Israel Gathers Support from ‘Best Enemy’

• by Pierre Klochendler (jerusalem)
• Monday, May 02, 2011
• Inter Press Service

Netanyahu was stunned by two unexpected policy reversals. On Wednesday last week, the mainstream nationalist Fatah party led by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas announced in Cairo the outlines of an agreement aimed at bringing an end to their four-year schism.

Secretly brokered by the Egyptian caretaker government, the initial agreement regulates power-sharing between the two rival groups and commits them to form an interim government ahead of elections scheduled for the end of 2011.

Two days later, the Egyptian government announced that its Rafah border-crossing would open permanently 'within days' to the free passage of peoples and goods in and out of the Gaza Strip, thus alleviating the international siege imposed on the Hamas-ruled enclave.

The announcements were the first tangible fallouts on both Palestinians and Israelis from the upheavals that have transformed Egypt, a Fatah ally, and that are changing Syria, a Hamas patron. They also underscore the developing foreign policy of post-Mubarak Egypt.

The new Egypt has recognised the Muslim Brotherhood (to which Hamas has historical ties), and has undergone a rapprochement with Iran, Israel's nemesis and another Hamas backer.

This time, Netanyahu broke the self-imposed silence that has characterised the official Israeli reaction to its neighbours’ transition to, and fight for, democracy. 'The PA must choose between peace with Israel and peace with Hamas,' he warned in the immediate wake of the Cairo announcement.

Abbas retorted, 'Hamas is part of the Palestinian people. I can't exclude them. You, Mr. Netanyahu, are our partner. We can't exclude you. So we must take both sides — not choose between this and that. But you must choose between settlement activities and peace.'

Relations between the two Palestinian movements deteriorated after Hamas won parliamentary elections in 2006. A year-and-a-half later, following a brief fractional war, Hamas seized control of Gaza. The power of Abbas's Fatah shrunk to parts of the West Bank.

In pro-unity rallies personifying pro-democracy demonstrations in the Arab world, Palestinians have exhorted the feuding factions to reconcile. They realised that the persistence of a territorial-political divide between competing forces, with the Israeli occupation on top, might preclude the impending UN-endorsed recognition of statehood from having any plausible impact on the sovereignty of their future state. Netanyahu's 'either-with-us-or-against-us' conditions conveniently elude the accepted 'land for peace' paradigm of negotiations. And, it might actually reinforce the legitimacy of his government's position.

Hamas refuses to abide by the Quartet-endorsed principles that it renounce violence, accept past Israeli-Palestinian agreements, and recognise Israel's right to exist. Israel contends the agreement will allow the Islamic movement to stick to its uncompromising stance. Hence, the declaration in Cairo by Hamas official Mahmoud e-Zahar: 'Our programme does not include negotiations with Israel or recognising it.'

Until last week, Netanyahu's rejection of a settlement construction freeze seriously damaged the credibility of his declared commitment to peace. Scheduled to address the U.S. Congress in May, he was reportedly contemplating to present a counter-peace initiative so as to defuse the growing international impatience towards his policy.

Netanyahu will now present Israel's case against international recognition of Palestinian statehood more persuasively, branding the reconciliation agreement as evidence that the Palestinians are not interested in peace talks.

In a piece that would constitute the tenets of the Premier's speech in Congress, Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit warns, 'With the most insane timing, the U.N. is heading with eyes wide open toward a hasty decision that's liable to reignite the conflict and set the land afire.'

That's precisely what Netanyahu's counting on — the fear factor. The last thing the U.S. would want is another inferno that would fan the flames of the current regional blaze. Besides, the U.S. shares Israel's concerns of its Arab neighbours gradually sliding back to old enmity within a new regional order of Hamas-like parties eventually reaping the fruits of democratisation.

Haaretz political analyst Aluf Benn says 'the agreement provides Netanyahu with an escape from the rut he's fallen into because of the peace deadlock.'

So pervasive is the sense of helplessness amongst Israelis in face of the upheaval surrounding their country that the Palestinian agreement has failed to ignite a national debate on whether Netanyahu, in his two years in power, intentionally created such 'peace deadlock' — with the most moderate leader the Palestinians ever had.

Netanyahu's critics point out that he refused to restart negotiations where they were left by his predecessor. But for now, Netanyahu is safe, Israel's legitimacy is saved, and peace seems ever more unattainable, they bemoan.

Long gone are the days when, in a bid to convince his fellow Israelis, peacemaker Yitzhak Rabin argued that Israel must 'pursue the peace process as if there's no terrorism, and fight terrorism as if there's no peace process.' But the stern vision of an unsolvable conflict proposed by the Israeli Right has become the predominant narrative.

Hyping fears, cementing national unity constitute the forte of the Israeli Right. Appropriately for Netanyahu, Israel enters a period of national remembrance — of the Nazi Holocaust and of the 1948 war that brought about the State of Israel and the Palestinian Nakba ('Catastrophe').

Renowned novelist A.B. Yehoshua, an ardent activist in the Israeli peace movement, seems to surrender to the general pessimism. In a Haaretz article entitled 'Why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict refuses to be resolved', Yehoshua harks back to the elemental battle: 'Here something unique in human history took place: a nation arrived in the homeland of another nation to replace its identity with an ancient-new one.

'Is it still possible to resolve the conflict without ending up in the trap of a bi-national state? I believe so, but since it's a question I haven't been asked, I won't answer it now.'

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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