By Ira Sharkansky
JERUSALEM, Nov. 14– This is one of those times to wonder if ridicule or serious analysis is in order.
The occasion is a combination of two moves by the Palestinian leadership. It is not even clear which of the two warrants ridicule or analysis, or if they are both just part of the noise coming out of a entity with doubtful credibility. Perhaps they deserve no more attention than the bull sessions heard in the halls of a legislature, or in the dorm rooms of individuals aspiring to make a splash in student government.
One of the moves is a threat by the ostensible president of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, to resign or not to run for re-election if Israel is not immediately forthcoming with respect to Palestinian demands. The other is to seek international recognition for an independent Palestine with the borders of 1967 and Jerusalem as its capital.
To be precise, it is not clear whether the threat is to resign, or not to run for re-election. The picture is confused by the formal end of Abbas’ term some months ago, which has led the Hamas leadership to declare that he is no longer the president. There is a further problem insofar as the Palestinian Election Commission has indicated that it may not be possible to implement the election scheduled for January, and Hamas has indicated that it will not let Gazans vote in an illegal election.
President Barack Obama, the heads of several European governments, and prominent Israelis in and out of government have urged Abbas to continue.
No doubt it would be easier for those saying he should stay if he accepted their call. Leaving aside the human factor (Doesn’t an ineffective 74 year old have a right to retire?), his continuation would avoid learning how to deal with someone new.
Some of those urging him to stay on are making the claim that “there is no one who could fill his shoes.” Apparently they come from places where the cemeteries are not already filled with indispensable people.
Palestinians are threatening that if Abbas goes, the only viable candidate is Marwan Barghouti. He has a following of unknown size in the West Bank, but was convicted of involvement in numerous murders and is serving several life sentences in an Israeli prison. One doubts that the Israeli government will respond with a “Sure, why not?” to Barghouti’s selection.
The other threat is that without Abbas, the Palestine National Authority will collapse, Israel will be saddled with governing the West Bank, and that will advance the idea of one country from the Jordan to the Mediterranean, with majority (i.e., Palestinian) rule.
If the Palestine National Authority does collapse, it is more likely that Israelis will not notice the difference from what currently exists. Those who do notice will be overseas Palestinian investors who are remaking the faces of Ramallah and Jenin. Perhaps their threats to halt the financial inflows will move the Palestinians in a direction of realism.
Those overseas investors might also work to moderate the Palestinian maneuver to seek international recognition for an independent state with the borders of 1967 and Jerusalem as its capital.
No doubt there are many unworthies of the world who will support the Palestinians. Will they notice that Israel surrounds the Palestinian areas of the West Bank, controls who and what moves in and out, including water and electricity? Will they pay attention to existing agreements between Israel and Palestinians that make changes of the kinds indicated dependent on an agreement of both parties?.
Enough analysis? Or is this ridicule?
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(November 15)
This overloaded news day provokes a secular and politically moderate Israeli to ask if the greater threat against a good life comes from Palestinians or Haredim (ultra-Orthodox)?
In an effort to avoid curses from Jewish readers, I will neither answer that question, nor identify myself as the secular, politically moderate Israeli who is asking it.
Let’s start with a cartoon in today’s Ha’aretz.
The text reads that the Haredi community is moving to high-tech. The picture shows the good men pushing their burning trash bin from the parking garage open on the Sabbath to an Intel facility, which this week announced that its production lines in Jerusalem would be working on the Sabbath.
Several hundred Haredim protested, threw things, and tried to break into the building. The police let them do their thing until they began attacked the front door. Before the Haredim attacked them, television journalists were able to film confrontations between individuals wanting to work and Haredim asserting that they were violating God’s law.
It is another open question as to whether the villains in this piece are the Haredim, the police, or the Intel management.
The hope is that the police were wise in keeping a low profile, letting the Haredim express their need to protest, and that the Haredim will abandon this mission after a few weekends, like they seem to have abandoned the parking garage without success.
The Intel management is not entirely innocent. This facility is in an industrial park only a short walk from a Haredi neighborhood. Working on the Sabbath any place in Jerusalem (except overtly Arab neighborhoods) is an invitation to protest, and something only a couple of hundred meters downhill from a Haredi neighborhood even more so.
Before the weekend, Intel’s Israel management indicated that the work must go on. If not, the company would consider pulling out of Jerusalem and perhaps even out of Israel.
That escalation would risk legal problems as well as management headaches. Intel has research and development as well as production facilities in Israel, with its largest facility south of Tel Aviv. It has received substantial financial inducements from the Israeli government, which entail some obligations on the part of the company.
We can hope for calm and good sense, without expecting it to erupt in the next week or two. And for the Haredim to stay in their communities, running their own lives without trying to impose their laws on the rest of us, while the Palestinians also pass over their rough patch of dire threats.
Anyone wanting to bet a shekel or two?
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Sharkansky is professor emeritus of political science at Hebrew University