netanyahu…how wisely, is yet to be seen. These elections have evinced interest from important capitals in the West and the region, for Israel’s policies could influence a very volatile region at a crucial juncture.

Netanyahu’s reelection is a big blow to the Democrats in the United States. The difficult relationship between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu is no secret; Jerusalem and Washington have differences on the Palestinian question but Iran has made the relationship even more acrimonious. While the White House has sought to engage diplomatically with Tehran and come to a negotiated settlement, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office has insisted on a harsher interpretation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and Iran’s obligations under it as a signatory. In September 2012, Netanyahu made a speech in the United Nations that urged the United States to draw clear red lines on Iranian nuclear development beyond which to consider a military solution to the issue. Israel has stuck to this stance despite several public statements from Israel’s own former intelligence chiefs that downplayed the Iranian nuclear threat to Israel.

In January of this year, the Netanyahu-Obama relationship became even more acrid when the Israeli prime minister accepted an invitation from John Boehner, the leader of the US House of Representatives, and Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, to address a joint session of the US Congress. The Republicans, who were critical of Obama’s nuclear negotiations with Tehran, were incensed at the US president’s threat to veto any bill that proposed passing new sanctions on Iran and broke diplomatic protocol by inviting a foreign head of state to Congress without the knowledge of the White House. This saga unfolded in the wake of ugly allegations that the US State Department had funded a tax-exempt organisation to undermine Netanyahu’s bid for reelection. In February 2015, senior US officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, and US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, publically criticised Netanyahu and some even took to the social media platform Twitter to attack him.

Israeli elections 2015It is important to understand this background for it informs the outcome of the Israeli election. The most important issue that concerns Israel today, according to Netanyahu, is the nuclearisation of Iran. On this, he has shown willingness to damage Israel’s relations with its closest ally and even weaken the bipartisan support it has enjoyed in the US Congress. This brinkmanship and fearmongering on the international scene finds strong support domestically. Netanyahu’s victory confirms that many ordinary Israelis agree with his assessment even over the opinion of their military and intelligence chiefs. While opinion poll after opinion poll tells us that Israelis are concerned about the social issues such as the cost of living, housing, and employment, Netanyahu’s Likud surged ahead of Isaac Herzog and his Zionist Union upon promises that Netanyahu would never accept a Palestinian state and continue to expand settlements in the disputed territories. Moshe Kahlon and his Kulanu, who had actually run on an economic platform, managed only fifth place with 10 seats, behind the Likud, Zionist Union, (Arab) United List, and Yesh Atid. Similar behaviour was observed even in 2013, and with 72 per cent voter turnout in these elections, ideology and identity seem to mean far more to Israelis than socioeconomic well-being – not a surprising conclusion but one that militates against the logic of the rational actor. Perhaps because for Israelis, ideology and identity is synonymous with security – a higher order need than bread alone.

Netanyahu was also helped by the fact that many of those who voted for him did so only because they could not see any viable alternative. To the middle class, he has been a disappointment though most admit that he is their man on security. What might put a spanner in the works is President Reuven Rivlin had earlier indicated that he would seek a national unity government. Given the political landscape, it would be very difficult for Herzog to produce a winning combination: he would have to seduce the Yahadut HaTora HaMeuhedet away from the Likud with concessions to synagogues, unite Meretz, the United List, and Yesh Atid behind him, and hope that Kahlon does not return to his Likud roots. Instead, the size of Likud’s victory might just persuade Rivlin to invite the leader of the largest party to form the governing coalition rather than maintain his earlier desire.

Netanyahu has used two issues to rally his base – the fear of a nuclear Iran and the undesirability of Palestinian statehood. His victory now puts Israel on a collision course with both the European Union and the United States, the former over Palestine and settlements and the latter over Iran. Unfortunately, the Israeli prime minister has no solutions of his own to offer either. On Palestine, Israel has two choices – accept their statehood or incorporate them into a larger, multicultural, non-Jewish Israel. The only other option is to use military force to initiate a mass exodus of the people of Gaza and the West Bank, a thoroughly unpalatable course of action with dire consequences for Jerusalem.

To become prime minister, however, one needs 61 of the 120 seats in the Knesset and the Likud’s 30 means there will be a coalition yet again. A coalition of the religious parties and Likud alone will not suffice to give Netanyahu the majority he needs and so he will have to reach out to the centrists at least. All centrist and leftist parties support Palestinian statehood though each have their own caveats. Nonetheless, this means that there will be support for Palestinian statehood within the ruling coalition and that could restrict the prime minister’s hand during his term.

From Iran, Netanyahu expects total supplication. No country could accept such terms short of total conquest, especially not the proud Persians. To be fair, Israel’s concerns are not unfathomable, especially to Indians. Jerusalem fears the nuclear veto Tehran will possess on Israel’s range of options if Iran ever crosses the nuclear Rubicon, much the same way Pakistan holds India hostage today. Unfortunately for Israel, its options are constricted for war with Iran without the backing of the United States – even with the backing of the United States – will be a thoroughly taxing affair and not be limited to the deserts of the Middle East but spread to all Jewish assets across the globe. Furthermore, Israel’s greatest patron, Uncle Sam, is exhausted after over a decade of military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Even worse for Israel, sanctions alone have proven ineffective against Iran for several reasons.

Politics makes for strange bedfellows, and interestingly, Israel is not alone in its fear – paranoia? – about the possibility of an Iranian nuclear arsenal. Netanyahu has the silent backing of at least Saudi Arabia and the majority of the Persian Gulf states such as Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. For reasons of political optics, it is a safe bet that this will not materialise into public support of Israel by the Arab monarchies and Israel will be remain isolated.

It would be an interesting exercise to study where the Likud got its votes. Compared to the results of the 2013 elections, it appears that the largest share of Likud’s votes came from other right-wing parties: while Likud jumped from 19 to 30, HaBayit HaYehudi and Yisrael Beiteinu fell from 12 and 11 to 8 and 6. On the whole, the right-wing parties have gained only one seat, from 43 to 44. It would, therefore, be inaccurate to consider this a landslide victory for the Right.

For India, the Israeli elections mean nothing. Delhi’s relations with Jerusalem are not so close that the finer differences between Israel’s political actors matter much to Raisina Hill. India plays the role of the deaf-mute in the Middle East for lack of capability (and willingness?) and has little influence on any side of any conflict. India would like to boost trade with Iran but Delhi has so far followed the American line and reduced its oil imports from the Middle Eastern state. Similarly, Israel is hardly likely to strike an alliance with Pakistan’s non-state friends – terrorists – nor is it likely to develop a strategic relationship with either Pakistan or China in the near future. Any government in Israel will be willing to develop its military and civilian relationship with India.

In sum, Netanyahu has come to power by playing on two major concerns, it appears, of the Israeli people and yet he has no solution to either. In fact, his preferences would put Israel squarely at war or at loggerheads with its close allies. At this moment, it is difficult to see how this will actualise into a successful prime ministership. One possibility is that Netanyahu will hope for a Republican victory in the next US presidential election; he will bide his time until January 2017 when Obama finally leaves office and hope to repair some of the damage done these past few years. Europe will be a tougher but less valuable nut to crack. For now, a sombre mood hangs over the Tehran, Washington, and a few pockets of Israel.

This post first appeared on Swarajya on March 19, 2015.