Deconstructing Netanyahu

Pundits are won­der­ing why two state­ments by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pri­or to the Israeli elec­tions and on the day of the elec­tions drew so much atten­tion. After the elec­tions, Republican leader and for­mer pres­i­den­tial con­tender John McCain told US pres­i­dent Barack Obama to “get over your tem­per tantrum.”

For Israel sup­port­ers like McCain, Netanyahu’s state­ments are mere­ly elec­tion rhetoric that can eas­i­ly be resolved and even erased. In fact, Netanyahu already slight­ly back­tracked from his pre-elec­tion oppo­si­tion to the two-state solu­tion and also tech­ni­cal­ly apol­o­gized to Israel’s Arab cit­i­zens. So some might won­der why the big fuss over these two state­ments. Well, to under­stand the depth of the prob­lems caused by these two state­ments, it is impor­tant to under­stand the two basic com­po­nents of the world (i.e., US) pol­i­cy towards Israel.

Washington and many European coun­tries con­sid­er Israel a demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try that fair­ly and hon­est­ly rep­re­sents all its cit­i­zens, and not just the Jewish pop­u­la­tion. If the US and oth­er Western coun­tries reached the con­clu­sion that Israel is unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic and a reli­gious state, they could not have giv­en it the kind of sup­port (finan­cial, polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary) they have. Based on this assump­tion that Israel is a demo­c­ra­t­ic state rep­re­sent­ing all of its cit­i­zens, the world always takes the side of Israel in jus­ti­fy­ing its decades-old occu­pa­tion. Israelis have fooled the world for so long say­ing that they want peace and a civ­il end to the occu­pa­tion, but it is some­how those bar­bar­ic ter­ror­ist Palestinians who refuse to deal hon­est­ly with Israel.

When the issue was fur­ther pressed on Israel as to what kind of a solu­tion it is will­ing to accept, Netanyahu reluc­tant­ly accept­ed the idea of a two-state solu­tion, putting two con­di­tions on such a state in order for benev­o­lent Israel to accept. But as US-spon­sored talks began and end­ed with­out a solu­tion, Washington start­ed to ques­tion Israel’s com­mit­ment. Secretary of State John Kerry pub­licly blamed Israelfor mak­ing peace talks fail because of its set­tle­ment expan­sion and reneg­ing on the promise to release pris­on­ers. Yet the US con­tin­ues to give Israel the ben­e­fit of the doubt and to believe that, some­how, the nor­mal cycle of democ­ra­cy will resolve this prob­lem. Americans real­ly believed that the Israeli pub­lic, like any oth­er democ­ra­cy, will make the need­ed adjust­ments at the polls when the time comes to decide whether they want peace or not.

The US had good rea­son to think that way. In the past, Israeli lead­ers, includ­ing Netanyahu in the first term, were oust­ed by the pub­lic in sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances. The Americans believe that the Israelis would take into con­sid­er­a­tion their rela­tion­ship with Washington when they go to the polls. After all, no oth­er ally in the world has stood by Israel and pro­tect­ed Israeli pol­i­cy more than Washington. The two state­ments by Netanyahu, there­fore, must have come as a dis­ap­point­ment for some. All of a sud­den, the Americans were faced with the real­i­ty that Israel is a democ­ra­cy only for Jewish cit­i­zens. When the non-Jewish cit­i­zen, i.e., Palestinian Arab cit­i­zens, unit­ed in one bloc and attempt­ed to prop­er­ly use their legal right to vote, Netanyahu and com­pa­ny got upset and showed where they real­ly stood on the issues of democ­ra­cy as a mech­a­nism work­ing to the ben­e­fit of the people.

The United States does not need to change its pol­i­cy. It sim­ply needs to hon­our its own com­mit­ments and hold all coun­tries, includ­ing Israel, account­able. The idea that Israel and the US have shared val­ues in terms of democ­ra­cy and the right to self-deter­mi­na­tion proved fake. The truth is com­ing out and Netanyahu’s attempts to cor­rect his errors will do lit­tle to change what the world has now final­ly come to under­stand, name­ly that Israel is nei­ther a democ­ra­cy nor that its five-decades old occu­pa­tion of four mil­lion Palestinians is the fault of the occu­pied rather than the occu­pi­er. huff​in​g​ton​post​.com

See also NO NICE WAY TO SAY “LIAR”.