It’s an article of faith that the results of Israel’s election this week show that the country has moved to the right. And yes, on one level the electorate shows a shift to the right from the current configuration. However, in the past 15 years, the Israeli electorate has moved pretty far to the Left.
Even Yitzchak Rabin, who ran as the candidate for peace in 1992 opposed the establishment of a Palestinian state. In 1992, promotion of a Palestinian state was the platform of Israel’s extreme Left. Now even Netanyahu, the ostensible leader of Israel’s Right, accepts the concept of a Palestinian state. That’s a huge shift. (And I don’t think it’s necessarily a good one. Concessions have not necessarily moderated the Palestinians, but they have strengthened the terrorists.) To deny this shift in Israel’s political spectrum is to be willfully blind.
The Wall Street Journal for its part seems to have read things correctly in Israel’s semi-right turn:
The rightward tilt is easy to appreciate. Under the leadership of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who broke away from Likud to form Kadima, Israel withdrew its settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip. This was an opportunity for Palestinians to showcase the benefits of independent statehood to an ambivalent Israeli public. Instead, Gaza descended first into anarchy and then into the control of Hamas, which used Gaza as a launching pad for firing thousands of rockets of increasing range and sophistication into sovereign Israeli territory.
Israelis aren’t eager to repeat the experiment by surrendering what remains of their control of the West Bank. That’s especially so since Hamas cemented its alliance with Iran, which in turn is moving rapidly to acquire a nuclear weapon. Many Israelis were disappointed that the Bush Administration didn’t do more to deter Iran, and they look skeptically at President Obama’s pledge to engage Iran diplomatically.
Still, it would be a mistake to interpret the election as evidence that Israelis have moved to the far right. Yisrael Beitenu — often denounced by the political left as crass and “fascistic” — barely increased its share of the vote, while the pragmatic Ms. Livni significantly outperformed her recent polling numbers. Much of her success, we suspect, owes to Israeli fears that Mr. Netanyahu, with his go-slow approach to the Arab-Israeli peace process, would quickly tangle with the Obama Administration, much as he did with the Clinton Administration during his previous time in office.
I don’t know why Netanyahu didn’t do better. I’m not convinced that it’s because Israelis feared a clash with the United States. Nor am I convinced that it’s because Israelis remember his previous tenure as PM not so fondly. More likely it’s like others who have written that he didn’t run far enough to the right, (not) effectively distinguishing himself and Likud from Kadima.
Similarly Meryl writes:
They voted for Likud and Yisrael Beitenu because Israel gave peace a chance. They tried land for peace. It didn’t work. Now, Israelis are going to give the Palestinians a government that won’t keep trying the same failed policies. Bibi Netanyahu has promised to work from the bottom up, instead of the top down, which is exactly what should be done. Let the Palestinians stop the terror first. It’s about time they stopped being rewarded for not fulfilling their end of any deal.
And of course, Israel’s “peace partner” hasn’t changed much as Mahmoud Abbas hysterically demands that the world treat Likud like Hamas. And while some coverage has made that equivalence, it’s just plain false.
The Israeli electorate has made slight shift to the right as a reasonable reaction to the bad faith of the Palestinians, but Israel’s electorate pretty far to the left of where it was when the “peace process” started back in 1993.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
