The challenge IMO is that Israel can choose no more than 2 of the 3 things they seem to collectively want: Democratic, Jewish, expansionary. They cannot be all three, but no politician since Rabin has seemed willing to face that.
I think the problem is they haven’t decided what it is they want. They’ve just been improvising. I think the whole of their strategy has been: Can we get away with this? Yes we can. Okay, let’s do that then.
Some Israeli leaders have been well aware of this, but maybe it hasn’t been pushed hard enough that when you maintain a brutal occupation for so long, it doesn’t just affect the people you’re occupying, it also changes you.
I think what Netanyahu is doing is a step towards transferring the brutality and might-makes-right of the occupation onto civil society.
The empirical data does not look promising.
Never any shortage of those.
The early Zionists were pretty focused on simply getting the hell out of Europe, long before it became a literal hell for them. Ottoman-era Palestine wasn’t organized or developed enough to force the relatively small numbers of well-organized and effective Jewish incomers to make many hard decisions. During the Mandate period, the British in various ways limited the scope of what the Zionists or the Palestinians could do, albeit sometimes in different ways. Those limits did push the Jews into organizing in ways that developed into military and civil infrastructures that were focused mostly on securing their own communities in a context where there was little opportunity or perceived benefit in reaching out to the Palestinians. In part that was a product of deliberate British “divide and conquer” strategies; the Palestinians were also discouraged from making connections with the Zionists.
Even well into the statehood period after 1948 the dominant mindset in Israel remained a sort of left-liberal European secularism, which saw Judaism largely in a cultural and historical light. It wasn’t until the nation was more or less secure that you saw the serious rise of immigrants and native Israelis who saw the country in primarily theological terms. This sort of coincided with the realization that not only was Israel pretty much secure from threats by neighboring states, thanks to the IDF, but that it now had the capacity to actually expand into areas like the West Bank.
That combo of military power, a lack of regional opposition, an increase in the number and power of groups of vastly more Orthodox Jews, and the shift of international attention away from the “Palestinian issue” to other things after the failed Intifadas opened up a whole slew of possible futures, which given the shift in demographics and political power in Israel tended to flow along the lines of replicating a sort of Jewish super-state lifted with embellishment from what folks had learned in Hebrew school it seems.
It’s not that Israel doesn’t know what it wants, it’s that the people whose voices are dominant in Israel seem to want something very very different than what the Ben Gurion generation wanted (and yes, even they were often pretty cavalier about the impact of their actions on their neighbors).
I think this is fair, but the dilemma is still there whether they want to face it or not. They’re basically improvising their way to a choice, which is to drop democracy and keep Jewish and expansionary; while steadfastly pretending they aren’t doing that.
Perhaps. Maybe it’s better to say they want the impossible; that they refuse to choose a path that preserves democracy, because they think they can have all three. ‘They’ is of course problematic — different people want different things — but I think it’s fair to say that, as a polity, ‘they’ express their desires and get what we see.
I do agree that a good way to frame it is the “choose any two” out of three approach. Trying for all three ain’t gonna work.
In the most basic terms, continued (low-level) conflict is beneficial to Israel. They have a unifying enemy politically, and they get a huge influx of defence money from the US mainly. So why change anything? For the people in power and the upper rungs of society this is a very profitable arrangement.
A lasting peace would mean less money and a bubbling up of all those internal divisions that are held at bay by “external” conflict.
Ugh.
We have to stop funding this stuff.
It always saddens me, and baffles me, not to mention infuriates me, that a people who have been the subject of so much hatred and abuse will, when given power of our own, turn into the very people who tormented us. It’s one reason why I hate religious framing of political events. The number one thing that drives a lot of Israel’s otherwise inexplicable behaviors these days seems to be a deeply held conviction that Israel has a divine get out of jail free card and can do no wrong as long as we say the right prayers.
And yes, I do realize there is a lot off mundane “let’s use religion as a smoke screen for grabbing as much as we can” going on, in Israel and elsewhere, but I really do think that there are a lot of Israelis who truly feel they have some sort of divine mandate to do whatever they want.
Timex
4971
I think that perhaps Israel’s had their heart somewhat hardened after decades of everyone around them saying that they should be destroyed and pushed into the sea.
abrandt
4973
Except it seems to me that it’s hardened more and more as that threat has diminished.
Timex
4974
Israel is still pretty routinely the target of terrorist and rocket attacks, aren’t they? A cursory search shows that Hamas fired rockets into Israel as recently as a few weeks ago.
I can imagine that would not be cool to have happening. I don’t think Americans or Europeans would put up with that, would they?
ShivaX
4975
While it’s certainly not a good thing, it’s also not an existential threat like the wars from earlier in their history.
Rocket attacks vs tank columns and an advancing army (or armies) is a diminished threat by nearly any metric.
It’s insurgent action mostly.
It’s also a Catch 22 in that Israelis will put up with it forever because they can never change it. Any agreement otherwise is nullified by any small group doing it, much less organizations like Hamas. Which leads to often brutal retaliations by Israel. Which leads to more support for groups like Hamas. Which leads to more attacks. Repeat endlessly for longer than I’ve been alive or will be alive.
abrandt
4976
Yeah, and that’s the thing. The terror attacks they are currently the victims of are perpetuated by Israel’s actions. But like you said, it’s a cycle that’s basically impossible to break at this point.
Timex
4977
I feel like if you are a citizen, and people are shooting rockets at your home, with the explicit purpose of cooking you and other civilians… That probably feels like a completely existential threat. Because it is, in a very real, literal sense, right?
Certainly, such things aren’t an existential threat to the nation of Israel as a whole, which I believe is your point, but from the context of this discussion, I think that the people of Israel themselves have suffered under this kind of threat for so long that it may harden their own hearts when it comes to threatening others, so it may explain how they support the current government’s actions.
And if your own government profits monetarily from those continued attacks, and constantly takes actions to aggravate them, and never makes any serious attempt at resolving the conflict?
It’s sort of like the border crisis in the US. Resolving it would be bad for business- it would reduce the budgets of the border states and actively hurt US growth, so no one reaaaallly wants it except for the powerless people who are most affected.
Timex
4979
Honestly, I can hardly blame Israelis who do not believe that the Palestinians led by Hamas are capable of negotiating in good faith.
Specifically though, is Israel benefiting from the current violent situation? I don’t know if that’s actually true. I suspect actual piece would be more economically beneficial.
KevinC
4980
Certain people in Israel do. Like the guy who got reelected.
