Haaretz | Anshel Pfeffer | Apr 13, 2023
The main prism for some people when reading or viewing any news concerning Israel is: “What does this mean for the Palestinians?” It should be clear by now that after 100 days of protest against the Netanyahu government’s plans to suppress the Supreme Court, this story is bad for the Palestinians.
After three decades in which the main cause of the Israeli center-left was about finding a way to end the occupation of millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, or at least shifting the occupation onto the shoulders of a corrupt and only semi-independent Palestinian Authority, has been supplanted. Not by the temporary political campaign to rid Israel of Benjamin Netanyahu’s rule, but by a cause that will endure long after the prime minister is gone.
The question regarding the character of Israel’s regime within its internationally recognized borders – will it continue to have an independent judiciary holding the government to scrutiny, or will it succumb to a nationalist-religious majoritarian rule? – will remain the defining question for nearly all Israelis, including Arab Israelis, for years to come.
It was coming for years. The Israeli center-left lost any real interest in ending the occupation some 15 years ago, as the second intifada was petering out. Not that they moved to the right on the subject. They just lost hope in a realistic solution and realized that it was never going to be a winner in electoral terms. There just weren’t any votes in being “the peace camp” when the prospects of peace were so dim.
For a while, they stuck to the old slogans. Then there were some brief flirtations with vague notions of social democracy. But they failed to come up with a new, compelling narrative, and gradually all politics in Israel became about Netanyahu anyway.
The unexpected scope and passion of the pro-democracy rallies and protests since Netanyahu returned to power last year have not just forced him to suspend his government’s “legal reform.” They have also given the center-left something it hasn’t had since the early heady days of the Oslo process: A cause that can bring hundreds of thousands out onto the streets and, if the latest polls are anything to go by, perhaps the chance of beating the nationalist-religious axis in a future election.
But the thing about successful causes (and we don’t know yet how enduring this one’s success will be) is that they don’t leave room for other causes.
The struggle to keep Israel – and once again, this is Israel proper, not any extra territories that it exercises control over – a place where secular liberals can remain in relative comfort must not be diverted or divided.
So, if anyone has any illusions that this wonderful resurgence of Israel’s “democratic camp” will lead to a wider reckoning in Israeli society over the occupation, it would be best to put those aside.
One of the very first strategic decisions made by the committee coordinating the pro-democracy protests was that the path to victory would have to run through the center ground. To achieve that, the anti-occupation groups were firmly told that they could hold their banners and chant their slogans, but Palestinian flags were not to be waved.
Tens of thousands of Israeli flags were manufactured for the express purpose of giving the rallies a “patriotic” atmosphere, with right-wingers who oppose Netanyahu – such as former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon – the main speakers on stage. You can see Ya’alon rubbing shoulders at demonstrations with the Peace Now founders he once called “a virus.”
The organizers knew this would deter many Palestinian citizens of Israel, natural opponents of the government as well, from joining in. But they calculated that few Arab Israelis joined protests anyway and there was much more potential among the center-right, who would never join a cause that included among its goals ending the occupation.
This has proved to be the right strategy, and it won’t change as long as this government is in office. No one is going to jeopardize a coalition that spans from right-wingers such as Ya’alon and Gideon Sa’ar to leftists such as Mossi Raz and Zehava Galon by bringing up the Palestinians. It’s Democracy Now and Peace Perhaps Later.
And that’s not only the situation within Israel. Netanyahu’s plan to eviscerate the judiciary has drawn openly vehement condemnations from the Biden administration, including from the U.S. president himself. Have they ever spoken out in a similar vein about the Israeli-Palestinian issue? They haven’t, because they’ve grown tired of a conflict they feel can’t be solved.
The same is true for many mainstream Jewish Diaspora organizations who have, for the first time, publicly turned against Netanyahu and his political partners. No previous injustice Israel committed against the Palestinians ever elicited such responses.
Left-wing Israelis, administration officials and Jewish Diaspora leaders all understand the same thing: this is the cause they have to fight now. A cause they may have a chance of winning.
Ideological purists say Israeli democracy is a myth anyway, because it only includes Israeli Jews while Palestinians remain under occupation. As far as theoretical ideological claims go, that’s a hard one to argue with. You can, of course, respond that an Israel without an independent Supreme Court will be even worse for the Palestinians. But that’s not why the overwhelming majority of Israelis in the streets are out there. Nor is it the reason Biden and all the others outside of Israel are on their side.
What is happening now within Israel doesn’t really concern the Palestinians. It is bad news for them, certainly in the short-term, because the world is now focused on an Israeli issue that doesn’t concern them. And just like the protest movement, the world doesn’t have enough attention for two Israel-related issues. Once again, the Palestinians are being pushed down the agenda.
This doesn’t detract from the importance of what is happening right now in Israel. Seventy-five years since its foundation, the country is at a pivotal moment – perhaps the most critical in all its existence, when the meaning of its democratic and Jewish character is being redefined. It is a moment that will last at least as long as this government is in office, and probably for a while longer.
It is much too early to say whether it will be easier to achieve some progress on the Palestinian issue once this moment, whatever its outcome, is over. But for now, this moment is only about Israel.