What the right has to offer

[bemildred]

The right won. The one clear result of this war is that the left suffered another fatal blow and the rightist camp was strengthened. The prevailing wisdom now is that not only is there nobody to talk to, there is nothing to talk about. Not only did we withdraw from Gaza and get Hamas and Qassams, we withdrew from Lebanon and got Hezbollah and rockets. The conclusion: no more withdrawals. Just before Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman translate this cognitive erosion into electoral achievements, one must ask: Where are they leading and where are we going?

The right has to come up with some answers now. All the despairing leftists and the new and confused enlistees in the right must stop and ask themselves: What exactly is the developing right actually offering? While in Syria, for example, they are thinking about the long term, and its president Bashar Assad has a vision for future generations to make Israel surrender, the Israeli discourse is characterized by total evasion of any long-term thinking. At most, the talk is about tomorrow. There's a reason for this: the Israeli right has no solutions. For the long term, there are only two real possibilities: transfer, or an end to the occupation. The sane right still rejects transfer, and ending the occupation is not its way. Since there is no other way, the right cannot offer anything beyond the next war. The demand for long-term solutions, therefore, is an urgent one.

---

The idea that the Palestinians will surrender and the Arabs give in is a twisted idea that doesn't have a chance. Recent years have already taught us - the hard way - that things are moving in the opposite direction. The Palestinian resolve to be free today of the occupation is much greater than it was 20 years ago; Syria has not conceded the Golan and the Arab states will not stand by idly forever. Islamic extremism is growing in strength, and there is no Israeli consensus about what to do about that except for continuing to arm, which is nothing more than a false formula, as the latest war proved.

Time only increases the dangers faced by Israel, which is walking down the rightist path to an abyss. In effect, it has never really tried any other path. It has never tried to truly end the occupation. The Oslo Accords were never properly implemented, and in any case, were not enough to end the occupation; Ehud Barak offered what he offered, but never actually implemented anything; the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, while continuing to keep it under siege, did not end its occupation. The left's approach has never been tried, so why despair of it?

Haaretz

[MadMaddie]

1. Ummm if you replace Israel with the US and Lebanon with Iraq...

and a few names here and there....we are talking about the same story aren't we?

[msmcghee]

2. I thought this was your analysis at first.

But seeing as it's Haaretz, it seems that the left can no longer deny the reality - the only long term plan that has any hope of succeeding is for Hamas and Hizbullah and Syria and Iran to get over it.

As long as they think that Israel will pull punches to avoid criticism from the west - or is actually weak enough militarily that Israel can be attacked successfully - they won't be over it.

That's the reality for anyone to see - supported by 60 plus years of evidence that has never suggested any other possibility - despite the wishful thinking of many in the west and even substantial numbers in Israel.

The peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan were signed after humiliating defeats that were painful enough and politically expensive enough that the leaders of those countries decided that perhaps peaceful cooperation with Israel wasn't such a bad idea.

Now, perhaps with the realization that Israel is now the really pissed-off crazy guy on the block, and who knows what they'll do next time - I mean they just about destroyed Lebanon over a couple of kidnapped reservists (it was really much more than that) - I expect Israel's enemies to talk big for while - like all bullies - like Nasrallah and Almedinijad have been doing - and then maybe find some other way to rip off their people and keep them poor besides using Israel as the mean monster who is out to drink Arab baby's blood.

[bemildred]

3. This is not the sort of thing I would write.

I was interested in the Alice-in-Wonderlandy sort of logic that prevails in Israeli internal politics. This was a good example.