Middle East Strategy at Harvard

From Robert O. Freedman

As Binyamin Netanyahu takes over as Israel’s new prime minister, the key to the future of his government may well be Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of the predominantly Russian-immigrant-based Yisrael Beiteinu Party, who was selected by Netanyahu as his foreign minister.

There are two major challenges which Lieberman poses to the Netanyahu government. The first is the question of how strongly he will pursue the secularist themes that permeated his campaign. Pushing that agenda could lead either his party, or Shas, with which it has been in conflict over religious issues, to leave the government. The second issue is Lieberman’s call for a transfer of territory inhabited by those Israeli Arabs who won’t pledge loyalty to Israel, to a new Palestinian state, in return for Israel maintaining some of the Jewish settlements on the West Bank.

Israel had a Russian-based political party before Yisrael Beiteinu. That was the Yisrael Ba’Aliyah party of Natan Sharansky. After initially securing seven seats in the 1996 election, Sharansky’s party fell to two seats in 2003 and then merged with Likud. Sharansky’s biggest mistake, and the primary cause of the demise of Yisrael Ba’Aliyah, was his neglect of the interests of the Russian sector of Israel’s population, as he went on to pursue a career in national politics.

So far, at least, Lieberman has not made this mistake. Issues of conversion and civil marriage are central to Israel’s Russian immigrant community. A reported 300,000 of the one million Russians in Israel are not Jewish according to Jewish law, and Lieberman put their status at the center of his campaign. Unfortunately for Netanyahu, Shas, another major part of his coalition, is dead set against both civil marriage and easing the conversion process. While the two parties (as Alan Dowty has noted) have temporarily seemed to paper over their dispute through the establishment of a committee, Lieberman might well leave the government if that committee does not come up with a compromise satisfactory to Yisrael Beiteinu. The departure of Lieberman’s 15 seats could cause the Netanyahu coalition government to collapse, unless he attracts Tzipi Livni’s Kadima party, a very unlikely prospect at this time.

Another major difference between Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party, and Sharansky’s Yisrael Ba’Aliyah party, is that Lieberman has succeeded in making his party more of an Israeli mainstream party. Lieberman’s means of doing this was to exploit the rising anger of many Jewish Israelis toward Israel’s Arab minority.

There are two factors at work here. First, Israeli Arabs justifiably feel resentment against discrimination by the majority Jewish community in terms of government grants to their villages and jobs in the public sector. Little has been done to improve the economic status of Israel’s Arab community, despite the recommendations of a high-level commission set up to investigate the causes of the Arab rioting in October 2000 after the start of the Al-Aqsa Intifada.

On the other hand, the leaders of the Israeli Arab community have increasingly identified with Israel’s enemies, particularly Hamas and Hezbollah, and have written several policy documents that effectively call for the end of the Jewish State. These actions have precipitated increasing anger against the Israeli Arabs—or Palestinian Israelis,as many now wish to define themselves—and have enabled politicians such as Lieberman to capitalize on this anger for electoral purposes. Indeed, it is estimated that one-third of his vote came from non-Russian Israelis angry at the Israeli Arabs.

Lieberman’s plan to deal with the Israeli Arabs, which some commentators both in Israel and abroad have called “racist,” involves giving the Israeli Arabs a choice. Either they can pledge loyalty to Israel as a Jewish State, or they can leave Israel—with their land. What Lieberman suggests is the transfer of Israeli Arab cities like Umm al-Fahm and towns in the Arab triangle in the Galilee, to a new Palestinian state, in return for Israel’s annexation of Jewish settlement areas on the West Bank such as Maaleh Adumim and Gush Etzion. The outspoken Lieberman says aloud what many Jewish Israelis increasingly believe—that it is impossible for Jews and Arabs to live together in a single state.

Whether or not one agrees with Lieberman, there have been cases of population transfers following wars caused by nationality conflicts. Indeed, compared to the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia and Poland after World War Two, or even the exchange of Greeks and Turks in 1923 following the failed Greek invasion of Ottoman Anatolia, Lieberman’s idea is far more gentle. The dilemma, of course, is that the vast majority of Palestinian Israelis don’t want to leave Israel for the chaos and corruption of the West Bank, even with their land. In Israel, their economic status is far better and they can speak freely.

Nonetheless, as tensions rise between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Israelis, the Arabs may soon face a difficult choice. The more they identify with Hamas and Hezbollah—organizations dedicated to the destruction of Israel—the more Lieberman’s ideas will become popular. Assuming Lieberman is not sidetracked by a series of corruption investigations against him, Yisrael Beiteinu may increase in its electoral strength in future elections—something that has to worry not only Israel’s Arab community, but politicians on the right side of Israel’s political spectrum, such as Binyamin Netanyahu.