Israel Under Netanyahu

Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy

Robert O. Freedman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367358723
• eBook ISBN: 9781000751765
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Examining Benjamin Netanyahu's more than a decade-long period as Israel's Prime Minister, this important book evaluates the domestic politics and foreign policy of Israel from 2009-2019. This comprehensive study assesses Israel's main political parties, highlights the special position in Israel of Israel's Arab, Russian and religious communities, appraises Netanyahu's stewardship of Israel's economy, and analyzes Israel's foreign relations.

The scholars contributing to the volume are leading experts from both Israel and the United States and represent a broad spectrum of viewpoints on Israeli politics and foreign policy. The case studies cover the Likud party, the non-religious opposition parties such as Labor, Meretz, and Yesh Atid, the Arab parties, the religious parties and the Russian-based Yisrael B'Aliyah party, and present analyses of the ups and downs of Israel's relations with the United States, the American Jewish Community, Iran, Europe, the Palestinians, the Arab World, Russia, China, India, and Turkey as well as Israel's challenges in dealing with terrorism. Another highlight of the book is an assessment of Netanyahu's leadership of the Likud party, which seeks to answer the question as to whether Netanyahu is a pragmatist interested in a peace deal with the Palestinians or an ideologue who wants Israel to hold on to the West Bank as well as all of Jerusalem.

This volume will be of interest to readers who wish to understand the dynamics of Israel during Benjamin Netanyahu's time as Prime Minister and are interested in the history and politics of Israel and the Middle East.

Part I

Israeli domestic politics

1
The Likud under Benjamin Netanyahu

Readjusting revisionism to the 21st century

Ilan Peleg

Modern political Zionism has been characterized from its beginning by conflictual notions of the essence of the Zionist project and the mechanisms for implementing it. While all Zionists called upon Jews to return to Eretz Israel (the ancient homeland of the Jews), build an autonomous Jewish society there and eventually establish an independent state, diverse views have dominated the Zionist camp.

The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 did not resolve the intra-Zionist conflict. Moreover, following the 1967 war in the Middle East – resulting in Israeli control over the entire territory of the post-1922 British mandate over Western Palestine – this conflict was reignited and has intensified beyond anything seen before. It has dominated Israeli politics ever since and has been directly linked to the political career of Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Likud party has been at the center of this ideological, political and cultural debate since its establishment in 1973. Its current leader, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has influenced the debate by his ideology, personality and policies more than any other individual.

This chapter, summarizing the author’s views in previous publications, offers an analysis of the Likud under Netanyahu by focusing on five interrelated issues:

• 1 A brief history of the Likud (1973–2018) through its four leaders – Begin, Shamir, Sharon and especially Netanyahu;
• 2 The ideological foundations of Likud’s political vision as a nationalist-territorialist movement – particularly as it has differed from alternative Zionist political visions emphasizing Arab-Jewish reconciliation, as well as social justice and equality within Israel as a Jewish state; this section will describe and analyze what might be called the Israeli kulturkampf,¹ the ideological struggle to define the Israeli political system and the country’s very identity;
• 3 The ideological evolution of Likud’s ideology within modern Zionism,² from Jabotinsky’s “Revisionism” through Begin’s “Neo-Revisionism”³ and finally through Nentanyahu’s readjustment of the Revisionist and the Neo- Revisionist ideological positions to what he has perceived as Israel’s current challenges – particular attention will be paid to Netanyahu’s adoption of an Israeli version of American neoconservatism (especially a free enterprise economy, his expansionist and heavily militarized foreign policy and patriotism as a tool of cultural hegemony);
• 4 The foreign policy positions of Netanyahu’s Likud and, in effect, the Israeli government, particularly since 2009, which have been designed to maintain the status quo while supporting a creeping annexation of the West Bank;⁴
• 5 Conclusions that emphasize what I will call Likud’s well-established “cultural hegemony” in Israel⁵ and its long-term implications for a possible peace between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as relations between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs within Israel.⁶

The thesis of this chapter is that Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud party that he has led almost continuously for the last 26 years have had three fundamental goals:

• 1 To undermine the possibility of adopting a two-state solution for Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs based on a partition of the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River – after 1993, this goal meant the derailment of the Oslo Accords while appearing, if and when necessary because of international and domestic pressures, as supporters of it. This position could be termed the “Bar-Ilan Strategy,” following Netanyahu’s ostensible public acceptance of the two-state solution while not only formulating a series of conditions that would make it unacceptable to the other side but also acting in numerous ways to prevent the two-state solution from being implemented;⁷
• 2 Replacing the Israel’s traditional social democracy with a new neoliberal socioeconomic regime based on US neoconservative principles, such as a free enterprise economy that benefits the wealthy, conservative social policies (facilitated in Israel by a coalition of right-wing parties and the ultra-Orthodox Haredim) and aggressive, militarized foreign and security policies;⁸
• 3 Replacing the so-called Old Elites and their ideology – (a) promoting an Arab-Israeli reconciliation based on territorial partition, (b) granting equal rights to all Israeli citizens (at least on an individual if not on a collective basis), (c) recognizing some minority rights (particularly in the areas of culture and language, including a special place for Arabic) and (d) sustaining a social democracy that provides a socioeconomic safety net to all Israelis – with a new elite and a new ideology based on complete Jewish hegemony both within Israel proper and in Western Palestine.⁹

It is important to note that Netanyahu’s territorial-nationalistic foreign policy, his domestic socioeconomic conservative program and his leadership style fits extremely well with growing worldwide trend noted at the time of writing (December 2018): The rise to power of prominent political elites in the United States (Donald Trump) and Russia (Vladimir Putin); the ascendance of new elites in several smaller European states, such as Hungary and Poland; unexpected political developments, such as Brexit in the United Kingdom; the rise of nationalist right-wing parties in Europe – each reflects Netanyahu’s philosophy and policies in his capacity as Israel’s prime minister. Furthermore, his political party, the Likud, has fully supported him. Thus, this chapter is not only a study of Netanyahu’s leadership and the Likud’s modus operandi; it is also a review of the political and governmental model contemporary Israel presents to the world.

A brief historical sketch of the Likud, 1973–2018

An alliance of several right-wing parties in Israel, Likud (The Consolidation) was founded prior to the 1973 Israeli elections by the intense efforts of two prominent but very different politicians – Menachem Begin, the former commander of Irgun and leader of Gahal, and Ariel Sharon, then a recently retired general with a hawkish reputation and the leader of the Shalom-Zion (or Shlomtzion) party. The new party included Herut and the Liberals (which had been united in Gahal since 1965), the Free Center, the National List, and the Movement for Greater Israel (combining annexationist elements from all sides of the Israeli political map).

Following a strong performance in 1973 – cutting the left-of-center Alignment’s lead to merely 12 seats in the Knesset – the Likud won the 1977 elections, enabling Begin to form a right-leaning coalition government. The victory was an unexpected political earthquake and a dramatic turning point in Israeli history.

The circumstances of Likud’s historic victory were connected to three political, historical and ideological factors that had been present in Zionist and Israeli politics for decades:

• 1 Politically, the Yom Kippur War of 1973 was widely perceived as a major failure of the Alignment (Labor) government led by Prime Minister Golda Meir. After almost 30 years at the helm of the Jewish state, the traditional left-of-center Israeli leadership was perceived by many as arrogant, corrupt and ineffective; on the other hand, the newly established Likud was perceived by many Israelis as a fresh alternative to the long-term Mapai hegemony in Israel.¹⁰
• 2 As a result of both the 1967 war and (especially) the 1973 war, a sharp division reemerged in Israeli society over the future of the occupied territories. The wars strengthened both the secular Right (the nationalist party Herut) and the religious-national camp, which had been politically moderate in the first few decades of the state.¹¹ The emergence of the Likud as Israel’s leading party reflected the shift of the entire Israeli political system to the right, including the increased influence of national-religious elements within Israeli society.¹²
• 3 The rise of the Likud reflected the deep dissatisfaction of many Israelis of Sephardi or Mizrahi background (that is, generally lower middle class immigrants from Arab-speaking countries) with the overwhelmingly secular Ashkenazi elite, who led the left-of-center Alignment. This sentiment prevailed particularly among blue-collar residents of some of Israel’s “development towns.”

Menachem Begin provided the Likud in particular and Israel in general with a strong nationalist leadership based on traditional Jewish religious values¹³ but was able to show surprising geostrategic pragmatism – while intensifying the Israeli settlement project, he responded positively to Sadat’s peace initiative and signed the 1978 Camp David Accords and the peace treaty with Egypt. However, it should be noted that this conciliatory policy on Begin’s part was adopted primarily to avoid territorial concessions on the West Bank.¹⁴ Begin also approved a series of additional nationalist actions, including the annexation of the Golan Heights, and the attack on Iraq’s nuclear reactor and the 1982 Lebanon War.

Following Begin’s resignation and departure from politics in October 1983, the Likud elected Yitzhak Shamir as its leader. As prime minister, Shamir pursued an extremely hard line on the settlement issue (conflicting with the American administration), sabotaged his foreign minister’s attempt to reach a settlement with the Jordanians and was a reluctant participant in the Madrid Conference of 1991. He was eventually defeated by Yitzhak Rabin in the 1992 election.

Shamir’s successor was Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu, a man who would become Israel’s most prominent political figure for decades to come. Under Netanyahu, elected as Likud leader on March 24, 1993, the Likud emerged as a party of one man,¹⁵ something of an imitation of the American political parties (with which Netanyahu was familiar), although still significantly more ideological. Netanyahu demanded total and personal loyalty from all party activists and saw any opponent as an enemy.¹⁶ He introduced primaries to the Likud to weaken both the party’s Central Committee and his political rivals,¹⁷ thereby radicalizing the party and forcing politicians to constantly try to please the voters (in the case of Likud, people with already strong and sometimes radical nationalist proclivities).

Ironically, under Netanyahu, despite his adding democratic primaries, the Likud party structure became more centralized; the power of the leader (Netanyahu), greatly enhanced. Netanyahu “succeeded in manipulating the party to his advantage,” but his “management style was well suited to the political culture of his party.”¹⁸

Despite the centrality of Netanyahu’s personality in his capacity first as Likud’s leader and then (after 1996) as Israel’s prime minister, it is important not to lose sight of the essential role of ideology in determining his and the Likud’s policies. The political genius of Netanyahu has been in creating a common, indistinguishable identity between himself as an individual, the Likud as a political organization, and even the country itself. Netanyahu has reflected the core values of the Likud and, in a deeper way, the Israeli Right. In this regard, the argument of Caspit that “Bibi’s new Likud was significantly less ideological than the old Likud”¹⁹ is, at its core, incorrect. Netanyahu has simply adopted a newer and considerably more effective political style in “selling” the Likud ideology than the stale and ineffective style of his immediate predecessor, Yitzhak Shamir. Netanyahu’s style has been essentially a TV-based, American-inspired communicative style, reflecting his own remarkable ability to manipulate the party and, in effect, the entire country to meet his immediate political needs and interests.²⁰

The political genius of Benjamin Netanyahu has been reflected in his ability to combine the fundamental ideology of his party²¹ – the Likud – with his own remarkable talents as a political orator and use those to take advantage of opportunities presented to him by Israel’s evolving political situation.

An exampl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of tables
• List of figures
• Preface
• Acronyms
• Introduction to Israel in the Netanyahu era
• Part I Israeli domestic politics
• Part II Israeli foreign policy
• Epilogue to Israel under Netanyahu
• About the authors
• Annex one: Israeli election results, 2009
• Annex two: Israeli election results, 2013
• Annex three: Israeli election results, 2015
• Annex four: Israeli election results, April 9, 2019
• Annex five: Results of the September 17, 2019 Israeli elections: Knesset seats
• Index