The problem with Jordan isn’t Jordan so much as it is that Jordan is extremely weak. It’s a country with little in the way of resources, or an economy, a large Palestinian refugee population, hostile or quasi-hostile states on tis borders, and a very modest military capability. In terms of its social and cultural norms, it’s about as close as we’re going to get to simpatico in the region (after Israel, and these days that’s starting to be questionable in some ways), but being good friends with Jordan isn’t going to do much in the geopolitical sense.
Simply put all the options in the region for allies are terrible for one reason or another.
abrandt
4882
Yeah, they don’t have the oil riches of others in the region. They are in a geographically interesting location, though. And culturally having a successful example in the neighborhood might be really good.
I’ve been to Jordan a couple off times, and I really liked it. Folks are generally cool, the Roman ruins are great, and the overall vibe is a nice mix of old and new, east and west, all that. But it’s not a rich country for sure. More so now given that years of Saudi free oil ended a while back, and they were really late to the solar bandwagon. Which is a shame given that they get like 300+ days of sun a year.
marxeil
4884
The Likud party has been consistently the largest party at ~29% for a very long time now. The next biggest party, Yesh Atid has about 17-18%. Adding the extreme right wing and religious parties to the mix, always gave them a majority.
The 2021 elections were a kind of an anomaly, because a couple of right wing leaders (Bennet and Liberman) who’d normally would ally with Netanyahu, refused to do so again, mostly on personal grounds (Netanyahu is known for stabbing his allies in the back when the need arises). This time around they Bennet didn’t make it to the Keneset - his right wing voters turned to other, even more extreme rightwing parties, while Liberman who relies on the Russian community vote still made it. The left parties on the other hand were greatly diminished: Labor who used to be the ruling party until the mid 70’s barely made it with 4 sits (3 less than the previous Knesset), and Merets the real social liberal party didn’t make it at all.
The Arab vote is interesting. In 2021, Yesh Atid was only able to form a coalition with the support of their 2 parties who had 10 seats between them. This time this wasn’t enough. Note that the Arab population is about 18%, which could in theory secure 20 seats…
So if we take away the Arab vote (assuming that most of them would support a withdrawal from the west bank), the jewish population leans to the right. Maybe the wonky political system is playing against the right, because sure as hell most of them are good with what this government is doing.
It would take someone with far more savvy and language skills than I to dig in to Israeli politics to see just what the majority really wants. There are so many degrees of detail between “dismantle settlements and create a modern democratic state that isn’t specifically and exclusively Jewish” and “eradicate the Palestinians and make sure no one but Jews lives here.” I suspect the population of Israelis is distributed somewhere along that continuum, probably concentrated closer to the right perhaps.
Sharpe
4886
The problem is, any solution to the right of that is either a major transgression against the norms of civilization or mythical-religious fantasy (often both). And I do agree with you that the bulk of the Israeli electorate is to the right of “reasonable solution range” which leaves us in this screwed situation.
And, I think at this point there is no reason to believe the Israeli electorate is going to make a huge change for the better. So I continue to feel the US needs to disengage from this entire situation.
I think this is somewhat fair, but on the other hand, I’m a big fan of the aphorism that if you want to understand what a system is designed to do, observe what it actually does. It may well be the case that many, even most, Israelis don’t want to live in an Apartheid state that systematically oppresses the Palestinian people with a regime of lawless violence, but that is the outcome of the system they live in and enable as citizens. I don’t think you can absolve a democratic society of responsibility for what it does as a state, when it’s being done openly.
Very true. I think the challenge is figuring out what “the people” want in a democratic society, given that democratic in these cases varies considerably. It’s easy to figure out what Israel as a nation state wants from its actions. It’s harder to figure out what Israelis as individuals or groups of individuals want. Then again, it doesn’t matter that much given the reality of the world–actions of states are what counts mostly.
I don’t know. I think most Israelis want things (peace, growth, prosperity, well-being) that they believe require them to oppress the Palestinians and take their land in order to get. Some of them don’t want to do the oppression and the taking, but even many of those people believe that doing those things will lead to the outcomes they desire, so they elect governments that do them. It’s not like the government agenda is a secret. They know what they’re voting for. If enough of them were unwilling to pay that price, they’d have different governments.
I know nothing about Israeli politics (so here I am going on in a thread about Israeli politics!) but in the US a lot of foreign policy gets steered by unrelated domestic concerns. For example, Ukraine is (potentially, hopefully not) at risk of losing US support if the Republicans come to power, and pro-Russian Republicans aren’t philosophically pro-Russian (though perhaps they sense a kindred spirit of fascism) but simply anti-Democrat regardless of the policy, and Ukraine happens to be the policy. (Yes, there’s a bunch of Trump history that we don’t need to get into right now.)
Similarly, a lot of folks in the US will vote Republican because they’re anti-abortion or anti-tax, and if that results in some foreign policy they didn’t intend, they don’t care.
Now, for Israel this isn’t exactly “foreign policy” and I have to imagine it’s going to be top of mind for Israeli voters, but I wonder if there are other issues that bring voters to the polls and some of the support for these right-wing policies is incidental. Of course, this also must be a major driving issue for a lot of voters there, so maybe not.
abrandt
4891
I think you’re right, and I’d use that to argue that if someone on the left was to bring a solid solution to for actually resolving the Palestinian situation peacefully, that a lot of Israelis would jump on that because it’s what they actually want. In the absence of that it’s way easier for people to support a status quo(of oppression and settlement) that guarantees them the same level of security and prosperity without regularly impacting their personal lives.
Well, it’s a hard problem. There are two ways to solve the problem peacefully. One of them is to abandon the West Bank — including all the settlements — and actively help the Palestinians build a viable country there and in Gaza, but that means an end to Greater Israel and probably puts a damper on economic growth, at least in the near term. The other is to annex all of it while embracing secular democracy, making all Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza full citizens, but that means an end to Israel as a distinctly Jewish state. Neither of those is palatable to many, if not most, Israelis, so they’re stuck with the middle ground of aggressive colonialism and Apartheid. They’ll effectively annex the West Bank while oppressing and exploiting the native population there.
Sharpe
4893
The difficulty as I see it is that although those were the two paths to something like a solution, I feel like the time window has expired. It’s been 55 years. I’m not sure at the precise point where Israel went past the point of no return, probably sometime after Rabin’s assassination, but by now we are years beyond a viable path.
From a US POV, I honestly don’t see any reasonable approach other than disengage and contain.
For what it’s worth, I’ve long supported trading the specifically Jewish nature of Israel for a more inclusive and equitable democratic identity, a multi-faith, multi-ethnic democracy committed to free expression and liberal values. But clearly most Israelis didn’t want that, so in many ways I agree with what @scottagibson is saying. Israelis by and large do not seem to want Israel to be anything but a Jewish state. I still harbor some hope that there are a fair number of Israelis who would like to throw off the weight of religion entirely, but I admit that’s probably wishful thinking.
Sharpe
4896
I can’t really imagine how a multi-ethnic democracy in Israel would work. In fact, I can’t really see it working, which is why I feel like the time window for that idea has expired. There are multiple factors: decades of violence and oppression between the various ethnicities, and the incredibly thorny problem of the West Bank Settlements. As a specific example, I don’t see any chance for Israel to have the political will to remove the settlers, or to restore land to the Palestinians, or to compensate Palestinians for decades of land- and rights- deprivation. And without those things, how can a “true Israel democracy” actually work?
I haven’t seen a solution for years, sadly. Somewhere over the last roughly 25 years, Israel passed the point of no return in my view. I don’t know what the future holds but I have a strong preference that the US no longer be involved.
Is this a generational thing. Do we know whether younger generations have a more open view of Israeli identity, or are they even more dug in / radicalized?
Absolutely every bit of this.
Palestinian Authority has announced the end of security cooperation with Israel.
Timex
4900
They were cooperating with Israel?
