Israel: Social Issues before Diplomacy
The international community is shocked by the result of the latest elections in Israel, and frightened by what seems to be a rejection of the peace process by the majority of the Israeli public. But do these elections really reflect a rejection of peace and compromise with the Arabs. And what was the real issue which divided Likud and Labour? Michael Warshawski BY ANY OBJECTIVE STANDARD, THE OUTGOING Labor government had loyally and successfully served the interests of the Israeli state: it began a process of normalisation with the entire Arab world, signed a peace treaty with Jordan, initiated economic and quasi- diplomatic relations with half-a-dozen other Arab states, withdrew the Israeli army from the Gaza quagmire and almost all of the turbulent Palestinian cities, obtained the recognition of the PLO and the virtual end of the Palestinian national struggle, restored Israel's image as a civilised and peaceful state, attracted foreign investors, reduced unemployment to less than 5% and achieved an annual growth of 6.2%, one of the highest rates of any "developed" economy.
Few governments in the world can boast such a positive balance-sheet, and yet the voters chose Benjamin Netanyahu over the internationally renowned and respected Shimon Peres. Does this reflect an unequivocal rejection of the peace process, as many observers seem to believe? Not at all.
These were simultaneous elections for the office of prime minister and for the Knesset (parliament). Previously, the Prime Minister has not been directly elected by the population. The aim of the new voting system was to reduce the weight of the smaller parties, and free the prime minister from their "coalition blackmail." In reality, almost the exact opposite occurred. Because, while the prime ministerial elections showed that Israeli society is, in one sense, split right down the middle, in another sense it is 32 International Viewpoint fragmented: the new Knesset is composed of eleven parties.
The two main parties lost around 25% of their strength (Labor declining from 44 to 34 mandates, and Likud from 41 to 32). This clearly reflects the desire of a growing and substantial proportion of the population to express itself outside the framework of the two "major" parties.
The "universal" parties (Labour, Likud, but also the far Right (Moledet: 2 seats), the Zionist Left (Meretz: 9 seats) and the Third Way centrist party (4 seats), only won 81 seats in the Knesset, out of a total of 120. What happened to the remaining third is the most significant characteristic of these elections. These mandates went to "sectoral" parties: seven to the Russian immigrants list, 10 to Shas - a religious and communal party for the Mizrahi (Jewish immigrants from Arab and other Moslem, countries), 13 to other religious parties, and nine to the two Arab lists. What is more, at least one third of Likud voters voted less out of identification with the Likud programme than because they perceive the party as the best opposition to Israel's Westernised Labor elite.
In other words, the dream of the Zionist pioneers to manufacture a "new Israeli" out of the variety of diaspora communities and cultures has failed: Israeli society is not homogeneous, not even within its Jewish component. The country is still, and increasingly, a mosaic of cultural communities and ethnic groups.
These elections confirmed that Jewish-
Israeli society is split into two subcultures: one Westernised and mostly affluent, and another which lives with strong feelings of being oppressed by the first one an threatened in its culture, identity a traditions. This is the prevalent mood amo both the Mizrahi (non-European Jews) and religious Jews - though it bears a differen character in these two communities. The defeat of Shimon Peres is not so much connected to his political program as much as it is to the rejection, and even hate, of the "Western" elite by these communities.
This is definitely not a new phenomenon, and it was at the root of the loss of power by Labor between 1977 and 1992. Indeed, the exception was the victory of Labor-Meretz in 1992, due to extraordinary circumstances, not least among them the personal popularity of Yitzhak Rabin.
In other words, the vote for Netanyahu was a vote against Shimon Peres and against Labor, and not necessarily a vote for an alternative policy with regard to Israeli-Arab relations. It is no accident that Netanyahu's campaign stressed his support for peace and his commitment to respect the agreements signed by the Labor government. He took this approach not only because he knows that he does not have any other choice, but also because he felt that peace is popular including in his own constituency.
It is precisely for these reasons that Netanyahu will have no difficulty in forming a government backed by a large majority in the Knesset. Religious parties believe that he
will not be an obstacle to their aspiration for more "Judaism" and less "Americanism."
Centrist parties will help him to moderate his own extremists, in order to maintain a reasonable stance towards the peace process. It is likely that the new prime minister will more or less walk in the footsteps of the outgoing government with regard to both the Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian channels (though the latter may be pursued at an even slower pace).
After all, the US administration wants it, Israeli business wants it and the majority of the Israeli public wants it. In any event, if the negotiating process were to be stopped, everything indicates that the new government would be confronted by a new wave of bombings, or a new mass uprising, or both. That would be suicidal from the perspectives of the government's public support as well as from that of the interests of Israeli business and US global policy.
The changes which the government is expected to make will be more on the internal Israeli level: more religious legislation, less liberal reforms protecting individual rights and a return to blatant discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel, who had experienced a substantial improvement in their treatment by the Jewish state in the last four years, in a range of matters, including the budgetary allocations to Arab municipalities.
The main challenge facing both the Likud and the Labor Party will be to try to rebuild a sense of national unity and common national identity. While it is most improbable that the gap between the two parts of the Jewish-Israeli nation will develop in the next four years into a real cultural war, there is no doubt that without a serious attempt to deal with this problem by the ruling elite in and around the two big parties, Israel will be faced with an acute social crisis of major proportions. The future of Israel and its role in the Middle East depends to a large degree on the capacity of its political, intellectual and spiritual leaders to cool down the embers of this latent war.
During the last fifteen years, the Labor Party leadership closed its eyes to the problem, while the Likud leadership played with fire. If no attempt is made to smother the flames, there will eventually be a conflagration, and both Right and Left Zionism will be overwhelmed by a fundamentalist movement which will signify not only the end of Israel as a modern Westernised state, but also the end of any prospect of normalisation in the Middle East. We may one day remember the Israeli-Arab conflict with nostalgia, as we compare it to the
Ice Process Update AND UNDER THE BRITISH PEACE PLAN EVERTONE ANNOUCES CEASEFIRES WHICH NETHER SIDE BELIEVES; THEN YOU SPEND 16 MONTHS MAKING ABSOLUTELY NO PROGRESS WHATSOEVER, AND THEN EVERINE CAN START KRUNG FACH OTHER ALL OVER AGAIN! horrors of an inter-religious war between Islamic and Jewish fundamentalism.
The fear of such a development may be the reason why one can hear voices from each of the two political camps appealing for a "national unity" government composed of the two main parties. Though such a government does not seem a likely prospect for the near future, it can no way be excluded in the medium term. A "national unity" government would certainly be the best way for Netanyahu to compel his hard-line friends to accept the continuation of the political process opened up by Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. The Arab Vote
If anything should moderate the sadness that has taken hold of many in the wake of Netanyahu's victory, it is the election results among the Palestinian population in Israel.
Only three months ago, everyone expected an unprecedented rate of participation in the elections by Palestinian citizens, with some even predicting it would exceed the 80% voter participation traditional among the Jewish-Israeli population. Pundits predicted an all-out mobilisation in favour of Shimon Peres, and a majority of Palestinian votes being cast for the Labor Party. The elections were perceived as the climax of a long process of Israelisation of Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the end of their national aspirations as an integral part of the Palestinian people.
But the results of the latest elections challenge this pessimistic analysis. The participation rate was massive, but somewhat less than predicted and certainly less than among the Jewish electorate, which voted in unprecedented numbers. This was the direct result of the bombing of Lebanon, an initiative the government took one month before the elections, hoping to gain thousands of "floating" Jewish voters, but
Israel * You GOTA DEAL! completely indifferent to the impact of such aggression on the Arab electorate.
The war in Lebanon also explains the more than 10,000 blank ballots cast in the prime ministerial elections in the Arab sector. All the Arab parties - with the exception of Abna el Balad, (a component of the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality -National Democratic Assembly bloc) called in the end for a vote for Peres as the "lesser evil." The Palestinian population, sensing that Peres was going to lose, finally mobilized in the last three hours of voting Nevertheless the war demobilised a part of the electorate, and a significant minority refused to vote for Peres.
In the end, almost 80% of the Arab electorate supported Peres, double the rate of the Jewish population. In an outrageous, racist display of bad faith, Labour leaders wasted no time after Peres' defeat to brazenly accuse Israeli Arabs of having sabotaged Labour's victory!
More significant in the long-term are the results of the Knesset elections among Israel's Arab citizens. 60% of votes were taken by the two national, non-Zionist lists, the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (led by the Communist Party (CP)/National Democratic Assembly), and the United Arab List (composed of the Democratic Arab Party of Abdel Wahab Darawsh and a part of the Islamic Movement). This is nearly double the proportion the non-Zionist, Arab lists received in 1992. The remaining votes were taken by various Jewish parties, particularly the Labor Party (24%), which had placed three Arab candidates in "safe" positions on their list.
The Bloc led by the CP got more than 120,000 votes (5 deputies, including a Jewish deputy, Tamar Gojansky, and the leader of the Democratic National Assembly, Azmi Bishara). The United Arab List got more than 60,000 votes (4 deputies, of whom two are
July 1996 #279 33
• Why did Likud win?
Michel Warshawski of the Alternative Information Centre explains how
Israel's military establishment sabotaged the Labour election campaign
* Israel Islamic leaders). So there is little evidence of an irreversible Israelisation of the Arab population.
The fact that the Peres-Labor campaign invested all its efforts in Peres' campaign proved destructive for the party's Knesset campaign, and lead to discrete deals where the Arab lists quietly lent their support to Peres in exchange for more votes in the Knesset elections. Nevertheless, we must look for deeper reasons for the transformation in Palestinian voting patterns, which few had foreseen two months ago. Only those who did not follow the campaign closely might think it exaggerated to note that the entry of the Democratic National Assembly made all the difference. This is, however, exactly what happened. Week after week, a soporific and apolitical campaign was politicised, infused with energy and became a tool of popular mobilisation. For the first time in ten years, one witnessed campaign rallies attended by thousands, full of passionate debate. These debates were also carried out in written form, with communiqués and counter-communiqués. Hundreds of activists went door-todoor to mobilize support. The militant nationalists recently regrouped in the DNA exposed the Palestinian public to a new discourse, and this language spoke to the Palestinian masses: it was a language that was neither defensive nor apologetic, but rather demanded recognition, equality and the recovery of Arab and Palestinian identity. This was a radical democratic program, which refused to ignore the rights of women and which did not shrink from challenging the racist and discriminatory structure of the Jewish state. And it was apparently just what the women and men of the Galilee, the Negev and the Arab Triangle wanted to hear. It was the DNA which doubled the votes of the CP-led list, and no one, except for some outmoded bureaucrats, can deny it. It is not just Azmi Bishara (number four on the list) and Wassel Taha (number 6) who owe thanks to the DNA activists, but also at least two CP deputies as well.
The present question is how to capitalise on the successful the election campaign, as much from the point of view of the entire Palestinian population as from that of the DNA. The next months will be crucial for the formation of a new national leadership, democratic and progressive, among the Palestinians in Israel, and although there are many problems to be resolved, the enthusiasm generated by the electoral campaign and its results allows us to be reasonably optimistic. *
Six months ago, Shimon Peres' Labour Party was massively popular, and the right was apparently defeated and on the defensive. Almost no-one was ready to question the "peace policy" after the assassination of Yitsak Rabin. Labour could claim the credit for increased international status, normalisation of relations with the Arab world, and a real improvement in personal security for Jewish Israelis. In the occupied territories, there were no substantial acts of resistance to Yasser Arafat.
Unsurprisingly, Israel was also experiencing fast economic growth, and the standard of living of most of the population was rising. Shimon Peres thought this was the perfect moment to call a general election. The election he has just lost.
His first mistake was to make "National Unity" the main axis of his campaign, and resisting anything which would polarise Israeli politics. Rather than exploit the antiright wing sentiments and mobilisation provoked by Rabin's assassination, Peres formulated a programme which aimed to show that between Labour and Likud there was no basic difference. He even arranged public meetings with far-right settlers in the occupied territories, to reassure them that, after a final Israeli-Palestinian settlement, most of the Zionist settlers will remain under Israeli sovereignty.
The result of this tactic was to provide his opponent, Benjamin Netanyahu, with the popular legitimacy he lacked. And to enable the Likud leader to argue that the contest was not for or against peace, or for or against Rabin's legacy." Instead, Netanyahu was able to axe his campaign around questions of "what peace do we want?".
One reason for Labour's "mistake" is that a strong wing of the party leadership was always opposed to Peres' "hasty" New Middle East policy, and very content indeed with a Peres campaign that was, basically, "Likud politics and Labour rhetoric".
To confront the right wing, Labour could have developed an offensive campaign against the continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip, and in favour of a new relationship with the Palestinian Authority. Labour could have proposed speeding up the peace negotiations, and demonstrated a willingness to make compromises and gestures of good will on the ground. But, in the end, a substantial part of the Labour leadership either supported or was too frightened to confront the military wing of the Israeli ruling class.
Peres' other big mistake was to authorise the assassination of the fundamentalist resistance leader Yihya Ayash. This murder ended the de-facto ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, leading to a wave of bloody suicide operations which jeopardised the real progress of the Israeli-Palestinian agreements in terms of personal security of Israelis. By deciding to assassinate Ayash, Peres eliminated the Israeli public's perception of the Israeli-Palestinian agreement as a success story.
As was confirmed in the election campaign, unlike Rabin, Peres and his advisors are simply too weak to say no to the demands of Israel's security service chiefs. The security establishment is well represented in the Labour leadership where it has done everything possible to put brakes on the negotiation process with the Palestinians. The Army and Security Service chiefs have, on several occasions, succeeded in reversing government commitments made in the Oslo Declaration of Principles.
It makes little difference whether there was a conscious plan by the security establishment to provoke the fall of Shimon Peres and the rise of Benjamin Netanyahu, or only unrelenting pressure on the Labour leadership to adopt a policy which the security chiefs could find acceptable. In either case, it caused Peres to loose the election. Once the Labour government's "peace policy" was identified with a decline in personal security, the right wing parties could unleash their propaganda.
Peres' defeat reflects the victory of the military wing of the Israeli ruling class, at the expense of the capitalist wing. The military conception which dominated the first 40 years of the state of Israel has again taken precedence over the concept of normalising relations with the Arab world as part of the new world order. *