There will be no struggle over the direction of the country as there has been for the last 20 months or so; the only struggle will be over which current Likudnik gets to hold the steering wheel steady.
Israel is faced with two major issues in its national life “the settlements and occupation in the West Bank, and the mitosis of society into two divergent halves“ one prosperous, one poor.
No matter if the next prime minister is Netanyahu or Sharon, no matter if Sharon remains in Likud or forms a new party, no matter if a dark horse like Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom or Likud rebel MK Uzi Landau gets elected instead, the basic facts of Israeli national life will remain not only unchanged, but unchallenged for the next couple of years.
Nobody who could get elected prime minister next year is going to try to uproot West Bank settlements; it's a political impossibility for the near future.
As for Sharon, he's said he would uproot some settlements in the West Bank interior, but only at the end of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, and that those negotiations can only take place once the PA has disarmed and dismantled terror organizations, stopped incitement and done the rest of what the road map says it must do.
Anybody who hasn't become convinced that Sharon works for bin Laden should, I think, take his statements at face value. Even if he was prepared to break his word a second time and make further unilateral withdrawals, he couldn't do it because he wouldn't have the support like he had for disengagement.
As for the chance of withdrawing from settlements via the road map, the Bush administration's peace plan remains exactly what it has been since its stage-managed kick-off in Aqaba over two years ago: a hopeless non-starter.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas would never dream of trying to disarm and dismantle Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades and the other terror groups as the road map requires.
It would mean full-scale civil war. So everybody can forget about the Palestinians living up to the road map.
AND PEOPLE can forget about the Israelis living up to it, for that matter. According to the road map, Israel has to dismantle 24 West Bank outposts where many hundreds of settlers live.
Before Gush Katif was destroyed, it was possible to hope that Israel would make good on this pledge. Not anymore, at any rate not for the near future. At most, maybe a few of the more negligible outposts will be removed.
The only "player" that could theoretically force the issue, that could hypothetically shove Israel into making further settlement evacuations in the next couple of years, is the US.
But in reality this isn't going to happen, not until 2009 at the earliest. The Bush administration is going down the tubes in Iraq; it no longer has the power to force an Israeli leader into doing something he really doesn't want to do; certainly not Sharon, and not even Netanyahu.
On the security front, my expectation is that Palestinians in Gaza will no longer be killing Israelis, while the West Bank will carry on like it's been for the last two years or get maybe a little worse, with somewhat more frequent ripples of terror.
But by no means do I see Intifada III breaking out; Israel has too strong a military hold on the West Bank, the security barrier is being completed, and the Palestinians are still reeling from Intifada II, no matter what their boasts are these days.
And if all hell does break loose, it won't matter if Sharon, Netanyahu or any other Likudnik or ex-Likudnik is prime minister; the response will be the same: Let the IDF win.
Economically, I think the overall situation will continue to improve as it has since Israeli security and the international hi-tech industry recovered, and it will get an additional boost from post-disengagement optimism.
The average Israeli will go on making steadily more money. The problem is that there are very few economically average Israelis; most are either well above average or well below.
And that isn't going to change whether the overall economy, the total income of Israelis gets bigger, stays the same, or contracts. Israel will remain a two-tiered society of haves and have-nots, and whoever gets elected prime minister next year isn't going to make a dent in that basic arrangement.
Sharon talks about undoing the damage to the poor that Netanyahu did as finance minister, but the prime minister went along with it enthusiastically for two and a half years; he won't make more than cosmetic changes at best. And if Netanyahu becomes prime minister again, he probably wouldn't be able to shred the social safety net much more than he already has, whatever his wish.
For the next couple of years, whoever runs the government, the ranks of the Israeli poor, as well as the gap between rich and poor, will continue to expand.
For the next couple of years, whoever runs the government, Israel's military policy toward Palestinian terror will be harsh.
For the next couple of years, whoever runs the government, settlements in the West Bank will go untouched.
But after a couple of years, if Israelis living near Gaza have reason to feel safe, as I think they will, the status quo will be broken again. Pressure will build in this country to extend disengagement to the interior of the West Bank, and to use the billions of dollars saved to fight Israel's war on poverty, to institute Israel's New Deal, to turn Israel back into one society instead of two.
And then there will be another struggle over this country's direction, only a much greater struggle than there was over Gush Katif and northern Samaria.
Until then, though, Israeli politics is just sport. So get out the sunflower seeds. Enjoy.
It doesn't matter who is in power
Rattling the Cage: Watching and waiting
LARRY DERFNER, THE JERUSALEM POST Aug. 31, 2005
Since Israel is now obviously in a transition period after the upheaval of disengagement, I thought I'd try to predict what the new, post-disengagement era is going to be like.
On the surface, it seems like we're heading for lively times, Binyamin Netanyahu vs Ariel Sharon for the leadership of the Likud and the country, a shake-up of the political alignment, a lot of bangs going off.
It will be fun to watch. Sunflower-seed consumption will rise.
But while there will be a great deal of turbulence in Israeli politics, Israeli government policy "no matter which Likudnik ends up running the government" is going to be static.
Nothing big is going to change for the next two years or so.
There will be no struggle over the direction of the country as there has been for the last 20 months or so; the only struggle will be over which current Likudnik gets to hold the steering wheel steady.
Israel is faced with two major issues in its national life “the settlements and occupation in the West Bank, and the mitosis of society into two divergent halves“ one prosperous, one poor.
No matter if the next prime minister is Netanyahu or Sharon, no matter if Sharon remains in Likud or forms a new party, no matter if a dark horse like Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom or Likud rebel MK Uzi Landau gets elected instead, the basic facts of Israeli national life will remain not only unchanged, but unchallenged for the next couple of years.
Nobody who could get elected prime minister next year is going to try to uproot West Bank settlements; it's a political impossibility for the near future.
As for Sharon, he's said he would uproot some settlements in the West Bank interior, but only at the end of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, and that those negotiations can only take place once the PA has disarmed and dismantled terror organizations, stopped incitement and done the rest of what the road map says it must do.
Anybody who hasn't become convinced that Sharon works for bin Laden should, I think, take his statements at face value. Even if he was prepared to break his word a second time and make further unilateral withdrawals, he couldn't do it because he wouldn't have the support like he had for disengagement.
As for the chance of withdrawing from settlements via the road map, the Bush administration's peace plan remains exactly what it has been since its stage-managed kick-off in Aqaba over two years ago: a hopeless non-starter.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas would never dream of trying to disarm and dismantle Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades and the other terror groups as the road map requires.
It would mean full-scale civil war. So everybody can forget about the Palestinians living up to the road map.
AND PEOPLE can forget about the Israelis living up to it, for that matter. According to the road map, Israel has to dismantle 24 West Bank outposts where many hundreds of settlers live.
Before Gush Katif was destroyed, it was possible to hope that Israel would make good on this pledge. Not anymore, at any rate not for the near future. At most, maybe a few of the more negligible outposts will be removed.
The only "player" that could theoretically force the issue, that could hypothetically shove Israel into making further settlement evacuations in the next couple of years, is the US.
But in reality this isn't going to happen, not until 2009 at the earliest. The Bush administration is going down the tubes in Iraq; it no longer has the power to force an Israeli leader into doing something he really doesn't want to do; certainly not Sharon, and not even Netanyahu.
On the security front, my expectation is that Palestinians in Gaza will no longer be killing Israelis, while the West Bank will carry on like it's been for the last two years or get maybe a little worse, with somewhat more frequent ripples of terror.
But by no means do I see Intifada III breaking out; Israel has too strong a military hold on the West Bank, the security barrier is being completed, and the Palestinians are still reeling from Intifada II, no matter what their boasts are these days.
And if all hell does break loose, it won't matter if Sharon, Netanyahu or any other Likudnik or ex-Likudnik is prime minister; the response will be the same: Let the IDF win.
Economically, I think the overall situation will continue to improve as it has since Israeli security and the international hi-tech industry recovered, and it will get an additional boost from post-disengagement optimism.
The average Israeli will go on making steadily more money. The problem is that there are very few economically average Israelis; most are either well above average or well below.
And that isn't going to change whether the overall economy, the total income of Israelis gets bigger, stays the same, or contracts. Israel will remain a two-tiered society of haves and have-nots, and whoever gets elected prime minister next year isn't going to make a dent in that basic arrangement.
Sharon talks about undoing the damage to the poor that Netanyahu did as finance minister, but the prime minister went along with it enthusiastically for two and a half years; he won't make more than cosmetic changes at best. And if Netanyahu becomes prime minister again, he probably wouldn't be able to shred the social safety net much more than he already has, whatever his wish.
For the next couple of years, whoever runs the government, the ranks of the Israeli poor, as well as the gap between rich and poor, will continue to expand.
For the next couple of years, whoever runs the government, Israel's military policy toward Palestinian terror will be harsh.
For the next couple of years, whoever runs the government, settlements in the West Bank will go untouched.
But after a couple of years, if Israelis living near Gaza have reason to feel safe, as I think they will, the status quo will be broken again. Pressure will build in this country to extend disengagement to the interior of the West Bank, and to use the billions of dollars saved to fight Israel's war on poverty, to institute Israel's New Deal, to turn Israel back into one society instead of two.
And then there will be another struggle over this country's direction, only a much greater struggle than there was over Gush Katif and northern Samaria.
Until then, though, Israeli politics is just sport. So get out the sunflower seeds. Enjoy.
Posted by Ted Belman at September 1, 2005 07:54 AM