Election prelude

Griff Witte pontificates about today’s Israeli election.

In Israel, most people welcome the idea of a solution — nearly 60 percent support the creation of a Palestinian state, according to a survey of Israeli Jews conducted late last year called the War and Peace Index. Most also think it’s completely unrealistic, a belief fueled by a deep-seated mistrust of the Palestinian side. Just over 60 percent of Israelis, according to the survey, believe the Palestinians would destroy Israel if they could.

Where could that mistrust come from? Here’s Yaacov Lozowick:

The Palestinian strategic decision in 2000 to prefer a campaign of murder of Israeli civilians over negotiations that had already given them Israeli acceptance of statehood and dismantling of many settlements, flipped the consensus of the late 1990s in the opposite direction. Rather than a majority preparing for partition and peace (welcoming it or merely accepting), an even broader consensus now assumed the Palestinians were aiming it Israel’s destruction, one way or another, not at partition. If I’m correctly understanding Klein Halevy’s thesis, an entire generation now has lost the feelings of guilt their parents had or at least recognized towards the Palestinians, and have replaced it with anger at the rejectionism of the Palestinians. Even as, I might add, they are willing for partition in a way their parents were not yet.

Taking this one step further, and focusing not on twenty-somethings but rather on the 16-22 year olds, their most formative introduction to politics wasn’t even the Palestinian rejectionism, it was the retreat from Gaza, in which Israel abandoned Gaza and disbanded its settlements, giving the Palestinians the opportunity, on a silver platter, to prove their commitment to a State. The readers of the Guardian can pretend to themselves that Israel never meant it, and continued to strangle Gaza from outside its fences, but the young Israelis know this is factually nonsense, and remember that in the 2nd half of 2005 Israel really had left, and was not blockading Gaza – that came later.

A few paragraphs later Witte writes:

Yet in the long term, Israel’s demographic dilemma — that one day there will be a clear majority of Palestinians living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea — is real. Livni and others advocate dealing with the problem before Israel confronts a choice between its democratic and its Jewish natures. Netanyahu and his backers counter that giving up the West Bank would put huge swaths of Israel, including Ben-Gurion Airport, within rocket range.

Again there’s a context missing. The Muqata recalls

I clearly remember a Shabbat lunch in 1991 with previous Minister of Finance, Moshe Nissim (Likud) who was sure the Likud would win in the 92 election. When I asked about the future of settlements in YESHA (West Bank and Gaza), he replied that they would exist forever. I said, “what if the left wing wins?” He replied that Israel was balanced between left and right, and settlements would always continue.

Less than a year later, the election came around. The intifada was mostly over except for occasional stabbing terror attacks. Israelis routinely shopped in the “West Bank” Arab cities of Beit-Lechem, Ramalla, Kalkilya, and Jenin. Israel’s intelligence services estimated that terrorists had less than 20 semi automatic weapons in the entire West Bank.

The election commercials from Meretz were “news broadcasts from the future”, that went something like this: “Today is yet another wonderful day in Israel. There are no traffic jams anywhere in Israel since Israel stopped building superhighways for settlers in the occupied territories, and invested all that money in pre-1967 Israel roads, education has never been better since Israel has earmarked all funding away from settlements to Israel’s schools, and our quality of life has never been higher, since we no longer need a huge military budget to keep the IDF occupying the territories. The weather is perfect as well. If you vote Meretz, this will not be a dream, but our future.”

Despite there being more right wing voters, the left won the election, and within months the green line reappeared, guns, ammunition and terrorists flowed into Gaza and the West Bank, and the worst terror attacks Israel had ever experienced started – suicide bomber explosions. Settlers were demonized, ostracized as crybabies, and the root of all of Israel’s problems. Rabin, Israel’s Prime Minister openly declared that he was only Prime Minister of 98% of the country…and the Oslo Accords were in full bloom.

It’s easy to mock Netanyahu’s pessimism, but the experience of Oslo was so at odds with its promise. Trusting Arafat didn’t bring peace. Arafat was interested in prestige and money, which he received plenty of in exchange for his empty promises.(Fifteen years of broken promises don’t seem to have deterred Israeli President Shimon Peres.)

Witte would ahve improved his reporting if he spent a little time explaining how and why Isreali views have changed.

UPDATE: See Media Backspin’s MSM’s 5 election spins.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.