If the nation is able to send Trumpism packing one way or the other, some of the damage will be harder to repair than other harm he caused. Regrettably, much may be permanent with consequences that will greatly hobble any strategies we employ to regain our global leadership credentials and international brand. One of those areas is the Middle East, specifically the Arab-Israeli conflict and both our role as an honest broker, as well as Israel’s position as a credible negotiating partner. It’s not hyperbole to say the destruction being done right now to both may be impossible to fix, while dooming Israel’s once vibrant democracy and permanently transforming it into a militarist national security state in full betrayal of the mission statement its creation was founded on.
The Likud Party was formed by religious hard liners, men like Begin and Shamir, former members of Irgun, a violent independence group. From the moment the Israeli Army secured possession of the West Bank, the men who would create the Likud had no intention of giving it back; after all, to them the land was sacred, Judea and Samaria…. Israel’s destiny.
Since its founding in 1973, with some interruption, Likud has greatly influenced both the Israeli political landscape and events in the region. While operating within the concept of land for peace, which forms the gist of the Arab-Israeli peace process, Likud leaders have encouraged aggressive Israeli settlement of West Bank lands. Though Gaza and the Sinai to the west were bargaining chips Likud was more than willing to toss into the pot, the West Bank was an entirely different matter.
The personal integrity of men like Begin, Shamir, even Sharon, was never at issue. These were, after all, founding fathers of their nation. Whatever mistakes they made, no matter how grievous the results, it was an article of faith their actions were taken in pursuit of Israel’s interests. Yet and still, their viewpoints were extreme on Judea and Samaria, and the unspoken goal all pursued was to settle the area enough to make it a political impossibility for any Israeli regime to bargain it away. The optics of uprooting Israeli citizens from their homes as part of some political agreement with those considered by many implacable enemies never aided approval ratings. Leave it to attrition, Likud has always believed, time and settlement will decide things.
Benjamin Netanyahu is a formidable man, with a sharp intellect and intimidating baritone voice that, matched with a straightforward charisma, makes ignoring his assertions impossible. Those are his personal features at odds with comparisons to the fully vapid Trump, but past those he checks off all the boxes as Israel’s version of the Donald. Forget Fifth Avenue, Netanyahu could run naked down Dizengoff Street squawking like a chicken and his bloc of voters would shrug and muse about the heat. Corruption? Israel’s attorney general has recommended indicting the Prime Minister on bribery, corruption and breach-of-trust charges. But where Netanyahu’s character frailties most substantially intersect with our soulless President is their shared willingness to pander at the expense of the national interest.
Trump thought nothing of ending decades of US policy continuity and moving our Embassy to Jerusalem. Since he gives no consideration at all to anything substantive, it was a no brainer, an easy bone to toss his wretched core as a “promise kept,” and gain Israeli acclamation. Ditto recognizing annexation of the Golan Heights. You can’t recognize damage to what you don’t understand or care about. Netanyahu on the other hand makes his deals with the devil with full cognition of the consequences, and, like Trump, he’ll go as low as he has to.
So in addition to tying himself at the hip to a man whose most ardent fans dismiss the holocaust as fake history, Netanyahu took no chances on election eve and made it official; he favored applying Israeli sovereignty to West Bank settlements, subtracting them permanently from the Arab-Israeli negotiating table. That most of the world’s nations hold to the position that the settlements are illegal and in conflict with basic premises underlying the peace process didn’t phase the Prime Minister as he finally gave voice to unspoken Likud ambitions, all for a few votes. Destroying whatever was left for Arab moderates to grasp a hold of didn’t seem to bother Bibi much either……. Trumpian to the core.
Coming on the heels of Netanyahu’s declaration that “Israel is the nation-state of Jews alone,” an unambiguous attack on the country’s Arab citizenry, it is now clear, like Trump, there is no floor to where Bibi will go for the sake of personal and political sustenance. In Trump, he has been gifted the perfect flunky for his purposes, a US President wholly unmoored from any responsibility to US national interest or geopolitical propriety, and a wretched core of supporters enamored with reactionary symbols of fealty to Israel the hucksters they adore have long touted in concert with anti-Muslim bigotry.
What are the longer-term consequences of this immoral abandonment of basic policy and principles? Nothing good. Arab moderates like Jordan’s Hussein and any Palestinian opponents of Hamas will have no position to fall back on. They will be between the rock of the Trump/Bibi boot and the hard place of Arab extremists proven correct that there is no longer anything left to negotiate for…. land for peace is dead. Fight or surrender.
Israel’s creation was based on an argument few people of conscience could refute after the holocaust’s horrors… Jews could not rely on other nations for their basic right to exist. With independence in 1948, a full panoply of Israeli leaders pledged that, while the right to exist was non-negotiable, Israel would value the rights of all its citizens and govern by a higher moral code. For decades hard choices have been made as a result of the tension between those two basic obligations, but few of Israel’s friends questioned the motivations of its leadership. Sadly, Netanyahu’s full embrace of Trump, and emulation of all his worst qualities, appears to have secured his re-election and ends those days, ushering in as dark a period for Israel as we are currently suffering here. Tragic. BC