Gideon Levy, Haaretz, August 20:
The right won. The one clear result of this war is that the left suffered another fatal blow and the rightist camp was strengthened. The prevailing wisdom now is that not only is there nobody to talk to, there is nothing to talk about. Not only did we withdraw from Gaza and get Hamas and Qassams, we withdrew from Lebanon and got Hezbollah and rockets. The conclusion: no more withdrawals. Just before Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman translate this cognitive erosion into electoral achievements, one must ask: Where are they leading and where are we going?
The right has to come up with some answers now. All the despairing leftists and the new and confused enlistees in the right must stop and ask themselves: What exactly is the developing right actually offering? While in Syria, for example, they are thinking about the long term, and its president Bashar Assad has a vision for future generations to make Israel surrender, the Israeli discourse is characterized by total evasion of any long-term thinking. At most, the talk is about tomorrow. There’s a reason for this: the Israeli right has no solutions. For the long term, there are only two real possibilities: transfer, or an end to the occupation. The sane right still rejects transfer, and ending the occupation is not its way. Since there is no other way, the right cannot offer anything beyond the next war. The demand for long-term solutions, therefore, is an urgent one.…