Thursday
Mar252010
Israel: So What is This Government Crisis? (Carlstrom)
Thursday, March 25, 2010 at 13:38 
UPDATE 1345 GMT: Laura Rozen of Politico has just posted a different view of the Israeli Prime Minister: Netanyahu departed Washington for Israel late Wednesday night, after what some sources described as a sometimes frantic last 24 hours of decision-making after a late night meeting with Obama at the White House Tuesday night.
Netanyahu was reported to have spent part of the day Wednesday in a secure room in the Israeli Embassy making calls back to advisors in Israel, after canceling a round of interviews he had been scheduled to have with the media Wednesday morning. He also met with Sen. George Mitchell and his advisors worked with Dennis Ross and Dan Shapiro to try to come to agreement on a written document of confidence building measures Netanyahu would agree to, but could not close the gap.
“Apparently Bibi is very nervous, frantically calling his ‘seven,’ trying to figure out what to do,” one Washington Middle East hand said Wednesday. “The word I heard most today was ‘panic.’"
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Gregg Carlstrom, writing for The Majlis, tells some home truths about the supposed crisis in the Netanyahu Government and its constraint on the Israeli Prime Minister:
Yedioth Ahronoth quotes a bunch of unnamed "commentators" -- every journalist's best friend! -- who think Netanyahu's coalition government is about to collapse. So does an unnamed minister from the Labor party, who thinks Bibi will have to replace right-wing parties like Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu with Kadima:
A Labor minister said Thursday that "the government in its current state may be in danger". But a senior Likud minister disagreed, saying that it was "too soon to assume that the composition of the coalition will change".
Israel Special: Obama-Netanyahu Meeting and the Settlement “Surprise”
I think the Likud minister gets it right. Coalitions don't just collapse, after all; Netanyahu would have to make some policy decision that causes the right-wing parties to withdraw.
Obviously we're talking about a settlement freeze in East Jerusalem -- a decision Bibi has shown no desire to make. He said this week that the Palestinian insistence on an East Jerusalem freeze would delay peace talks, calling it an "illogical and unreasonable demand." And Interior Minister Eli Yishai told a Shas-affiliated newspaper that construction will continue.
"I thank God I have been given the opportunity to be the minister who approves the construction of thousands of housing units in Jerusalem," Yishai said in an interview with ultra-Orthodox newspaper Yom Yom.
Daniel Hershkowitz, the science and technology minister (from the right-wing Habayit Hayehudi party) praised Netanyahu for standing up for (what he perceives as) Israel's interests; Silvan Shalom, the deputy prime minister, also commended Netanyahu for his response to "American pressure."
Doesn't seem like there's any crisis in this coalition right now. There will be, if Netanyahu freezes construction in East Jerusalem -- but that doesn't seem likely.
Reader Comments (9)
I think Hillary needs to pull a Madeleine Albright!
The crisis is with the United States. Our national interests are best served by a settlement freeze and an independent Palestinian state. In the long term it is difficult to see how we can continue to support an Israel determined to make the West Bank and East Jerusalem majority Jewish. But this continued settlement building must eventually lead to a majority Jewish West Bank and East Jerusalem. Continued settlement building simply makes our relationships with the Arab world worse. At some point we may find we will have to withdraw all support for Israel in order to have any relationship with the Arab and Muslim worlds.
How can there ever be a fully functional two State solution?? One of those States (the Palestinian one) would be split up between two areas (Gaza and West Bank) . Has anyone heard of East and West Pakistan????
Best solution is for Egypt to take back Gaza and Jordan to take back West Bank. The other often proposed solution for Israel to "go away" isn't going to happen.
Barry
The Egyptians will not take back Gaza and Jordan will not take back the West Bank. They have agreed with the other Arab states not to do so. One state solutions force Israel to choose between becoming either a non-Jewish state or a non-democratic state. This is what keeps the two state solution alive.
Robert,
I don't think a Hamastan is the answer either; which is what a Palestinian state will be.
Which leaves us with what? A unitary federal state composed of what is now Israel and what would be Palestine? Soft ethnic cleansing by making the Palestinian's lives so miserable they pack up and leave. The death of a thousand sword cuts by Islamic terrorism until all the Jews leave? There may not be any good answers. So what keeps the two state solution alive is that it is considered by most people the least bad one.
"The Egyptians will not take back Gaza and Jordan will not take back the West Bank. They have agreed with the other Arab states not to do so."
Hmm - I wonder why 1. they won't take these two territories back (after all, Israel took them from Egypt and Jordan and 2. why the other Arab States do not want them to take these teritories back. Perhaps the answer is because, to do so, would end the conflict?????
Barry
AAHH!! -- I hear you say -- It wouldn't end the conflict because Israel would still exist and occupy the land taken in 1948!!!
Barry
Which is, of course, why peace is so difficult. It is also why separating the United States from Israeli extremism and ethnic cleansing is so difficult. The simple policy of not giving aid to Israel because it is doing things not in our own self-interest doesn't work because not giving aid to Israel means turning it over to the not so tender mercies of its avowed enemies. And they really do consider the land taken in 1948 occupied territories.