by Shimon Stein , Shlomo Brom
The issue of US interference in Israeli national elections is not new. This time, though, the issue takes on a special twist given the difficult relationship between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu.
The
decision by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to seek a UN
Security Council resolution that would recognize a Palestinian state
within the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its
capital, and would require Israel’s withdrawal from the territories by
the end of 2017 has forced many countries, in the Middle East and around
the world, to revisit the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and restore the
issue yet again to the front burner. This development has inevitably
also placed the political process with the Palestinians and Israeli-US
relations over this issue at the top of Israel’s public agenda,
resulting in the Israeli-Palestinian political process becoming a hotly
contested topic in the Israeli national election slated, for March 17,
2015.
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| PA President Mahmoud Abbas (l) with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, September 25, 2014, AFP/Getty Images |
The tense atmosphere between Israel
and the Palestinians is exacerbated by recent events on the Temple
Mount. Given the lack of response by the Israeli government to
activities by right wing politicians at the site, these events are seen
as a reflection of Israel’s intention to undermine the longstanding
status quo there. Moreover, the focus on Jerusalem has pushed Jordan,
which views itself as the keeper of the site, to take several
countermeasures, including the recall of its ambassador to Israel for
consultations, an emergency summit meeting in Amman to discuss
developments, and use of its status as a member of the Security Council
to back the Palestinian diplomatic bid at the UN.
The Israeli government has reacted to
the Palestinian move at the Security Council with intensive diplomatic
efforts to foil the bid, mostly by trying to persuade the US
administration to veto the Palestinian resolution and any other version
proposed in the Security Council. As part of these efforts, Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Rome for a special emergency
meeting with John Kerry. The meeting was not followed by any public
announcement, and thus the outcome of the meeting is still unknown.
To help extricate the United States
from its dilemma, France, Great Britain, and Germany are working on a
resolution that would allow Washington to avoid using its veto power.
The proposal presumably focuses on the principles for resolving the
conflict in the same spirit that Secretary of State Kerry used to try to
elicit an agreement when he mediated the last round of talks between
Israel and the Palestinians. It would set a two-year timetable for
concluding the talks on a permanent settlement of the conflict. Indeed,
the European initiative is in line with the current atmosphere in Europe
that has prompted a wave of decisions recognizing the Palestinian state
by several governments and parliaments.
Even if at this point it remains
unclear how the Palestinian diplomatic effort will end and what its
practical ramifications might be, the implications of these developments
are not insignificant.
Netanyahu’s decision to dissolve the
government and head for new elections places the US administration in a
bind regarding the potential impact of its decision about the resolution
on the Israeli election campaign. Media reports indicate disagreement
within the administration. Some support casting a veto so as not to
provide Netanyahu and the Israeli political right with a reason to rally
under the banner of “the whole world is against us” and draw the
electorate more rightwards. Others are less worried about the effect
that withholding the veto would have on Israeli voting trends, provided
the resolution is one that the United States could live with. In their
minds, the United States should work with the leading European nations
on formulating the resolution. Kerry himself told reporters at the State
Department that the United States would not have “any problem with [the
Palestinians] filing some resolution, providing it’s done in the spirit
of working with people to see how we could proceed forward in a
thoughtful way that solves the problem [and] doesn’t make it worse.”
The issue of US interference in
Israeli national elections is not new. This time, though, the issue
takes on a special twist given the difficult relationship between
President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu. (Presumably the
White House remembers Netanyahu’s support for Republican candidate Mitt
Romney when Obama ran for reelection in 2012.) Regardless of
administration considerations, a US refusal to veto a resolution
formulated through dialogue between the United States and the European
nations could have a positive effect on the Israeli election campaign,
as this would force the respective Israeli political parties and the
public in general to face the implications of a Security Council
resolution that determines the parameters for discussing a final
resolution. This would be very different from the previous election,
which focused on social and economic issues and allowed the political
parties and the electorate to avoid facing the critical issue of
Israeli-Palestinian relations.
In the context of the public debate
before the election, the issue of Israeli-US relations is also of
fundamental importance. The public will have to decide between two
diametrically opposed worldviews: one that sees the relationship between
the two nations as a key component of Israel’s strategic strength and
deterrence, and that holds that the leader who damages these relations
must be punished (which is what happened to Prime Minister Yitzhak
Shamir, who was beaten by Yitzhak Rabin in the 1992 election), and one
that sees Israel as “a nation that dwells alone” and maintains that
friction with other nations simply reflects inherent, generic
anti-Semitism. The proponents of the second view will support a
political leader who promises to resist international pressure and the
intention by the nations of the world to impose on Israel any policies
and moves they view as inimical.
If the election results in a coalition
government interested in genuine negotiations with the Palestinians, it
can make use of the Security Council resolution and begin discussion of
the core issues of the conflict while relying on the progress made in
previous rounds of talks. This would be a stark departure from previous
tradition, whereby any new Israeli government started talks from
scratch. This resulted in Israeli governments having to decide on
essential issues only at the ends of their terms, each time calling into
question their ability to realize the agreements they had made and meet
their commitments.Shimon Stein , Shlomo Brom
Source: http://www.inss.org.il/index.aspx?id=4538&articleid=8403
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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