Rabin Square

On my way back home from a friend's house, I passed by Rabin square during the annual rally commemorating PM Yitzhak Rabin. Both Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni spoke on stage, and were equally unimpressive. I don't think I can name a single Israeli politician who can give a decent speech (some say Menachem Begin could, but that was before my time).

There were some 50,000 people there, and the atmosphere was as gloomy as ever. These are the remains of “the Peace Camp”, once a real power in the political arena and now a nostalgic movement which hangs on to the memory of its dead leader. The left is going to crash in the next election, and the only active political force advocating negotiation with Israel's neighbors is Kadima – a party formed mostly by Likud members. If the historical role of the left was to get Israel to leave the occupied territories on its own will, it failed to fulfill it. Israel has left Gaza and Lebanon, and will leave the West Bank, due to terrorism and international pressure. We lost the debate.

An Obama Effect?

Most Israelis were just waking up when John McCain conceded and Barack Obama was officially declared the next president of the United States. On Monday you could still find articles predicting [in Hebrew] that in the end “The Real America” will have the last word and McCain will win. On election day there was an ugly article on Ynet by Naomi Ragan, the right-wing religious novelist, who quoted most of the rumors about Obama as if they were facts (for example: Obama's campaign was funded mostly by rich Arabs, some of them from Gaza). Reading this article again this morning was particularly fun.

As for myself, I guessed a 318-220 victory for Obama and 52-48 on popular vote, which was not that far-off.

We will have to wait for tomorrow's papers to see what the pundits have to say about the outcomes effect on Israel and the middle east. Meanwhile, here are some of my thoughts.

The US support of Israel– both diplomatically and financially –will remain the same. Assuming Israel will continue asking the US for permission to use military force (like it probably did before the attack on the nuclear facility in Syria) we will not see major change in security issues. The million dollar question is what will happen if Israel wishes to attack the Iranian nuclear facilities. My guess is that for as long as the US is in Iraq, nobody in Washington will care to open a third front (this goes for W as well on his two remaining months in the White House).

So what difference does the presidential election make? Well, the US has direct influence on two key issues here: the peace negotiations and the settlements, especially those around Jerusalem.

In his eight years in office, George W. Bush didn't do much to reignite the peace process. Instead, he supported unilateral steps taken by Israel, such as reoccupying the West Bank cities and the withdrawal from Gaza. The result was an increase in the power of all extremist groups in the region, most of all the Hamas. Lately, there have been signs of a change in policy, the result of Condoleezza Rice's efforts. As I wrote before, there is a learning period for any new administration, so it will take some time before we can evaluate if there is a real change in policy.

During this time, Israel will build settlements. We have been doing it for more then 40 years, regardless of the identity of the guy in the oval office – or in the PM office in Jerusalem for that matter.

All settlements are harmful, but some are worst than others. Even the neo-cons and neo-Zionists around Bush didn't allow Israel to build in the area called E1, east of Jerusalem. The Israeli plan is to build there a Jewish neighborhood, an industrail park and even a few hotels, that will eventually be part of Jerusalem, thus diminishing the last option to divide the city into Israeli and Palestinian capitals. And if Bush didn't allow it, nobody else will. Hopefully, Obama's people will also keep a closer eye on other construction project in the West Bank, which only serve to to prevent the two states solution.

Finally, there has been some talk on the influence of an Obama victory on Israeli politics, and especially on the results of the general election in February. Some people, both here [Hebrew] and in the US, think that the “Change” massage coming from America will help those candidates who are perceived as “fresh” (aka Tzipi Livni). It has also been speculated that Netanyahu will be considered as someone who will find it harder to deal with the new president, given his hawkish stands. However, one might also claim that some voters will move to the right, in hope of a government that will stand up to American and international pressure towards concessions. But most importantly - in order to have an Obama-like spirit of change, you must have an Obama-like candidate. We don't.

The Problem with Barak

Colonel Yaakov Vilian had one of the most sensitive jobs in the Israeli administration: until a year ago, he was the intelligence officer of the Prime Minister's office. Every day he had to prepare a resume of the most important information gathered by the IDF and the other security services, including the Mossad and the Shabak, report it to the PM, and be prepared to answer any question. To Ariel Sharon he even read the daily briefing out loud sometimes.

Vilian was considered a very professional and non-partisan officer. That's why he was able to serve under four different PMs, from the right and the left alike. This weekend he gave Ben Caspit from Maariv his first interview ever, in which he revealed some very interesting inside information on Ehud Barak's negotiations with the Palestinians and the Syrians during his short term in office (the second Intifada started after the failure of the Camp David talks between Barak and Arafat on the summer of 2000; the negotiations with Syria collapsed several months earlier). Here are some experts from this interview:

Q: Didn't the Intelligence warn PM Ehud Barak from another round of violence in case the Camp David negotiations fail?

A: “They did. And there were memos written, but the head of state can decide do what he wants. That's why he's there. He has the right to ignore the intelligence. Maybe he thinks the intelligence units are unaware of all factors, that he can still make it. In his view, [going to] Camp David was a daring move, a leap forward, and one couldn't tell which way it would turn. So he was warned that if he fails it will end in a clash, but in his mind he didn't give up anything there, not an inch of land. By the way, it wasn't only the intelligence that warned him. [Then ministers] Shimon Peres warned him, Haim Ramon warned him. Everyone did.”

Q: Did Yasser Arafat initiate the Intifada, or was he dragged into it?

A: “when the violence started, Barak sent me a note asking me just that. I wrote him my opinion... it could well have been that Arafat had lost control over the events. It could have been that even if he would have ordered to stop the violence, his people wouldn't understand how to interpret this, if it's for real or not. The Intifada fed itself. It moved on i's own.”

Q: The Question is whether Arafat wanted it or not.

A: “I can't say if Arafat planned for it to go on for years. He might have wanted something much shorter, but it got out of hand. I don't know of any meeting between Arafat and his people in which he ordered them to start the Intifada. But I don't know of any opposite order as well.”

In his famous 2002 interview to Bennie Morris in the “New York Review of Books”, Barak (who already left his office) rejected the notion that the Palestinians were dragged to Camp David, and that the talks were bound to failure. He also claimed that the level of violence on the Palestinian side was under Arafat's complete control at all times. But as we learn now, Barak was warned that he is pushing the Palestinians into a corner, and that the outcome might be catastrophic.

In the months and years to follow Camp David, Barak continued insisting it was a bald move that “exposed Arafat's true face.” He continue to claim so even now. I think Camp David also exposed some things about Ehud Barak, his style of decision making and his political philosophy.

On two matters it seems that Barak did do the right thing, at least in Colonel Vilian's opinion:

The first is that contrary to what some of Barak advisors had said in the past, Vilian believes that there was no real opportunity to reach a peace agreement with Hafiz al-Assad when Israel and Syria met in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, on January 2000.

“Assad the father was in no condition for a move like that at the time,” says Vilian. “He was shifting between Alzheimer and Parkinson, and suffered from dementia attacks, and Barak knew it. I wrote him a memo on the matter. Physically, Assad couldn't have gone for such a move.”

Vilian also gives Barak credit for a correct reading of the situation on the matter of the withdrawal from South Lebanon:

“He [Barak] was warned [by the intelligence] from something that eventually didn't happen. He was told that if we were to leave Lebanon, the North of Israel will immediately turn into a war zone. He was warned that it will be a catastrophe. It didn't happen. You got to give him credit for that.”

What's the final score for Barak? It has been, and will be for some time, the big debate in the left wing in Israel. I think Barak has a tendency towards dangerous arrogance, that leads him believe strongly in unilateral acts (even when they are disguised as a bilateral process, like in Camp David). But some people, like Meretz's Zehava Gal-On, think he is the only leader willing and able to take the bald steps necessary to move forward the peace train. This has yet to be proven.

obama for president

Aluf Benn predicts in today's Haaretz, that the next president of the US won't be too involved in the Arab-Israeli peace process. “Ever since efforts failed to achieve final-status agreements between Israel and Syria, and Israel and the Palestinians, in 2000, U.S. policy has been to 'contain' the Israeli-Arab conflict”, writes Benn, and concludes that more urgent problems – such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the economic crisis – will prevent a change of policy, regardless the identity of the winner in the upcoming election.

To that we can add the fact that no administration has ever been very effective in the Palestinian-Israeli front on the first two years in office: it takes time before the administration forms its own ideas in regards to the middle east, and more time before medium level envoys (and above) arrive, and even then, both sides here are very good at playing tricks on the new guy: the Israelis promise him to stop building settlements and to dismantle some of the road blocks, but somehow by the next visit of the American envoy, there are new Jewish neighborhoods on the shrinking Palestinian land and more road blocks. The same goes for the Palestinian promises to fight terrorism and stop the anti-Israeli, and sometimes anti-Semitic, propaganda (though most observers agree there has been a significant improvement on these issues in the West Bank recently).

It took Bush the father three years to drag PM Yitzhak Shamir to the peace conference in Madrid, and Clinton offered his peace plan only when the negotiation reached a deadlock in 1999. By this time, it was too late. With McCain or Obama we might not have to wait seven years, but it's clear that there won't be any peace initiative coming from Washington before 2010.

With all this in mind, there will still be a big difference between the effects that each of the candidates might have, if elected, on the dynamics in the region. McCain's, one must admit, will probably have a shorter learning period of the issues. But the real danger is that he will follow the policies of the current administration towards Israel, and that's not something we can afford.

Already, some people wonder if the two states solution is still applicable, and with the growing settlements and the Hamas gaining power, it's clear that in five years or so, establishing a Palestinian state will be all but impossible. Even now it's hard to see an Israeli prime minister who will be able to pay the political price of taking down more than a handful of settlements. The Bush administration has practically given Israel a carte blanche in all of the west bank but Jerusalem. An Obama administration might change that.

Obama also seems more careful with the idea of using military force to change the political dynamics – something both PM Sharon (in the territories) and Olmert (in Lebanon) - tried to do, again, with America's support. It is more than likely that Netanyahu will be Israel's next PM, so we could use someone in the White House who can restrain him a bit. And finally, there is the Syrian front, where the Bush administration actually prevented the negotiations between Olmerts government and Assad after the war in Lebanon. It's hard to see Obama taking the same approach.

So I support Obama, but we shouldn't get our hopes up too high. No American president will save the Israelis from themselves.