The Uniqueness Of Israeli Election
By Dr. Elias Akleh
16 February, 2009
Countercurrents.org
Elections all over the world very much look alike. The candidates talk about improving economic situations, creating jobs, cutting spending and reducing taxes, improving education, and increasing medical coverage and social services. But the Israeli elections have a unique characteristic that distinguishes it from all other elections. Israeli candidates talk about huge military spending, killing Palestinians, evicting them out of their homes, destroying their towns, stealing their land and building more illegal Israeli colonies.
The Israeli election was a competition between the Israeli parties, and their leaders, in expressing more willingness in shedding more Palestinian blood, more opposition to any peace negotiations, and ambition for more expansion in contravention to all UN resolutions and human rights.
Benjamin Netanyahu, whose Likud party had won 27 seats, is known for his extremist positions against Palestinians. He believes that peace negotiations are just a waste of time. He does not recognize any Palestinian partner in peace and does not want to talk even with the colluding Palestinian President Abbas, whose term has legally ended on January 8th.
Netanyahu does not believe in the two states solution. He is against any Palestinian return to their home land, and he asserts emphatically that undivided Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the state of Israel. Netanyahu calls for expansion and building more illegal Israeli colonies on Palestinian land. He is against any withdrawal from any part of the occupied land of West Bank, Gaza, and Syrian Golan Heights. He vowed to crush the democratically elected Hamas government in the Gaza Strip calling it an “extremist fanatic regime backed by the extremist fanatic government of Iran.” (AP).
Netanyahu’s ambition is to enlarge the conflict into the region by transforming the Arab/Israeli conflict and diverting it towards Iran. In the 24th January edition of the Wall Street Journal Netanyahu described Iran as the “terrorist mother base”, who provides weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon and to Hamas in Gaza. He justified the latest 22-days Israeli massacre of Palestinians in Gaza because “Israel cannot accept an Iranian terror base next to its major cities”. He wants Hamas-run government in Gaza be overthrown, and had faulted the outgoing Prime Minister Olmert for halting the onslaught on Gaza and withdrawing too early without finishing off Hamas.
Tzipi Livni, whose Kadima party had won 28 seats, does not differ much from Netanyahu in her hostile posture against Palestinians in general and Hamas in particular. Livni labels Hamas a terrorist group and calls for its destruction. Livni, Barak, and Olmert had planned and orchestrated Israel’s 22-days massacre of Palestinians in Gaza to improve the chances of a Kadima/Labor (Livni/Barak) coalition in the election. Livni was so proud of “regaining” the respect (fear) of the Israeli military after its defeat in the 2006 Lebanon war. She bragged to the Hebrew Ma’arev paper stating: “what better than a Livni/Barak government that can protect Israel from Hamas? We have destroyed half of Gaza, and have killed hundreds of terrorists. Who dares to oppose us after now?”
Although adopting the same anti-Palestinian policies like Netanyahu, Livni has a different maneuver of carrying these policies. She wants to follow the diplomatic, rather than Netanyahu’s aggressive, path. She wants to keep Kadima the preferred peace-negotiating partner for the “moderate” Palestinians. She wants to keep wasting Palestinian time and efforts in useless negotiations in order to give Israeli extremists more time to build more colonies and to draw more facts on the ground.
Livni, similar to Netanyahu, wants to expand the conflict and to divert Arab hostility towards Iran. In her speeches she claimed that many Arab leaders were not against Israel’s onslaught against Hamas in Gaza, because they, too, believe that Hamas is an agent of Iran. She claimed that Arab leaders perceive Iran, not Israel, to be the enemy and a threat to the region. To this endeavor Livni was successful in soliciting the help of the American administration and NATO naval forces to impose a tighter blockade against Gaza as part of a wider blockade against Iran.
Avigdor Lieberman’s party Yisrael Beiteinu had advanced his position by winning 15 seats, an improvement from the previous 11 seats. This is due to Lieberman’s bloodiest and extremist right position. Adopting the ideology of annihilation Avigdor Lieberman proposed nuking Gaza following the US example when it dropped the atomic bomb on Japan during WWII. He also called for bombing the Egyptian Aswan Dam to destroy Egypt. He wished Egyptian President Mubarak to “go to hell” accusing him of covering up “arms smuggling” to Gaza through tunnels. He wants to wipe Gaza off the map, and to transfer all Palestinians (including Arab Israelis) to Jordan and to Egypt. Lieberman has been called a “fascist” and a “racist” for his extreme rhetoric against Israel’s Arabs.
Unfortunately, Lieberman’s party has become the third largest political party in Israel. This made it the most sought after party to form a ruling coalition. Extremist racist Lieberman has become the decision maker of who will rule Israel.
Ehud Barak, the leader of the Labor party, is no better than the others. He, too, wanted to win the election on the expense of Palestinians. He was hoping that shedding Palestinian blood in Gaza might gain him more votes. During the 22-days onslaught on Gaza many Israelis supported this massacre. Yet when it was over without accomplishing any of the goals Barak had declared but brought international condemnation of Israel, this support dwindled leading the party to lose votes in the election. Labor won only 13 seats.
Another party to consider is the right-wing ultra-Orthodox Shas party that had won 11 seats. It is lead politically by racist Eli Yishai and religiously by the extremist Sephardic Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who is considered a “Poskim” meaning a decisor of Jewish Law. Yosef had established “responses”, religious rulings, calling for the annihilation of all Arabs. Such annihilation callings were distributed to the Israeli soldiers during their massacre of Gaza Palestinian. Yishai is presently negotiating with Netanyahu to form a political coalition.
The next Israeli government will be formed out of a coalition between some of these extremist parties. The main competition will be between a right-wing Kadima and extreme right Likud. It is actually a competition between two wings of original Likud, for Kadima was born out of Likud. The difference between them is not political, for both adopt the same anti-Arab policies, but leadership; who will lead the party. Each will try to win other parties, especially the third largest Yisrael Beiteinu, to its side. Political analysts tend to believe that Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu would form the new government.
No matter what shape the new Israeli government would take its anti-Palestinian policies would not change. It never did in the past. The main goal of the Zionist entity is the annihilation of the Palestinians and the supplanting of Zionist Jews in its place to build Great Israel. The difference between one government and the other is the intensity of carrying this goal.
Political experts agree that the results of the Israeli election had indicated a clear shift in the Israeli society toward the extreme right-wing and religious parties veering away from any peace settlement with Palestinians, and moving more towards further confrontation and conflict.
The Palestinian side looks at the results of this election with suspicion. Hamas official Fawzi Barhoum called the election results a demonstration of Israeli support for a government led by a “troika of terrorism”. He said “This troika, this trio of terrorism of Lieberman, Livni and Netanyahu chose the dramatic development in Israeli society towards terror”
Saeb Erekat, the top negotiator for the “moderate” Palestinian Authority, told Al-Jazeera that he does not expect any peace deal with the newly formed Israeli government. He said: “Any form of government as a result of these elections will not accept the two state solution, they will not accept the agreements signed, they will continue with the settlements activities and the incursions and the attacks”
The Israeli society that was built by terrorist gangs and militias (Hagana, Lehi, and Irgun) through shedding Palestinian blood since early 1940’s, and building their cities on Palestinian land, has progressively become more aggressive, oppressive and criminal. They had built their illegal Israel in the heart of the Arab World, and thus expect rejection and hostility. They resorted to their military leaders, who misguide them into believing that there is no peaceful solution, but constant war. The average Israeli man, and woman, of the street has become progressively more thirsty for Palestinian blood. This was clearly seen in their support for the late onslaught on Gaza using banned weapons. This tendency is also seen in their election of the most right-wing parties.
I can’t help but remember the words of the Israeli President, Shimon Peres, in Davos last month when he emphatically stated that “Democracy is not a matter of election, it is a civilization”. Israel had showed its civic spirit in its latest election.
