February 11, 2009
Israel votes today for a new government in elections in which the Palestinian issue dominated. A coalition of the Right formed around Likud and Avigdor Lieberman's Israel Our Homeland party (Yisrael Beiteinu), which could well overtake the Labour party by coming third in the polls, is a real possibility.
Will Tzipi Livni's Kadima be able to muster the 61-seat coalition needed to lead the country--they need to win the most seats, so as to be given the first opportunity to form a coalition? Unfortunately, Labour is now no longer of sufficient size for Kadima to put together a coalition with it.
The Right talks about security and opposes the evacuation of even the smallest settlement. A governing triumvirate of the Right would reject the two-state solution which is based on the liberal notion that the other side has the right to a normal life, to an independent state, in which life is free, liberated from the chains of occupation. Lieberman as minister of defense in a right/religious government would represent a nightmare scenario.
Lieberman's campaign slogan is "No citizenship without loyalty" and he promises a new bill requiring all Palestinians with Israeli passports to swear loyalty to the Jewish state or lose their citizenship. When they did not do this, Lieberman would carve out the Arab villages of Northern Galilee and hand them over to the Palestinian Authority, an idea that has caused outrage among Israeli Arabs. Israel is a Jewish state and Lieberman's message is thinly veiled one of racism and xenophobia.
This neo-Zionist political program aims to strengthen the “Jewish state”, strengthen “Jewish connections” to Zionism , strengthen “Jewish education” and thus cohesiveness around the political program. Its agenda includes strengthening “Jewish” institutions to defend “Jewish” values/interests (does Zionism represent Jews or Jewish interests?).
To sustain a Jewish state requires an endless effort to fend off the majority of the population in that area who are not Jewish, since Israel as a state was founded by expelling and killing the indigenous native inhabitants of the land; the Palestinian people. The objective is the establishment of a Greater Israel that includes the occupied Palestinian Territories.That is the end of the two state solution.
As Andrew Sullivan has realized US neo-neoconservatism has in large part, been about supporting and enabling the most irredentist elements in Israel and sustaining a permanent war against anyone or any country who disagrees with the Israeli right. It has also been about squashing Iran's challenge to US hegemony in the region.
The possibility is an Israeli government that is in favour of more aggression--- Israel's destruction of huge parts of Gaza "did not go far enough"----and more internal repression of its own ethnic and religious minorities.
|
The elections results are in. With 99% of the votes counted, the Kadima party continues to occupy the first place after winning 28 out of 120 Knesset seats.The rival Likud party is only one seat behind, while the Labor party’s representation dropped to 13 seats.The right wing party of Avigdor Lieberman is expected to garner 15 Knesset seats and thus is expected to have a bigger influence of coalitions.
The right-wing bloc as a whole could form a majority of at least 64 seats in the next Knesset, without turning either to Labour or Kadima. The left-wing bloc, on the other hand, would struggle to come up with more than 56 seats. So under the right wing governance we have expanding the settlements, Israel clashing with the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, a confrontational approach to blocking Iran's cloaked nuclear program, and an embrace with the racist ideas of Avigdor Lieberman--eg.,the Arab population of the occupied territories and even Arab citizens of Israel should be transferred elsewhere and world opinion be damned.
Is this a Yugoslav type ethnic cleansing over the next 5 years aimed at driving away as many Arabs as possible from greater Israel?