Alpher offers a review of the outgoing year, 5772, on domestic issues, including the economy and the social justice movement, international affairs of the past year, including Netanyahu's failures, and a forecast for 5773.
Q. The Jewish New Year is upon us. How do you summarize the outgoing year, 5772, which ended earlier this week?
A. All in all, this was not a good year for Israel's interests and for US-Israel relations.
Q. Let's start with domestic issues during 5772.
A. Israel's economy began seriously to contract in the early summer, joining the global trend but also reflecting neglect and mismanagement on the part of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Most of the promises made to the dynamic summer 2011 social justice protest movement regarding easier mortgages and lower taxes and prices were shelved without ceremony. So were commitments to expand military service to the Haredi and Arab sectors. Ostensibly, this last reversal was the victim of the collapsed unity government Netanyahu briefly maintained with Shaul Mofaz and Kadima. In fact, Netanyahu's dependence on Haredi coalition support trumped all other economic considerations, particularly with elections looming in early 2013.
The single ray of light in the economic picture in the past year was the emergence of certainty and a clear timetable regarding the supply of natural gas and eventually the export of gas from Israel's new discoveries in the Eastern Mediterranean. What also emerged was a thicket of potential international complications and disputes with Lebanon and possibly even Turkey over drilling rights, with Cyprus and Greece (meaning, happily, the European Union) in the same camp as Israel.
Another striking characteristic of the past year was the Netanyahu government's fixation on the issue of illegal African immigrants, whose numbers--a few tens of thousands--were trumpeted as a threat to Israel's Jewish character even as expansion of settlements and conscious neglect of a peace process with the Palestinians brought ever closer the real demographic threat to Israel. By year's end, near-completion of the border fence with Egypt coupled with a draconian crackdown on the Africans seemed to have eliminated the "threat"--at least until the Eritreans and Sudanese discover the Jordan-Israel border.
Apropos the absence of a peace process, the departing year witnessed more and more creeping annexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem by the Netanyahu government. Unfettered by serious international and Arab pressure, the settler-right-wing coalition simply kept building and expanding the settlements. When forced by the High Court of Justice to observe the niceties of the rule of law and dismantle Migron and the Ulpana neighborhood in Bet El, the coalition reassured its followers by building ten times as many new dwellings as those destroyed. That's where at least some of the money went that should have been spent to satisfy legitimate social justice commitments and to combat poverty and hardship at home.
All in all, a growing number of Israelis, Palestinians and outside observers concluded during the passing year that the prospects for a viable two-state solution had been seriously reduced, with potentially catastrophic ramifications for Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state.
The social justice movement, incidentally, helped bring to the fore two political leaders who may or may not make a significant impact in elections in 2013: Labor's Shelly Yacimovich, and the TV personality Yair Lapid who spent most of the past year laying the foundations for a new center party. On the other hand, the year witnessed the removal of Tzipi Livni from the leadership of Kadima. The man who bested her for the leadership, Shaul Mofaz, proceeded unimpressively to join then quickly leave the Likud coalition, and in general gave the impression that he was leading Kadima to oblivion. Netanyahu--"King Bibi" according to Time magazine--ushered out 5772 with his political stature virtually unchallenged despite a year of few positive accomplishments other than the repatriation of Gilad Shalit.
Netanyahu's failures were particularly apparent in the international sphere.
Q. What happened there?
A. Israel's overall isolation grew acutely. With no peace process, no prospects for a peace process and the Israeli settler right wing increasingly triumphant, the moderate Palestinian leadership took its distance, pursuing the option of United Nations recognition and, by year's end, beginning to explore the possibility of unilaterally withdrawing from the Oslo accords. Meanwhile, the Obama administration had its eyes on the November elections, the European Union was consumed by its financial crisis, and the Arab world was preoccupied with its revolutions. All marked Israel as the primary culprit, even as they did nothing about it. Under these circumstances, the global movement to delegitimize and boycott Israel picked up steam.
Toward year's end, the Israel Foreign Ministry mounted a campaign to portray the suffering experienced by Jews who immigrated to Israel from Arab lands in the early years of the State as a refugee issue that is somehow akin to the narrative of the 1948 Palestinian refugees. This appeared to be yet another classic instance of misjudgment and phony nationalism on the part of the Foreign Ministry under extremists Avigdor Lieberman and Danny Ayalon. After all, if indeed the Jews from Arab lands are refugees and not, as portrayed by Israel for years, Zionist pioneers, this is an issue that should engage Israel and specific Arab states, not the Palestinians. In a way, though, by raising the issue the Foreign Ministry seemed actually to be signaling that Israel in fact anticipates a renewed peace process and related international pressures.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu successfully focused much of the world's attention on Iran and its nuclear program. Yet he was singularly unsuccessful in recruiting American or other international support for an early military offensive against Iran. While under Netanyahu's leadership Israel generally avoided involvement in the Arab revolutions, especially in neighboring Syria, the government seemingly failed to appreciate that, at least for the moment, the real key to reducing Iran's clout is through the removal of the Assad regime. And while the advent to power of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt generated far less danger to the Egypt-Israel peace agreement than might have been anticipated, events in Egypt helped create a new and extremely worrisome nexus of Islamist terrorism against Israel (and even against Egypt) in the Gaza-Sinai arena.
Q. And what's your forecast for the incoming year, 5773?
A. (Please do not hold me too tightly to any of the following predictions. This is the Middle East. Expect the unexpected.)
Domestically, we will almost certainly witness new elections before 5774, most likely around February-March of next year. This will reflect Israel's bad economic situation and Netanyahu's preference to postpone severe budget cuts by holding early elections that freeze the current budget.
By the same token, it stands to reason (though reason is a highly relative term in this context) that Israeli military action against Iran, if deemed necessary, will also await the outcome of Israeli elections, lest the Iranian and Hezbollah military response against Israel be held against the Netanyahu government by a wounded and bleeding Israeli public. Postponing an offensive against Iran would also allow Netanyahu to gauge whether the next American administration agrees that the United States do the job itself or at least gives its blessing to an Israeli attack. Here we assume that, by now, Netanyahu understands that an immediate Israeli attack is favored by few Israelis and few Americans, and certainly not by the security establishments in both countries.
All this, based on the fairly solid assumption that ultimately Iran wants a military nuclear option, will not be broken by economic sanctions, will not accept the international community's compromise offers, and may even withdraw soon from the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
It is impossible to predict with any certainty what the Arab revolutions around Israel will bring in the months ahead. The turmoil in Syria could continue throughout the year and could degenerate into violence on Israel's northern borders--conceivably even to the extent of a war that expands to include Iran. Egypt's effort to get a grip on Sinai could take months. The friendly relationship between Egypt's Muslim Brothers and Hamas (i.e., the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood) in Gaza could generate growing Gazan autonomy or independence and a weakening of both Gaza-West Bank ties and the West Bank-based PLO and Palestinian Authority.
Could there be a serious, renewed Israeli-Palestinian two-state process this year before it's too late? Only if the next American administration is prepared to exercise heavy pressure and engage the international community. Meanwhile, we may witness violence on the West Bank due to frustrations with both the economic situation and the PLO's inability to block Israel's creeping annexation.
If the Arab revolutionary virus strikes anywhere that we haven't seen it yet, my candidate would be Jordan. There, an otherwise popular monarch has thus far failed to really engage an increasingly pressing need for reform.
The outgoing year produced troubling indications--in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and the Palestinian issue, including the current spate of anti-American demonstrations and the violent assassination in Libya--that the United States is hard put to encourage Arab and Muslim democracy in an increasingly Islamizing Arab world wherein the more extreme Salafi elements are on the offensive. So here is an open question regarding the new year: will this very problematic dynamic further distance the US from deep involvement in Middle East issues like Iran and Israel-Palestine?
A. All in all, this was not a good year for Israel's interests and for US-Israel relations.
Q. Let's start with domestic issues during 5772.
A. Israel's economy began seriously to contract in the early summer, joining the global trend but also reflecting neglect and mismanagement on the part of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Most of the promises made to the dynamic summer 2011 social justice protest movement regarding easier mortgages and lower taxes and prices were shelved without ceremony. So were commitments to expand military service to the Haredi and Arab sectors. Ostensibly, this last reversal was the victim of the collapsed unity government Netanyahu briefly maintained with Shaul Mofaz and Kadima. In fact, Netanyahu's dependence on Haredi coalition support trumped all other economic considerations, particularly with elections looming in early 2013.
The single ray of light in the economic picture in the past year was the emergence of certainty and a clear timetable regarding the supply of natural gas and eventually the export of gas from Israel's new discoveries in the Eastern Mediterranean. What also emerged was a thicket of potential international complications and disputes with Lebanon and possibly even Turkey over drilling rights, with Cyprus and Greece (meaning, happily, the European Union) in the same camp as Israel.
Another striking characteristic of the past year was the Netanyahu government's fixation on the issue of illegal African immigrants, whose numbers--a few tens of thousands--were trumpeted as a threat to Israel's Jewish character even as expansion of settlements and conscious neglect of a peace process with the Palestinians brought ever closer the real demographic threat to Israel. By year's end, near-completion of the border fence with Egypt coupled with a draconian crackdown on the Africans seemed to have eliminated the "threat"--at least until the Eritreans and Sudanese discover the Jordan-Israel border.
Apropos the absence of a peace process, the departing year witnessed more and more creeping annexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem by the Netanyahu government. Unfettered by serious international and Arab pressure, the settler-right-wing coalition simply kept building and expanding the settlements. When forced by the High Court of Justice to observe the niceties of the rule of law and dismantle Migron and the Ulpana neighborhood in Bet El, the coalition reassured its followers by building ten times as many new dwellings as those destroyed. That's where at least some of the money went that should have been spent to satisfy legitimate social justice commitments and to combat poverty and hardship at home.
All in all, a growing number of Israelis, Palestinians and outside observers concluded during the passing year that the prospects for a viable two-state solution had been seriously reduced, with potentially catastrophic ramifications for Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state.
The social justice movement, incidentally, helped bring to the fore two political leaders who may or may not make a significant impact in elections in 2013: Labor's Shelly Yacimovich, and the TV personality Yair Lapid who spent most of the past year laying the foundations for a new center party. On the other hand, the year witnessed the removal of Tzipi Livni from the leadership of Kadima. The man who bested her for the leadership, Shaul Mofaz, proceeded unimpressively to join then quickly leave the Likud coalition, and in general gave the impression that he was leading Kadima to oblivion. Netanyahu--"King Bibi" according to Time magazine--ushered out 5772 with his political stature virtually unchallenged despite a year of few positive accomplishments other than the repatriation of Gilad Shalit.
Netanyahu's failures were particularly apparent in the international sphere.
Q. What happened there?
A. Israel's overall isolation grew acutely. With no peace process, no prospects for a peace process and the Israeli settler right wing increasingly triumphant, the moderate Palestinian leadership took its distance, pursuing the option of United Nations recognition and, by year's end, beginning to explore the possibility of unilaterally withdrawing from the Oslo accords. Meanwhile, the Obama administration had its eyes on the November elections, the European Union was consumed by its financial crisis, and the Arab world was preoccupied with its revolutions. All marked Israel as the primary culprit, even as they did nothing about it. Under these circumstances, the global movement to delegitimize and boycott Israel picked up steam.
Toward year's end, the Israel Foreign Ministry mounted a campaign to portray the suffering experienced by Jews who immigrated to Israel from Arab lands in the early years of the State as a refugee issue that is somehow akin to the narrative of the 1948 Palestinian refugees. This appeared to be yet another classic instance of misjudgment and phony nationalism on the part of the Foreign Ministry under extremists Avigdor Lieberman and Danny Ayalon. After all, if indeed the Jews from Arab lands are refugees and not, as portrayed by Israel for years, Zionist pioneers, this is an issue that should engage Israel and specific Arab states, not the Palestinians. In a way, though, by raising the issue the Foreign Ministry seemed actually to be signaling that Israel in fact anticipates a renewed peace process and related international pressures.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu successfully focused much of the world's attention on Iran and its nuclear program. Yet he was singularly unsuccessful in recruiting American or other international support for an early military offensive against Iran. While under Netanyahu's leadership Israel generally avoided involvement in the Arab revolutions, especially in neighboring Syria, the government seemingly failed to appreciate that, at least for the moment, the real key to reducing Iran's clout is through the removal of the Assad regime. And while the advent to power of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt generated far less danger to the Egypt-Israel peace agreement than might have been anticipated, events in Egypt helped create a new and extremely worrisome nexus of Islamist terrorism against Israel (and even against Egypt) in the Gaza-Sinai arena.
Q. And what's your forecast for the incoming year, 5773?
A. (Please do not hold me too tightly to any of the following predictions. This is the Middle East. Expect the unexpected.)
Domestically, we will almost certainly witness new elections before 5774, most likely around February-March of next year. This will reflect Israel's bad economic situation and Netanyahu's preference to postpone severe budget cuts by holding early elections that freeze the current budget.
By the same token, it stands to reason (though reason is a highly relative term in this context) that Israeli military action against Iran, if deemed necessary, will also await the outcome of Israeli elections, lest the Iranian and Hezbollah military response against Israel be held against the Netanyahu government by a wounded and bleeding Israeli public. Postponing an offensive against Iran would also allow Netanyahu to gauge whether the next American administration agrees that the United States do the job itself or at least gives its blessing to an Israeli attack. Here we assume that, by now, Netanyahu understands that an immediate Israeli attack is favored by few Israelis and few Americans, and certainly not by the security establishments in both countries.
All this, based on the fairly solid assumption that ultimately Iran wants a military nuclear option, will not be broken by economic sanctions, will not accept the international community's compromise offers, and may even withdraw soon from the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
It is impossible to predict with any certainty what the Arab revolutions around Israel will bring in the months ahead. The turmoil in Syria could continue throughout the year and could degenerate into violence on Israel's northern borders--conceivably even to the extent of a war that expands to include Iran. Egypt's effort to get a grip on Sinai could take months. The friendly relationship between Egypt's Muslim Brothers and Hamas (i.e., the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood) in Gaza could generate growing Gazan autonomy or independence and a weakening of both Gaza-West Bank ties and the West Bank-based PLO and Palestinian Authority.
Could there be a serious, renewed Israeli-Palestinian two-state process this year before it's too late? Only if the next American administration is prepared to exercise heavy pressure and engage the international community. Meanwhile, we may witness violence on the West Bank due to frustrations with both the economic situation and the PLO's inability to block Israel's creeping annexation.
If the Arab revolutionary virus strikes anywhere that we haven't seen it yet, my candidate would be Jordan. There, an otherwise popular monarch has thus far failed to really engage an increasingly pressing need for reform.
The outgoing year produced troubling indications--in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and the Palestinian issue, including the current spate of anti-American demonstrations and the violent assassination in Libya--that the United States is hard put to encourage Arab and Muslim democracy in an increasingly Islamizing Arab world wherein the more extreme Salafi elements are on the offensive. So here is an open question regarding the new year: will this very problematic dynamic further distance the US from deep involvement in Middle East issues like Iran and Israel-Palestine?
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