March 26, 2015

Israel: views on the election

Amira Hass, Phyllis Bennis and Gideon Levy consider the results of the recent reelection of rightwing Bejamin Netanyahu.

Comments on election in Israel: March 2015

Jim Crow in the Holy Land

By Phyllis Bennis, March 25, 2015. Originally in Foreign Policy In Focus

"Our own progress against racism in the United States remains too recent, too fragile, and too incomplete to go on abetting apartheid in Israel."

(excerpt)
"The U.S. relationship with Israel has sustained and cosseted an over-armed, nuclearized state that not only expropriates and occupies other peoples’ lands and deprives 20 percent of its own citizens of crucial national rights, but has also worked deliberately to derail U.S. and international negotiations with Iran. The United States can no longer welcome Israeli leaders who rely on openly racist provocations to win votes in support of apartheid policies or foolish wars.

A Normal Relationship

It’s time for an entirely new connection — one based not on a “special relationship,” but on the normal ties Washington shares with most other countries.

A normal relationship means reconsidering why U.S. taxpayers send $3.1 billion to Israel every year — that’s 55 percent of all U.S. military aid — when Israel, according to the IMF, is the 25th wealthiest country in the world." more

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Israel: The Morning After
By Gideon Levy

March 25, 2015  "The morning after the elections in Israel brings no optimism. With a little effort, however, even the pessimists can find some comfort. Benjamin Netanyahu’s victory, unexpected and unequivocal, will usher in another coalition of right wing zealots, nationalists, and the religious - resembling its predecessors but more uniform and sans fig leaf. We’ve already seen what such a government can do to Palestinians and Israelis: another war in Gaza, more mass arrests in the West Bank, additional anti-democratic legislation and more incitement against Arabs and other minorities in Israel. ...

Gaza can expect another cruel assault by Israel. The Palestinian Authority’s tax monies will certainly not be transferred to them promptly and maybe the Palestinians will be pushed one more time into rebellion’s corner, as doubtful a proposition as that may be - factoring in their internal rifts and the unhealed, still-bleeding wounds from the second Intifada.

Evil tidings, of course, also have an upside. One need not be a Marxist to understand that once all disguises are ripped apart, they are ripped apart on both sides: maybe that could presage something good. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in announcing on election eve that no Palestinian state would happen, did a good turn for Palestinians as well as for those Israelis and those abroad who strive for justice here. The false front fell away, and having dispensed with the artificial tableau we can now address the reality that was there all along: Israel has no intention of allowing the establishment of a Palestinian state. Israel has no intention of ending the occupation. Israel has no intention of heeding America, international law, or global public opinion. The relevant conclusion can and must be drawn: let us end this masquerade, this aimless and useless “peace process,” and begin anew in a different mode."... more

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Amira Hass on Democracy Now!  March 18, 2015

"AMIRA HASS: Not at all, not at all. The whole campaign was not about the real issues of war, of occupation, of Israeli continued colonization. The cosmetic differences between the Labor, which is now called the Zionist Alliance or the Zionist Camp, and Likud were minor, did not attract people’s real enthusiasm. What Netanyahu has been offering for the past years continues to be a winning horse for most of the people. That means the nonexistent welfare state in Israel proper now exists by the occupied territory in the forms of colonies, well-pampered colonies, so it is always an option for Israelis to move to the occupied territory to improve their conditions. Inside Israel, his policies guarantee that there will be continued the discriminated—the policy which discriminates Palestinians, Israeli citizens, from their—against the Israeli Jews. With a combination of support of the right-wing parties—of the religious parties, I think his position was guaranteed. The change would have been only in the puzzle—I mean, if he would get 28 seats and not 30 seats. So, for me, I didn’t expect much more.

And when people say that it is because he promised now not to have a Palestinian state, to do everything against a Palestinian state, his actions have done everything possible to prevent this from happening anyway. So it’s not about statements that the people fall to. I mean, it’s the reality that he’s established for the past—and not only he, other parties as well. So it’s not about the last-moment statements, I think, that—what guaranteed his position. Labor—anyway, the two-state solution that people, that other parties, like the Labor Party, advocate, I call it the 10-state solution or the seven-, eight- solutions, which doesn’t see Gaza in a Palestinian state, and the Palestinian state itself is a bunch of bantustans inside the West Bank."...