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Q. Is Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in trouble politically?

A. Recent weeks have witnessed a wave of popular protests in the West Bank against Fayyad. The backdrop is a worsening economic situation: rising prices, growing unemployment and unpaid government salaries. The demonstrators are calling on PA President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) to fire Fayyad.

Abbas presumably knows that no alternative prime minister will do a better job economically than Fayyad, who can take credit for successful Palestinian state-building in terms of security and governing institutions as well as the economy. Abbas also knows that Fayyad's reputation for good government and fighting corruption is a major factor in reassuring international donors that their contributions to the Palestinian economy are not being wasted. Moreover, it's clear that many of the PA's economic ills are linked to the global and particularly Israeli downturn, to foreign aid pledges that have not been honored and to the many constraints imposed by the occupation.

Still, Palestinian officials were clearly embarrassed during the Eid al-Fitr holiday in late August when Israel, in a gesture, allowed 150,000 West Bank Palestinians to visit Israel and many flocked to Israel's malls instead of doing their holiday shopping in Ramallah, where prices were reportedly higher. A second cause of embarrassment was economic statistics from the Gaza Strip that indicate that the Hamas-controlled area has a higher growth rate than the PA (albeit beginning from a much lower base). Hamas leaders, buoyed by support from Egypt's new Muslim Brotherhood leaders, hastened to pronounce that the demonstrations in the West Bank, which on occasion have turned violent, constitute "the PA's Arab spring".

Thus far, Abbas has rejected calls to dismiss Fayyad, who until the demonstrations against him was considered a potential political rival. One way Abbas is deflecting criticism is through the fanfare of going to the United Nations later this month to request observer state status for the PA. That act of defiance, in turn, is precisely one of the reasons cited by Israeli officials for rejecting Fayyad's request to improve Palestinian finances by renegotiating the 1995 Paris agreement regulating economic relations between Israel and the PA.

Here, then, we confront concentric vicious circles of deterioration: Palestinian-Palestinian and Palestinian-Israeli. As they say in French, 'plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose' (The more things change, the more they stay the same).

Q. The Israeli print media, television and radio appear to be shrinking in size and increasingly dominated by right-wing tycoons and bureaucrats. How is this affecting freedom of information and opinion about sensitive issues like Iran and the Palestinians?

A. It's never easy to discuss the media without losing a sense of proportion. To keep the record straight, it's important to note that Hebrew-language web-based news services continue to flourish and provide all shades of news and commentary. Indeed, as elsewhere, the web is almost certainly the primary reason why both the print press and major television networks in Israel are in trouble financially. Moreover, for a small country Israel has always had an unusual number of newspapers and news networks. That they can no longer all be sustained, particularly in difficult economic times, should not come as a surprise.

 

But even if we keep these factors in mind, the most recent developments are troubling. Two stand out: First, Channel 10, whose newsroom is considered left-wing and critical of Netanyahu (even though one prominent owner is right-wing American tycoon Ron Lauder), nearly closed down in recent weeks due to an inability to pay its debts to the government. Public pressure, even including from some public-spirited politicians associated with the political right, is keeping it alive--but just barely. Second, Maariv, long a relatively centrist paper and recently on the verge of bankruptcy, was purchased last week by a far right-wing millionaire settler, Shlomo Ben-Zvi, who in recent years bought and merged two other publications, Makor Rishon and Nekuda, that are associated with the West Bank settler mainstream. Most of Maariv's 2,000 or so employees will almost certainly now be fired and the paper, in one form or another, will come to reflect views of the far right of the current governing coalition.

Then too, both Yedioth Aharonot and Haaretz, two leading dailies associated with the left and center, have recently laid off large numbers of staff due to persistent deficits. Even Channel 2 with its more-or-less centrist newsroom is losing money, while the state-owned media, particularly Channel 1 and Israel Radio's Reshet B, are under constant pressure by politically-appointed government regulators to "balance" their coverage.

Are any of the media flourishing? Only Yisrael HaYom, the freebie daily owned by American Jewish right-wing gambling billionaire Sheldon Adelson, an avid supporter of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his policies. In five years, Adelson's paper, backed by a huge investment from his bottomless financial reserves, has garnered the largest national circulation, eclipsing Yedioth Aharonot. Needless to say, Yisrael HaYom is shamelessly pro-Netanyahu, particularly on issues like Iran and the Palestinians. Ben-Zvi, a business rival of Adelson, could now conceivably publish a competing major-circulation freebie that tilts even further to the right. That sort of media competition is hardly comforting to Israelis concerned over growing hawkish influence in the media.

That the opinion polls consistently register a majority of Israelis opposing some Netanyahu policies, for example regarding Iran, apparently infuriates right-wing critics of Israel's "traditional" leftist press, or what's left of it. I recently heard a very prominent commentator on Middle East affairs rant against the "conspiracy" allegedly launched by President Shimon Peres and Yedioth Aharonot to portray Netanyahu and his advocacy of an early military strike against Iran in a negative light. The long line of serving and former security chiefs who have criticized both Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak in this regard were portrayed shamelessly as helpless dupes of Peres and Yedioth.

That sort of argument bears three messages. One is that the media is still pluralistic and feisty. A second is that Netanyahu and the forces loyal to him are paranoid about criticism of their policies. And the third is that they are trying, with the help of hefty funding from people like Adelson and the new owners of Maariv, not merely to ensure "balanced" coverage but actually to silence criticism.

Q. Two weeks ago, you discussed a possible Egyptian demand to amend the military annex of the peace treaty with Israel to allow for full Egyptian military deployment in Sinai. Meanwhile, Israel's demilitarization agreement with Syria on the Golan could conceivably be threatened by the violence and anarchy there. Could these developments affect Israeli thinking on the territories-for-peace principle that underlies past and, hopefully, future peace agreements?

A. Here too, we must begin with a word of caution. While prominent Egyptian Muslim Brothers have demanded to revise the Israel-Egypt treaty, President Mohamed Morsy has carefully committed himself to respect "Egypt's international obligations". And with the exception of one brief violation of the treaty's Sinai demilitarization arrangements that was quickly corrected, all Egyptian troop reinforcements in Sinai in recent weeks have been carried out with Israel's permission as Morsy has acted resolutely to combat jihadist terrorists in Sinai.

By the same token, demilitarization arrangements on the Golan with the Assad regime have thus far--again with one brief exception--been maintained despite the widespread fighting in Syria and the crumbling of the regime.

The principle of territories for peace in Sinai was agreed by Egypt and Israel 35 years ago. With Syria under the Assads, territorial compromise has been a principle of negotiations since the 1991 Madrid conference launched the Israeli-Syrian peace process. Today, inevitably, opponents are taking advantage of events in Egypt and Syria to drive home what they argue is the fragility of the peace arrangements that are supposed to compensate Israel for making territorial concessions. Still, no one in Israel is seriously suggesting that Israel revoke what is left of the peace agreement with Egypt. And territories-for-peace talks with any Syrian regime are currently inconceivable. Hence this argument inevitably focuses on the wisdom of offering territorial concessions on the West Bank to the PLO leadership.

Thus far, I have seen no opinion polls that examine the effect of recent events in Egypt and Syria on the Israeli public's thinking about the territories-for-peace principle. In the months ahead, a lot depends on what happens in Sinai and Egypt and what the violence in Syria produces. Cairo has already virtually suspended travel by Israelis to Egypt--another blow to peace that bodes ill. But if the military arrangements between the two countries hold, and if the next rulers of Syria (or even southern Syria, if the country disintegrates) honor the 1974 Golan demilitarization agreement and develop a moderate regime that seeks peace, then it will actually be possible to state that the territories-for peace principle survived the "Arab spring". And if that principle can survive radical and even violent regime change in the Arab world, then it must be a good thing, worthy of emulation in the Palestinian sphere as well