Netanyahu’s two states and Arab droves?

Geoff Sifrin

TAKING ISSUE

Although at this writing the new Israeli government has yet to be formed – assembling a coalition to govern requires difficult horse-trading with different parties each with their own priorities – it is clear Netanyahu will again be prime minister.

In the South African political climate, with much hostility to Israel, SA Jewish leadership has for years taken a centrist position, forthrightly supporting the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – two independent states, Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace.

This is how Palestinians will achieve self-determination. They have emphasised that the majority of Israelis support this, including Netanyahu himself.

SA Jewish leaders even obtained from President Jacob Zuma a letter endorsing the two-state solution as the ANC’s official policy, which meant SA Jewry and the government could co-operate on Israel-related issues despite the ANC’s coolness towards that country.  

Then last week came the election’s tense end-game with Likud and the Zionist Union led by Isaac Herzog running neck and neck. And the huge surprise – or shock for some – after votes had been counted, with Netanyahu emerging with a crushing victory over Herzog.

The thorny problem for SA Jewish leaders is Netanyahu’s statement in the final hours of campaigning – under pressure to demonstrate toughness on security for rightwing voters – that he does not support a Palestinian state.

An interviewer asked him whether no Palestinian state would be created under his leadership; he answered: “Indeed.” He qualified it by saying elsewhere “…in the current circumstances”, and “any territory that you vacate will be used for an armed Islamist state against us”.

SA Jewish leaders will struggle to maintain credibility when their declared two-state approach flies in the face of Israel’s leader. The fact is, however, that the majority of Israelis do support the two-state solution, including many in Likud. And Herzog’s party represents a huge proportion of centrist Israelis who desperately want to end the conflict and stop controlling Palestinian lives.

It is their fear of the Islamist threat – and the bitter precedent of Hamas taking control of Gaza after Israel withdrew in 2005 – that keeps them from asserting this strongly enough.

The “current circumstances” referred to by Netanyahu seem unlikely to change in the short term as radical Islam attracts more followers and enlarges its reach. In the unstable Middle East, as Iraq and Syria are disintegrating and ISIS is growing, a newly-created Palestinian state could quickly be overrun by Islamist extremists.

South Africans need to understand Israel’s dilemma. You have to have your head buried in the sand not to see the threat radical Islamists pose to it – and to the world.

There is an even hotter potato for SA Jewish leaders. In his campaign’s final hours, when it looked like the Likud might lose, Netanyahu obviously panicked and said something he will have a hard time living down. He sent a warning to the rightwing on social media saying: “The rule of the Right is in danger. The Arab voters are moving in droves toward the polling places. The NGOs of the Left are bringing them in buses.”

The implication: Jews must respond to the Arab throngs – who are fully legitimate Israeli citizens! – by rushing to outvote Likud. Netanyahu wrote: “With your help, and with G-d’s help, we will put up a nationalist government which will safeguard the state of Israel.”

To South African ears this sounds racist, like the once-familiar cry in South Africa of “swartgevaar!”, even though Israel’s context is profoundly different. If comments about Arabs were made by a random Israeli in the street, it would not be newsworthy; when it comes from Israel’s prime minister, it is.

It is an achievement of which Israel can be proud that its Arab citizens participated vigorously. Whatever the views of individual Israelis, their full integration into society is crucial for the wellbeing of the state. The prime minister should never have made such a comment; Jewish Israelis have slammed him for it.

Returning to the starting point: how should SA Jewish leaders explain all of this to the ANC? This week we marked Human Rights day, 55 years after the Sharpeville massacre where police killed 69 unarmed blacks and injured 180 others who refused to carry the hated dompas identity document.

The day is also marked by the UN; safeguarding human rights has become a mantra for all enlightened societies.

Palestinian human rights are part of that goal. But one cannot ignore the world context and Israel’s existential fears. Radical Islam cares not a whit for human rights as understood by the West, the UN and South Africa.

South African Jewish leaders need to pose this challenge to Israel’s critics: “We support the vision of a peaceful, viable Palestinian state living alongside Israel. But if you cannot show us that it will not become merely another radical Islamist entity threatening not only Israel but the region and the world, then you have to understand the Israeli dilemma.”

Geoff Sifrin is former editor of the SAJR. He writes this column in his personal capacity.