Encountering Peace: Half-way there (Gershon Baskin, Jerusalem Post)
Gershon Baskin
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Photo by: Marc Israel Sellem
Encountering Peace: Half-way there
By GERSHON BASKIN
12/12/2011
Our prime minister has learned to say the things the world wants to hear,
but only his father really understands the truth: He doesn’t mean it.
‘I am very pessimistic on the future of Israel. The trends in general mood
in Israel, US, worldwide are towards polarization, conflict and pessimism,
and all is made worse by the worsening worldwide financial problems which I
expect to end in a depression pretty much everywhere. I don’t expect Israel
to avoid war with considerable casualties and damage.”
This is a letter I received this week from an American Jewish friend who is
long-time friend and supporter of Israel, who has visited Israel many times.
He is a regular contributor to pro-Israeli organizations – the Jewish
Federation and others. His letter indicates deep concern and is similar to
many voices that I hear from Jewish and non-Jewish groups visiting Israel.
There are a lot of reasons this negativity.
The world on the eve of 2012 does not look like a happy place. As former US
president Bill Clinton said, it is the economy probably more than anything
else that is affecting the global mood of doom and lost hopes. In that
respect, maybe this is the explanation for why Israel’s domestic mood
appears to be somewhat more hopeful. We are not on the verge of
economic/fiscal collapse. Unemployment is very low. The global economic
decline affects Israel, but so far it is mainly expressed in planned future
budget cuts, a slowdown in economic growth and foreign investment and maybe
a small drop in standard of living.
It is quite clear now to most Israelis that the optimism following the
summer’s middle- class uprising will not be translated into new policies.
There have been some cosmetic changes but the deep shift in economic
philosophy, the redistribution of wealth, the reform in social economic
preferences will not take place in the coming year. It will not be so easy
to get the hundreds of thousands of Israelis back onto the streets and not
only because we are at the beginning of the winter.
There was hope during the summer that Israelis had awakened to a new era.
Thousands of people said they were no longer willing to accept our reality
as a given. We have the power to demand change and to expect our leaders to
respond, because if they don’t, we will replace them. And the leaders
responded.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his ministers talked the talk. They
learned the new language of social justice. They speak about the need for
change. The have adopted the vocabulary, but words come easy, a lot easier
than policy change. Now, several months later, it seems that we have
returned to business as usual. Change is a good word, used and abused by
politicians, but it is not so easy to translate into real policies,
particularly those that go against almost everything that you previously
believed in.
I AM not very surprised that no real change has taken place. I do not
believe that real social justice can be achieved in Israel without real
peace with our neighbors. Our economy will always be subjugated by the
national security discourse and reality. It will always be easy for the
military every year at the time of budget debates to create a crisis
situation in security terms that will remove public pressure for defense
spending cuts. No real economic boom will occur here until Israel is
seriously involved in a successful peace process, first with the
Palestinians, and then with the rest of the region. But no fear – no one in
the region, or the world, has any expectations that the current government
of Israel will make any surprise moves in that direction. And besides, the
world is much too busy to care right now about what Israel and the
Palestinians do or don’t do.
Netanyahu also doesn’t have much to be worried about. He has never had
better cooperation from the Palestinians in not doing anything. Palestinians
have very conveniently adopted a policy of not talking. But if Netanyahu is
not concerned, the public should be. The Palestinian refusal to come to the
table is not due to Palestinian rejection of peace with Israel, but because
they believe that Netanyahu is as serious about implementing his landmark
Bar Ilan policy shift as he is about changing his newly found economic
views.
Israelis wrongly interpret Palestinian refusal to come to the table as
Palestinian objection to peace with Israel. The public has a very short
memory, but in 2003, then president George W. Bush (not Barack Hussein
Obama), with the support of the international community demanded that the
Palestinians dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism, fight corruption,
crack down on government corruption, reorganize their security forces and
place them under a political echelon committed to peace and diplomacy.
Israel demanded President Bush adopt criteria based on performance, not
declarations, as had been the custom previously. There is no doubt, even
among Israel’s own security chiefs, that the Palestinians in the West Bank
have fulfilled these obligations and have performed much better than ever
expected in this regard.
In parallel, President Bush demanded that Israel implement four steps: (1)
freeze settlement building, (2) remove unauthorized outposts, (3) allow
closed Palestinian institutions in Jerusalem to reopen (including Orient
House and the East Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce); and redeploy its forces
back to positions it held prior to the beginning of the second intifada.
The Road Map occupied the international agenda and attention for years. We
talked the Road Map jargon and demanded full Palestinian implementation of
all its many clauses. Israel has not implemented a single one of its Road
Map obligations. No one even speaks about the Road Map anymore. In
retrospect, it seems quite clear that the words were serious, the intentions
were not.
Today, there is no American pressure. There is no one in the world advising
Israel to make those tough decisions and concessions that the prime minister
says he is prepared to make for peace. Netanyahu’s “two states” declaration
at Bar Ilan University June 2009 appeared to signal a major shift in policy
from “greater Israel” to accepting the creation of a Palestinian in Judea
and Samaria. In hindsight, it can be understood as one of the most brilliant
public relations campaigns in history.
Our prime minister said the words that the world wanted to hear. They were
relieved, believing Netanyahu was serious. Netanyahu’s father, Professor
Benzion Netanyahu, in an interview the morning following the speech was the
only candid person. He said clearly and directly during an Army Radio
interview that “he didn’t mean it.”
In the US, and particularly in Washington, they say “you have to talk the
talk and walk the walk.” Perhaps I can tell my pessimistic American Jewish
friend that we are halfway there.
The writer is co-CEO of IPCRI, the Israel Palestine Center for Research and
Information and radio host on All for Peace Radio
Gershon Baskin, Ph.D.
P.O. Box 9321, Jerusalem 91092
Cellphone: +972-(0)52-238-1715
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