The New York… Times, not exactly known for honesting debating the Middle East conflict, has placed Israel’s foreign minister Tzipi Livni on the cover of this week’s Sunday Magazine. It’s a gem of an article, principally because it displays the levels of delusions still harboured by “moderates” like Livni:
Israelis these days fret about how they are seen. They like to convey the spirit of the underdog — that of Israel’s heroic beginnings — as if discomfited by the adornments of an increasingly moneyed, Americanized and postheroic society. More powerful than ever, Israelis are also more anxious than ever, a paradox with U.S. parallels that they find maddening. Israel’s strength and wealth grow, but the country’s long-term security does not grow with them. The shekel rises; so does the billowing smoke just over the border in Gaza. Two Israeli withdrawals, from Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005, have ended up bolstering two groups that the West and Israel brand as terrorists — Hezbollah and Hamas. Some Israelis, watching the black-masked militia of Hamas take over Gaza, have taken to calling the benighted sliver of territory “Hamastan.”…
“Stagnation works against those who believe in a two-state solution,” Livni said in our first conversation. The West, she suggested, needs to tell Hamas, the Islamist movement battling Fatah for control of a Palestinian movement now split between Gaza and the West Bank, that it must not only recognize Israel’s right to exist but also “the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, which is not that obvious anymore.”…
Authenticity was a core quality of Ariel Sharon, Livni’s political mentor, the last of the heroic breed of warrior-politicians. He liked her industry and loyalty. His imprimatur bolsters her because at a time of national self-questioning, his loss is keenly felt. It was with Sharon that Livni made her fundamental ideological break: from a defender in the right-wing Likud Party of an Israeli state on all its biblical land to the idea of land for peace, embodied in the evacuation of Gaza in 2005 and the promise of a further withdrawal from the West Bank.…
Such rantings may pass for journalism in the NYT, but they’re utterly removed from reality. The Gaza withdrawal had nothing to do with “peace”, but rather a realisation that Israel simply couldn’t sustain an ongoing occupation to protect only 8000 settlers. The result of the “withdrawal” was the strangulation of the Strip,… leading to the current Hamas take-over (a… fascinating recent interview with the group’s Lebanon representative is well worth reading.)
Perhaps more importantly, there is a growing chorus around the world opposed to the concept of a Jewish state. Livni may be saddened by this, as are many Zionists, but there’s a damn good reason why. The fundamentals of the state are designed to oppress the Palestinian people. Non-Jews are actively discriminated against. The occupation of the West Bank is expanding, not decreasing in size. So much to be proud of…
Livni and her fellow travellers are indeed fighting in a race against time, but they’re guaranteed to lose. I’m not opposed to Jews living in Israel or Palestine, but I will continue to campaign against Jews who believe they have the right to live there at the expense of another people. Livni… will realise this…when it’s far too late.