by Caroline Glick
It is still difficult to assess how Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu will govern in his next government. The public has
little interest in begging the Palestinians to return to negotiations.
But then the Israeli public has rarely had much interest in pursuing
fruitless deals with unreformed Palestinian terrorists. The only reason
we continue to chase deals with them is because the US is obsessed with
supporting Palestinian anti-Israel demands in the name of peace.
To
a significant, if not necessarily determinative degree, whether the
Palestinians will continue to be a salient issue in the coming years
will be a function of events in the wider Arab world. The collapse of
the Egyptian state, Syria's civil war, and the potential collapse of the
Hashemite monarchy in Jordan will all limit President Barack Obama's
ability to press Israel to give away land to the Palestinians.
At
the same time, Netanyahu's assault on his own political camp, starting
with Likud and moving to Naftali Bennett and the Bayit Yehudi indicate
that at a minimum, Netanyahu will do nothing to advance Israel's
position vis-à-vis the Palestinians. He is unlikely to permit
significant new construction in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria
or significant Jewish building in Jerusalem. He is unlikely to undertake
any democratic reforms in the Justice Ministry or the court system. He
is unlikely to take any steps to boost Israel's rights in Judea and
Samaria or to undermine the terrorist-led Palestinian Authority.
Where
the next government is likely to move ahead are in two other
significant, if under-discussed areas: economic reform, and religious
reform.
This weekend Israel reportedly
conducted its first successful test pumping of natural gas from the
offshore Leviathan natural gas field. In the next four years, Israel
will become a major natural gas exporter and will make great strides in
developing its recently discovered shale oil deposits. Israel's
emergence as an energy exporter will have a transformational impact on
Israel's economic independence and long-term viability.
Moreover,
as the surrounding Arab world becomes more unstable, violent and
fanatical, Israel's economic independence and vitality will emerge as
our most important diplomatic asset and a hugely important domestic
trump card. Under the economic leadership of Netanyahu, Lapid and
Bennett, as Israel stands at the cusp of this economic breakthrough, it
will be led by its most powerful, and - at least in the cases of
Netanyahu and Bennett - ideologically committed champions of free market
economics.
Lapid's emergence as the leader of
the second largest party will lead to one of two possibilities - Shas,
the Sephardic ultra-Orthodox party will join the coalition and have no
power, or it will be kept outside the coalition and have no power.
Either way, both in terms of Israel's ability to capitalize on its
economic opportunities, and in terms of its ability to transform the
country's religious institutions, Shas's demotion from political
kingmaker to political deadweight is a major and possibly transformative
development.
As far as religious reform is
concerned, one of the sources of social friction that has weakened
Israeli society over the past few decades is perception shared by most
Israelis that the ultra-Orthodox community is comprised of freeloaders.
The fact that most ultra-Orthodox men do not serve in the IDF, while
receiving government handouts to study in state-funded yeshivot is one
source of social friction. Another source of friction is that while its
members do not participate in either the common burden of national
defense or in the economic life of the country, due to Israel's
proportional electoral system, the ultra-Orthodox minority has managed
to maintain control over the state religious institutions and so dictate
the (sour) relationship between religion and society in Israel
.
Both
Bennett and Lapid ran on platforms of universal male conscription or
national service and ending the ultra-Orthodox community's monopoly on
control over the state rabbinate. A Netanyahu-Lapid-Bennett government
could enact major reforms in the religious establishment that would lead
to a national-religious takeover of the rabbinic courts and the chief
rabbinate of the country. Such a government could also require the
ultra-Orthodox to serve in the IDF, and enable the community's members
to integrate into the economic life of the country.
All
of these steps would have a salutary, indeed, revolutionary impact on
the religious life of the country. National religious rabbis would do
what the ultra-Orthodox rabbis have failed to do, or stubbornly refused
to do. They would make Judaism part of the life blood of the country in a
way that is relevant to the lives of the vast majority of Israelis and
pave the way for Israel's further emergence as the spiritual center of
world Jewry. The ripple effects of such a reform would extend to nearly
every corner of Israel, and indeed, to nearly every corner of the Jewish
world.
We will learn a great deal about
Netanyahu's plans to contend with Iran's nuclear project, the hostile
Obama administration, the rapidly expanding and metastasizing campaign
to delegitimize the Jewish state in the West, and the rise of genocidal
anti-Semitic regimes in neighboring countries through his choice of
Defense Minister. After the Prime Minister, the Defense Minister will be
the most important member of the government, on nearly every level and
every sphere of national endeavor. He has two outstanding candidates for
the position inside Likud -- Moshe Ya'alon, and Yuval Steinitz. If he
chooses either of these men, then we can be relatively confident that
Israel will rise to the challenges we face. If he chooses anyone else,
then the country's capacity to contend successfully with these threats
will be more dubious.
But here too, external
events may be more important than the identity of Israel's national
leaders. The gravitational impact of the Islamic wave engulfing the Arab
world and Israel's emergence as an independent economic force will
limit the ability of any one person to determine the course of events
based on his own political preferences.
We are
still at the earliest stages of the formation of the next governing
coalition. The reports just this week about Israeli Air Force strikes on
convoys of anti-aircraft missiles being transferred from Syria to
Hezbollah and fears that Syria's chemical weapons will imminently be
controlled by al Qaeda or Hezbollah; the still unconfirmed reports about
an Israeli attack on Iran's uranium enrichment facility at Fordo; and
the mass riots in Egypt particularly in the strategically vital cities
of Port Said and Suez all make clear that regardless of the plans of the
next government, and the intentions of the Obama administration, many
of the actions of the next government will be dictated by forces beyond
the control of the Israeli electorate and the preferences of our
leaders.
Caroline Glick
Source: http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2013/01/about-the-next-government.php
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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