Weekly Commentary: Time for substantive debate – not “do something” slogans

Dr. Aaron Lerner Date: 24 December 2014

Herzog. Livni and now Liberman and Kahlon have all adopted a common slogan
in their campaign against Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: we have to “do
something”.

But what’s the “something”?

And just how well does that “something” stand up to public scrutiny?

This week Livni had a photo op at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, proclaiming
that it would always be under Israeli control.

Netanyahu retorted that if the final status arrangements that Livni appears
to support were implemented that safe access to the Western Wall might
require an armored carrier.

Is Prime Minister Netanyahu’s assessment reasonable?

His remark certainly provided Livni the opportunity to address the efficacy
of the various options for dividing the city into a patchwork of
sovereignties with schemes involving third party observers and even third
party security forces.

But instead of rising to the challenge Livni snapped back that Netanyahu was
dredging up slogans from past election campaigns.

Now wait a moment: the slogans from previous election campaigns were that
opponents of Netanyahu want to divide Jerusalem.

Were the slogans incorrect?

Of course not.

That’s exactly what Herzog and Livni – and now apparently Liberman and
Kahlon – want to do!

And since they want to divide Jerusalem, then they damn well owe it to the
Israeli voters to explain why they are so confident that the situation on
the ground couldn’t possibly deteriorate to the point that, as Netanyahu put
it, safe access to the Western Wall might required an armored carrier.

But just how important is the efficacy of their programs?

Here’s the realpolitik argument: the efficacy of Israeli proposals are
irrelevant because the Palestinians can be relied upon to always reject
them.

Israel, therefore, should make ever more generous proposals – not because
they will actually help to close a deal with the Palestinians but because
feeding the world’s insatiable desire for Israeli concessions can placate
Europe and the Obama White House.

Or so the argument goes.

An argument that, among other things, ignores the possible significance of
the shift in emphasis from a Palestinian-Israeli deal to a regional
solution.

This is because the “regional solution” approach can make possible the
creation of a sovereign Palestinian state in which regional and other third
parties ostensibly fill the gaps preventing the conclusion of a deal between
Israel and the Palestinians.

Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Liberman has been writing and talking about
this for decades.

He openly has stated that Palestinian compliance – in particular Palestinian
compliance regarding critical security matters - can be rendered irrelevant
by having third party security forces deployed inside the Palestinian state.

Again: Avigdor Liberman would support the creation of a sovereign
Palestinian state if the Jordanian and Egyptian armies were willing to
deploy respectively in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

And while my sense is that Jordan, Egypt, the Saudis and pretty much every
other potential participant in a third party security force don’t want to
get involved in such an enterprise, there is a very serious potential danger
that Israeli rhetoric about a “regional solution” snowballs into an
initiative that essentially compels some third parties to contribute the
forces for implementation.

This is, therefore anything but a secondary or tertiary issue for these
elections.

“Do something” should not be an acceptable slogan for a serious candidate.

Voters deserve to know not only what candidates propose to do but also be
provided with serious analysis and debate of their proposals.

Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)
(Mail POB 982 Kfar Sava)
Tel 972-9-7604719/Fax 972-3-7255730
INTERNET ADDRESS: imra@netvision.net.il
Website: http://www.imra.org.il