Trump's Conflict-Ridden World : Five Hotspots to Watch in 2017 (Ukraine/Baltics, China/Taiwan, ISIS, Israel/Palestine, Mexico)

Trump’s Conflict-Ridden World: Five Hotspots to Watch in 2017

By Larry Luxner
Uploaded on March 1, 2017

From Berlin to Beijing, from Tallinn to Taipei, President Donald Trump seems eager to pick fights — even among U.S. allies — without leaving the White House, where infighting among his own team has made his young administration one of the most volatile in U.S. history.
In less than a month in office, the 45^th president has managed to turn the world order upside down.
He infuriated Chinese leaders by questioning America’s long-standing commitment to Beijing’s “one China” policy regarding Taiwan, provoked anger across the Islamic world by instituting a refugee order widely seen as a blanket ban on Muslims and infuriated Arabs by insisting he would move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Two weeks into the job, he even sparked outrage in Australia, one of America’s most steadfast allies, by abruptly cutting short a 25-minute phone conversation with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
As if that’s not enough, he’s lashed out at Germany, indirectly called for the dismantling of the European Union and threatened to start a trade war with Mexico over the building of a massive border wall to keep out illegal immigrants.
Yet all this pales in comparison to the fallout following the forced resignation of Trump’s national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, after it was revealed that he had discussed U.S. sanctions in a phone call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and then lied about it to no less than Vice President Mike Pence. The White House, embroiled in controversy over the timeline of who knew what when, is now in full damage control mode.
On Feb. 14, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said it was “highly likely” that the events leading up to Flynn’s departure would be included in a broader congressional probe into Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Democrats smell blood and are pushing for a wider independent investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia (the FBI is already reportedly looking into contacts between Trump’s campaign associates and Moscow a year before the U.S. election).

Photo: U.S. Department of Homeland Security

President Donald Trump, center, talks with Vice President Mike Pence, left, and Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly during a Jan. 25 visit to the Department of Homeland Security.

Leaks have gushed out of the White House at an unprecedented pace and constant chaos seems to have become the new norm. Conservative pundit Eliot A. Cohen, director of the strategic studies program at Johns Hopkins University and a noted Trump critic, suggests that precisely because the problem is one of Trump’s temperament and character, the situation will not get better.
“It will get worse, as power intoxicates Trump and those around him,” Cohen wrote recently in the Atlantic. “It will probably end in calamity — substantial domestic protest and violence, a breakdown of international economic relationships, the collapse of major alliances, or perhaps one or more new wars (even with China) on top of the ones we already have. It will not be surprising in the slightest if his term ends not in four or in eight years, but sooner, with impeachment or removal under the 25th Amendment. The sooner Americans get used to these likelihoods, the better.”
At the start of the year, many journalists and think tanks reported on possible conflict scenarios to watch out for in 2017, ranging from Islamic State attacks on Turkey to humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen to bloodshed in South Sudan, Myanmar, Afghanistan and Iraq.
But in just a span of a few weeks, Trump has upended that equation, creating new trouble-spots that could erupt in violence or cause global chaos. To make sense of it all, we have selected five areas of conflict, military or otherwise, likely to worsen in 2017 under Trump — and what experts say can be done to prevent things from spiraling out of control.

UKRAINE/BALTICS
It remains to be seen whether Trump’s connections with Russia snowball into a Watergate-like downfall. Regardless, Trump’s admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin is well documented, as is his desire to please Moscow by lifting sanctions imposed against it by his predecessor, Barack Obama. That leaves Ukraine, still split between a beleaguered central government in Kiev and Moscow-backed rebels in the east, in the crosshairs.
The Flynn scandal may have quashed the administration’s hopes of a major rapprochement with Russia for the time being, but European leaders worry about America’s commitment to the sanctions imposed on Moscow for annexing Crimea in 2014. Europe, a major trading partner with Russia, has felt the sting of those penalties far more than the U.S. has, and without Washington’s backing, Germany and other countries may be hard pressed to convince their publics to stick with sanctions that have hurt their economies.

Photo: © Evgeniy Maloletka / OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) monitors the movement of heavy weaponry in eastern Ukraine in March 2015. A month before, Ukraine and Russia, along with France and Germany, agreed to a ceasefire under the Minsk agreement, but Kiev and Moscow-backed rebels in the east have failed to implement key parts of the deal.

But removing those sanctions would amount to rewarding the Kremlin for bad behavior, warned John Herbst, director of the Atlantic Council’s Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center.
He said it’s no coincidence that within 36 hours of Trump’s Jan. 28 phone call with Putin — which focused mainly on working together to defeat the Islamic State — “the Russians upped the violence in Ukraine substantially.”
Herbst, who was U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2003 to 2006, noted that for three days, as fighting raged in eastern Ukraine that killed over two dozen civilians and soldiers, “the administration said only that, ‘We’re concerned about this.’ Only on Thursday, the fourth day of the violence, did Nikki Haley [U.S. ambassador to the United Nations] in New York slam the Kremlin for its aggression. But this slamming was never repeated by the White House. That Sunday, Trump was asked on the news if he was embarrassed by the fact that the violence went up substantially after his phone call, and he said he wasn’t.”
Observers say there is also a chance, however, that Ukraine instigated some of the violence itself.
“Kiev, too, has become less inclined to compromise as it has grown more uncertain about Washington’s policy toward the conflict,” wrote Kiev-based Isaac Webb in a Feb. 6 Foreign Policy article.
He noted that Ukraine has been making frequent incursions into the “gray zone,” the no man’s land separating government and rebel forces, increasing the likelihood of clashes. Moreover, neither side seems particularly inclined to implement the hard compromises laid out in the Minsk accords that led to the current fragile ceasefire.
“At the same time, the Ukrainian president’s office has used the escalation to remind Trump of the costs of rapprochement with Russian President Vladimir Putin: ‘The shelling is massive. Who would dare talk about lifting the sanctions in such circumstances?’” Webb wrote.
But for Trump, Ukraine — whose Russian intervention has led to nearly three years of war and about 10,000 deaths — is at best a secondary consideration, according to Herbst.
“That’s why he keeps talking about lifting sanctions if the Russians help us fight ISIS [Islamic State]. He doesn’t seem to understand that Russia is conducting a war of aggression in Ukraine, and that their aim is to weaken NATO and the EU,” Herbst told The Diplomat. “What we’re seeing right now is a fair amount of institutional pushback against this unwise policy, and not just from Sen. John McCain [R-Ariz.] and the Democrats. Even McConnell made a statement about how this is not the time to be talking about removing sanctions. Sen. Paul Ryan [R-Wis.] said the same thing. I suspect that if Trump keeps pushing, he’ll produce a serious response from Congress.”
Peter Doran, executive vice president at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), said this debate is being watched very closely throughout Eastern Europe, but especially in the three ex-Soviet republics of the Baltics: Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

Photo: OSCE / Evgeniy Maloletka

Civilians make the dangerous crossing over a damaged bridge in Stanytsia Luhanska in eastern Ukraine on Dec. 16, 2016. Shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump took office, skirmishes broke out between government forces and Moscow-backed rebels.

“If the United States is going to be tested somewhere on its frontier of power, that test is likely to come where American capabilities are weak,” Doran told us. “Certainly NATO’s eastern flank has been one of the most neglected zones of conflict in recent memory. Since the Crimea invasion, the U.S. has scrambled to catch up with the game that Vladimir Putin is already playing very well — and winning, for now.”
As part of an agreement struck by Obama last year, NATO has already begun moving thousands of troops to shore up its defenses in Eastern Europe, with the first contingent arriving in Poland in January. But allies remain nervous whether Trump will follow through on the new deployments and other promised NATO initiatives. Indeed, during a Feb. 15 visit to Brussels, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis reiterated Trump’s longstanding threat that NATO members must contribute their fair share and spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense.
“If your nations do not want to see America moderate its commitment to this alliance, each of your capitals needs to show support for our common defense,” he warned.
At the same time, Mattis has repeatedly sought to reassure allies that the security bloc remains vital to U.S. interests.
Still, NATO allies are closely watching to see how the Russia drama will unfold. Doran said that despite the general rancor in Washington, there is “strong bilateral support” on Capitol Hill for taking a tough line toward the Kremlin, as well as a transatlantic consensus that the sanctions against Russia are there for good reason.
“Keeping the sanctions in place sends a very clear message to Russia: that the international system is governed by laws, that those laws must be respected and that these actions are not acceptable in the 21^st century. Putin is a leader who respects strength and power — and removing the sanctions as a way of accommodating the Kremlin would be a serious mistake.”
CHINA/TAIWAN
Many observers assumed the initial flashpoint between China and the U.S. under a new administration would occur because of maritime disputes in the South China Sea, where Beijing has been aggressively staking its territorial claims.
But Trump’s surprise December acceptance of a congratulatory phone call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen — the first since the U.S. and Taiwan severed relations in 1979 — infuriated China and drove a wedge between the world’s two largest economies.
Even before that, the billionaire candidate blasted China for manipulating its currency and ruining the U.S. economy. Once in office, Trump promptly questioned whether the U.S. will use the one China policy — under which the U.S. acknowledges that there is a single Chinese government in Beijing — as leverage to extract concessions from Beijing, which views Taiwan as a renegade province and a core national interest.
But after receiving the diplomatic cold shoulder from Chinese President Xi Jinping for weeks, Trump toned down his anti-China rhetoric, though it’s unclear what might happen next — especially with regard to Taiwan and an even more potentially serious flashpoint: North Korea.
“Donald Trump is enabling Xi Jinping to make China great again,” quipped Robert A. Manning, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security.
“Trump stepped in with his initial inane, ignorant comments, thinking that since the whole world is a real estate deal, he’d put Taiwan on the table as a bargaining chip,” Manning told The Diplomat in a phone interview. “The Taiwanese were pretty indignant. It achieved the unique goal of pissing off Taiwan and China at the same time.”

Photo: DoD / Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley, U.S. Navy

A full honors arrival ceremony welcomes then-Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping to the Pentagon on Feb. 14, 2012. Xi, now president, has bristled at Donald Trump's suggestion that the longstanding "one China" policy can be used as a bargaining chip in bilateral relations.

On Feb. 10, Trump agreed to accept the one China definition during a phone call with Xi, his first since taking office.
“The reality is, this is not a bargaining chip,” Manning said. “That’s why we’re able to have a policy with China in the first place. The idea that the Chinese would negotiate that is really dumb and deeply flawed.”
In fact, he said — and this goes back way before Trump’s election — “many of our core assumptions about China have been proven wrong, for instance the notion that as they became more integrated into the international system, they’d buy into our rules, or as they succeeded economically, we’d begin to see political reform. Actually, it’s going the other way. Given that, there will be a rethinking of China policy in any event.”
High on that policy agenda, of course, are economic issues. Yet here too, says Manning, the Trump administration has been long on rhetoric and short on facts.
“They’re right in identifying China as a troubling economic actor, but they’ve chosen all the wrong issues,” he argued. “They have not manipulated their currency in years. If you talk to 100 businessmen operating in China, 99 of them will tell you the currency issue is pretty far down on their list. The real issue of concern is China’s very nationalistic industrial policies.”
Manning cited a recent U.S. Chamber of Commerce poll which found that 80 percent of U.S. companies say they feel less welcome in China than before.
“Being frozen out — that is the central issue, and hopefully [the Trump administration] will eventually figure that out.”
But Trump may have lost his biggest source of economic leverage by abandoning the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a sweeping trade deal with 12 Asia-Pacific nations that notably excluded China. While widely expected, the move opens the door for China to push its own competing trade pact — which has far less labor, intellectual property and environmental protections — and further cement its hegemony over the region.
“By preemptively eliminating tools like economic statecraft from its foreign-policy toolbox, the Trump administration will be leaving itself with only hard power to counteract China’s ambitions,” wrote Hunter Marston in Foreign Policy magazine on Jan. 23.
Marston cited comments by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at his confirmation hearing that the U.S. would deny China access to artificial islands it is building in the international waters of the South China Sea. White House press secretary Sean Spicer doubled down on that statement, perhaps unaware of its implications. That’s because any attempt by the U.S. to militarily bar China from those islands would require a naval blockade, which would be tantamount to an act of war.
Whether those comments were a slip of the tongue because Trump officials don’t fully grasp the issue or an intentional warning, they sent a chilling signal to China watchers.

Photo: U.S. Navy / Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Gerald Dudley Reynolds

A team attached to the guided-missile destroyer USS Decatur conducts drills with a Japanese Akizuki-class destroyer in the East China Sea on Aug. 23, 2016. Decatur is deployed in support of maritime security and stability in the Indo-Asia-Pacific as part of a U.S. 3rd Fleet Pacific Surface Action Group.

“Tillerson’s provocative remarks may be a rhetorical gesture, another tenuous red line, or they may signal the beginnings of a far more assertive American policy of containment aimed at curbing China’s control of the South China Sea. Either interpretation invites peril,” warned Marston.
What this means for North Korea’s nuclear ambitions remains to be seen. Trump has lamented that Beijing should do more to rein in its erratic neighbor, which fired a nuclear test and a barrage of missile launches last year. Its most recent provocation was an intermediate-range ballistic missile test that took place while Trump was visiting with Japan’s prime minister. Trump’s response was uncharacteristically muted as he sought to avoid an escalation with the North’s mercurial dictator, Kim Jong-un. But if the North fires an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the U.S., that would immediately change the calculus.
Regardless, Trump needs the cooperation of China, North Korea’s economic lifeline, to address the nuclear threat on the Korean Peninsula. But Beijing is wary of toppling Kim’s regime, fearing an influx of millions of poor refugees and a unified U.S. ally on its doorstep.
“In the past, China’s role [in North Korea] has been cited as an area of U.S.-China cooperation,” said Manning. “But there’s a real risk it will become an area of U.S.-China contention. They clearly hate North Korea, and North Korea hates them, but they’re stuck with each other. China’s biggest fear is instability on the Korean Peninsula. They don’t want to do anything that would threaten that stability, so there are limits to how far they’d go.”
To that end, some experts say it’s time to end the U.S. policy of strategic patience and engage with the North, a prospect China favors. John Delury, a senior fellow at the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations, wrote in Foreign Affairs that the Trump administration “should negotiate a freeze of North Korea’s nuclear program in return for a U.S. security guarantee, since that is the only measure that could enable Kim to start concentrating on economic development and the belated transformation of North Korea.”
He adds: “Like it or not, North Korea’s nukes are a reality. The United States needs a new strategy for dealing with Kim — and Trump is well placed to deliver it.”
ISLAMIC STATE
During his presidential campaign, Trump vowed to crush the so-called Islamic State (also known as ISIS and ISIL) and “defeat the ideology of radical Islamic terrorism.” But that’s easier said than done — Obama essentially made the same pledge to defeat the terrorist group. Last year, Obama’s administration did, in fact, significantly degrade the group’s capabilities, dislodging it from large tracts of territory in Iraq, Syria and Libya and killing thousands of its fighters through a relentless bombing campaign. At the same time, the Islamic State has adapted into a guerilla-style insurgency still capable of recruiting lone wolves to launch spectacular attacks abroad, both in the U.S. and Europe.
Experts fear that Trump’s controversial refugee ban (also see stories "Former Iraqi Ambassador Denounces Controversial Travel Ban", "Trump's Refugee Ban Sparks Uproar at State Department" and "Op-Ed: State Department Memo on Trump's Refugee Ban Long on Rhetoric, Short on Specifics") will only add fuel to the fire, helping the Islamic State recruit disgruntled Arabs all over the world to attack the West.
In any event, “crushing” the Islamic State has little to do with ending the grinding six-year war in Syria, a war that’s cost more than 500,000 lives and sparked Europe’s worst migration crisis since World War II. Nor will a military victory over the group end the global war on terrorism that began with 9/11.
Michael Totten, a veteran foreign correspondent with more than a decade of experience in the Middle East, said Trump’s Mideast approach is doomed to fail.
“President Trump has repeatedly said he wants to partner with Russia in Syria to fight ISIS, but there are a couple of problems with that,” Totten told The Diplomat in an email.

Photo: U.S. Army / Spc. Paris Maxey

U.S. Army paratroopers maneuver through a hallway as part of squad-level training at Camp Taji in Iraq in 2015 — part of the multinational effort to train Iraqi security forces to defeat the Islamic State.

“First, Russia is not fighting ISIS in Syria. Russia is propping up the [Bashar al-] Assad regime and fighting every faction in Syria except ISIS. Second, Russia is part of the Iranian/Syrian/Hezbollah axis. Syria has been a Russian client state since the Cold War, and Iran gets its nuclear material from Moscow. So Vladimir Putin is a patron and armorer of Syria, which is the biggest state sponsor of international terrorism in the Arab world, and of Iran, which is the biggest state sponsor of international terrorism in the entire world.”
Totten, winner of the Washington Institute Book Prize for his 2012 analysis of Hezbollah, “The Road to Fatima Gate,” is predictably pessimistic about Trump helping to end Syria’s horrific civil war.
“Trump wants to be tough on Iran and tough on ISIS, but he can’t do both at the same time if he climbs into bed with Vladimir Putin,” he told us, referring to Iran and Russia’s alliance in Syria.
As of late 2016, write professors Hal Brands of Johns Hopkins University and Peter Feaver of Duke University in Foreign Affairs, the Islamic State had lost control of key strongholds such as Fallujah and Ramadi in Iraq, and Manbij and Jarabulus in Syria. Iraqi forces are currently struggling to retake Mosul, while U.S.-backed militia groups in Syria are attempting to capture the de facto Islamic State capital of Raqqa. Since August 2014, the Pentagon estimates that the U.S. coalition has killed more than 45,000 Islamic State fighters.
But even if the Islamic State can be destroyed, what happens next in the Middle East?
“Remnants of the caliphate may morph into an insurgency. Al Qaeda and its affiliates will still pose a threat. Moreover, the conditions that breed jihadist organizations will likely persist across the greater Middle East,” the professors write.
They say that leaves four options. “At one extreme, Washington could abandon its military commitments in the greater Middle East on the assumption that it is U.S. interference that provokes terrorism in the first place. At the other, it could adopt a heavy-footprint surge strategy that would involve using overwhelming military force … and attempt to politically transform the societies that produce [terrorist groups]. In between lie two options: one, a light-footprint approach akin to that taken by the Obama administration before ISIS’s rise; the other, a more robust approach closer to Washington’s response to ISIS since late 2014.”
Their conclusion: None of the four options are ideal. “The least worst choice would be an approach close to the medium-footprint strategy being used to defeat ISIS today.”
A February report by Rand Corp. suggests a similar strategy and advocates viewing the group as a trans-regional threat.
“The nature of the threat suggests the need to prioritize the security of Americans in the homeland, but does not imply placing the United States on a continuous war footing,” write authors Lynn E. Davis, Jeffrey Martini and Kim Cragin.
Rather, this approach involves boosting resources for intelligence and law enforcement, as well airstrikes and special ops raids. The authors also say the U.S. must help address underlying grievances that breed radicalism, including weak states and poor governance.
“The U.S. counter-ISIL strategy overseas should be designed to improve these conditions to the extent possible, but strategists must recognize that the United States has limited leverage to affect these conditions, and improvements will require years to accomplish.”

Photo: By Bienchido - Own work / Wikimedia Commons GFDL

A panorama of Jerusalem, the contested capital of Israelis and Palestinians, shows the Temple Mount, including Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, as seen from the Mount of Olives mountain ridge next to the Old City.

ISRAEL/PALESTINE
Will Trump be the president that finally brokers peace between the Arabs and Jews?
It’s hard to say, though Trump is the first U.S. leader to have a Jewish daughter and son-in-law. His relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is certainly warmer than the one his predecessor, Obama, had with Israel’s leader.
Throughout his campaign and even during the first week of his presidency, Trump vowed to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. But no such move appears imminent. That doesn’t surprise Gershon Baskin, founder and co-chairman of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information.
“Trump will probably sign the order delaying the implementation of the move, mainly because the intelligence and military people will tell him that if he moves the embassy, American lives will be at risk,” Baskin told The Diplomat in a phone call from Jerusalem. “That’s what’s happened for the past 20 years, and that’s not likely to change.”
Even so, Trump is seen as more pro-Israel than any American president in recent memory. Although the president has called additional settlement construction unhelpful toward achieving peace, his pick for U.S. ambassador to Israel, Orthodox Jewish lawyer David Friedman, is an unabashed proponent of settlements who has disavowed the two-state solution and bashed liberal Jews.
The administration’s pro-Israeli bend is not necessarily a good thing, warn Dana H. Allin and Steven N. Simon, authors of “Our Separate Ways: The Struggle for the Future of the U.S.-Israel Alliance.”
In a lengthy article for Foreign Affairs, the two authors outline the dangers of Trump’s alliance with Israel’s hard right.
“Although any new administration would find the landscape daunting, the United States’ strategic interests and moral values call for continued opposition to Israeli settlements in occupied territory, a continued insistence that the Palestinians pursue their cause through peaceful means, a continued commitment to a two-state solution, and continued attentiveness to Israel’s strategic vulnerabilities,” they wrote. “In other words, the most basic requirement is to do no harm, thus following in the tradition of past presidents.”
On Feb. 15, Trump — who has suggested enlisting the help of Arab states to break the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate — met with Netanyahu in Washington and held a joint press conference.
“The body language was terrific, and their rhetoric on Iran is probably very close,” said Ariel Cohen, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center. “I think both Bibi and Trump are coming to the conclusion that it’ll be almost impossible to scuttle the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] on Iran, but they both want to work to enforce strictly the [nuclear weapons] agreement.”
He added: “They also want to work with Sunni Arab countries. One of the interesting challenges and opportunities is to get Arab states to recognize Israel and provide the imprimatur for some kind of long-term or permanent peace arrangement.”
But that has effectively left the Palestinians out of the equation. In fact, the president, in typical Trump fashion, jettisoned decades of diplomatic convention by declaring that he was open to the idea of a one-state solution, thereby effectively abandoning Washington’s long-term support of two states — one for Jews, the other for Palestinians — as a way of ending the conflict. “I can live with either one,” he told reporters.
Whether the Palestinians can is another matter entirely.
MEXICO

Photo: By z2amiller - IMG_4919_2.jpg / Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 2.0

Mexican immigrants march for more rights in the northern California city of San Jose in 2006.

The two issues that propelled Donald Trump into the White House were trade and immigration — and Mexico is the proxy for both issues. It’s unfortunate, because until Trump’s election, the relationship between North America’s two most populous countries was quite positive.
Yet Trump’s rhetoric about building a wall (now estimated to cost $21 billion), deporting up to 3 million undocumented immigrants and slapping a 35 percent tariff on imports from Mexico hasn’t ended with his campaign. That worries Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank.
“This administration is still figuring out what it’s going to do on both immigration and trade issues,” he said. “They’ll have to do something that’s a change from the previous administration, because that’s why Trump was elected.”
But things are complicated by the fact that nobody is currently in charge of Latin America at the State Department. And while Roberta Jacobson — a seasoned diplomat who spent four years as Obama’s assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs — is now U.S. ambassador to Mexico, she’s unlikely to stay in that position for very long.
“The question is, how far will he go?” Shifter mused. “[Secretary of State] Tillerson recently met with Mexico’s foreign minister. He and other Cabinet officials like [Secretary of Defense] James Mattis and [Secretary of Homeland Security] John F. Kelly have a better understanding about what the stakes are in the U.S. taking such an aggressive position, which could really hurt us economically. It’s already damaged Mexico in a number of ways and is playing into the election campaign of 2018. If these economic measures are applied, that’s going to make economic conditions in Mexico worse, which is likely to spur migration to the United States.” (Ironically, net migration from Mexico has been down since the 2008 recession.)
Shifter warned that Mexico — which has been “very helpful” on issues ranging from drug interdiction to stemming the flow of Central American migrants — might not want to cooperate if the U.S. government pursues policies that hurt its southern neighbor.
“The hope is that if you have responsible people like Tillerson, Kelly and Mattis in senior positions, and some members of Congress, including Republicans, begin to speak out, the basic elements of our relationship will be preserved going forward and some of the damage could be contained.”
Shifter says he has no doubt that NAFTA will be renegotiated, most likely under the leadership of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.
Yet Walter Molano, writing in Latinvex, says Mexico could be the “unexpected star” of Latin America in 2017.
“Despite the rhetoric from the White House, the Mexican economy will benefit from economic revival in the United States,” he predicted. “Today, Mexico is an integral part of the U.S. industrial base. Hence, the expansion in U.S. economic activity will surely be felt south of the border.”
Molano noted that many of the companies that have announced changes to their Mexican investment plans, like General Motors and Chrysler, either received government bailouts in the past or depend heavily on federal contracts.
“It is only natural that they kowtow to the new powers in Washington,” he observed. “Still, the larger set of corporations that are not as dependent on government assistance or projects will continue to operate unabatedly, and provide a strong boost to the Mexican economy. In other words, there will be winners and losers in 2017, but Mexico could be holding the proverbial Trump card.”

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About the Author

Larry Luxner is the Tel Aviv-based news editor of The Washington Diplomat.

The End of the Old Israel

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

The End of the Old Israel

How Netanyahu Has Transformed the Nation

Aluf Benn

ALUF BENN is Editor in Chief of Haaretz. Follow him on Twitter @alufbenn [1].

Israel—at least the largely secular and progressive version of Israel that once captured the world’s imagination—is over. Although that Israel was always in some ways a fantasy, the myth was at least grounded in reality [2]. Today that reality has changed, and the country that has replaced it is profoundly different from the one its founders imagined almost 70 years ago. Since the last elections, in March 2015 [3], a number of slow-moving trends have accelerated dramatically. Should they continue, they could soon render the country unrecognizable.

Already, the transformation has been dramatic. Israel’s current leaders—headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu [4], who metamorphosed after the election from a risk-averse conservative into a right-wing radical—see democracy as synonymous with unchecked majority rule and have no patience for restraints such as judicial review or the protection of minorities. In their view, Israel is a Jewish state and a democratic state—in that order. Only Jews should enjoy full rights, while gentiles should be treated with suspicion. Extreme as it sounds, this belief is now widely held: a Pew public opinion survey published in March found that 79 percent of Jewish Israelis supported “preferential treatment” for Jews—a thinly veiled euphemism for discrimination against non-Jews.

Meanwhile, the two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians has been taken off the table, and Israel is steadily making its occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank permanent. Human rights groups and dissidents who dare criticize the occupation and expose its abuses are denounced by officials, and the government has sought to pass new laws restricting their activities. Arab-Jewish relations [5] within the country have hit a low point, and Israel’s society is breaking down into its constituent tribes.

Netanyahu thrives on such tribalism, which serves his lifelong goal of replacing Israel’s traditional elite with one more in tune with his philosophy. The origins of all these changes predate the current prime minister, however. To truly under­stand them, one must look much further back in Israel’s history: to the country’s founding, in 1948.

THE OLD MAN AND THE NEW JEW

Modern Israel was created by a group of secular socialists led by David Ben-Gurion, who would become the state’s first prime minister. “The Old Man,” as he was known, sought to create a homeland for a new type of Jew: a warrior-pioneer who would plow the land with a gun on his back and then read poetry around a bonfire when the battle was won. (This “new Jew” was mythologized, most memorably, by Paul Newman in the film Exodus.) Although a civilian, Ben-Gurion was a martial leader. He oversaw the fledgling state’s victory in its War of Independence against Israel’s Arab neighbors and the Palestinians, most of whom were then exiled. And when the war was over, the Old Man oversaw the creation of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which he designed to serve as (among other things) the new country’s main tool for turning its polyglot Jewish immigrants into Hebrew-speaking citizens.

Ben-Gurion was a leftist but not a liberal. Following independence, he put Israel’s remaining Arab residents under martial law (a condition that lasted until 1966) and expropriated much of their land, which he gave to Jewish communities. His party, Mapai (the forerunner of Labor), controlled the economy and the distribution of jobs. Ben-Gurion and his cohort were almost all Ashkenazi (of eastern European origin), and they discriminated against the Sephardic Jews (known in Israel as the Mizrahim), who came from Arab states such as Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia, and Yemen. Ben-Gurion also failed to appreciate the power of religion, which he believed would wither away when confronted with secular modernity. He therefore allowed the Orthodox to preserve their educational autonomy under the new state—thereby ensuring and underwriting the creation of future generations of religious voters.

In recent years, as the Israeli public has shifted rightward, so has Netanyahu—which has allowed him to more openly indulge his true passions.

For all Ben-Gurion’s flaws, his achievements were enormous and should not be underestimated: he created one of the most developed states in the post­colonial world, with a world-class military, including a nuclear deterrent, and top scientific and technological institutions. His reliance on the IDF as a melting pot also worked well, effectively assimilating great numbers of new Israelis. This reliance on the military—along with its battlefield victories in 1948, 1956, and 1967—helped cement the centrality of the IDF in Israeli society. To this day, serving in the military’s more prestigious units is the surest way to get ahead in the country. The army has supplied many of the nation’s top leaders, from Yitzhak Rabin and Ezer Weizman to Ehud Barak [6] and Ariel Sharon, and every chief of staff or intelligence head instantly becomes an unofficial candidate for high office on retirement.

The first major challenge to Ben-Gurion’s idea of Israel arrived on Yom Kippur in 1973, when Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack that managed to catch the IDF unawares. Although Israel ultimately won the war, it suffered heavy losses, and the massive intelligence failure traumatized the nation. Like the United Kingdom after World War I, Israel emerged technically victorious but shorn of its sense of invincibility.

Less than four years later, Menachem Begin—the founder of Israel’s right wing—capitalized on this unhappiness and on Sephardic grievances to hand Labor its first-ever defeat at the polls. Taking power at the head of a new coalition called Likud (Unity), Begin forged an alliance with Israel’s religious parties, which felt more at home with a Sabbath-observing con­servative. To sweeten the deal, his government accelerated the building of Jewish settlements in the West Bank (which appealed to religious Zionists) and offered numerous concessions to the ultra-Orthodox, such as generous educational subsidies.

Begin was a conservative and nationalist. But the decades he’d spent in the opposition had taught him to respect dissent and debate. As prime minister, therefore, he always defended judicial independence, and he refrained from purging Labor loyalists from the top echelons of the civil service and the IDF. As a consequence, his revolution, important though it was, was only a partial one. Under Begin’s leadership, Israel’s old left-wing elite lost its cabinet seats. But it preserved much of its influence, holding on to top positions in powerful institutions such as the media and academia. And the Supreme Court remained stocked with justices who, while officially nonpartisan, nevertheless represented a liberal worldview of human and civil rights.

BIBI’S BAPTISM

Although Likud has governed Israel for most of the years since then, the left’s ongoing control over many other facets of life has given rise to a deep sense of resentment on the right. No one has felt that grievance more keenly than Netanyahu, who long dreamed of finishing Begin’s incomplete revolution. “Bibi,” as Netanyahu is known, first won the premiership in 1996, but it would take him decades to accomplish his goal.

Netanyahu’s initial election came shortly after the assassination of Rabin. The years prior to Rabin’s death had been dominated by the Oslo peace process between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and that same peace process would become the focus of his successor’s first term as well.

Netanyahu opposed Oslo from the very beginning. Then as now, he saw Israel as a Jewish community besieged by hostile Arabs and Muslims who wanted to destroy it. He considered the Arab-Israeli conflict a perpetual fact of life that could be managed but would never be resolved. The West—which, in his view, was anti-Semitic, indifferent, or both—couldn’t be counted on to help, and so Israel’s leaders were duty bound to prevent a second Holocaust through a combination of smart diplomacy and military prowess. And they couldn’t afford to worry about what the rest of the world thought of them. Indeed, one of Netanyahu’s main domestic selling points has always been his willingness to stand up to established powers, whether they take the form of the U.S. president or the UN General Assembly (where Netanyahu served as Israel’s representative from 1984 to 1988 and first caught his nation’s attention). Netanyahu loves lecturing gentiles in his perfect English, and much of the Israeli public loves these performances. He may go overboard at times—as when, last October, he suggested that Adolf Hitler had gotten the idea to kill Europe’s Jews [7] from Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem during World War II. Historians of all stripes scoffed at the claim, but many ordinary Israelis were indifferent to its inaccuracy.

During his first term, Netanyahu connected his domestic and international agendas by blaming the leftism of Israel’s old elite for the country’s foreign policy mistakes. To prevent more missteps in the future, he borrowed a page from the U.S. conservative playbook and vowed to fight the groupthink at Israel’s universities and on its editorial boards—a way of thinking that, he argued, had led the country to Oslo. In a 1996 interview with the Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit, Netanyahu complained about his delegitimization “by the nomenklatura of the old regime,” adding that “the problem is that the intellectual structure of Israeli society is unbalanced.” He pledged to create new, more conserva­tive institutions to rewrite the national narrative.

But Netanyahu’s political inexperience worked against him. His tenure was rocked by controversy, from his reck­less provocations of the Palestinians and of Jordan to a scandal caused by his wife’s mistreatment of household employees. Israel’s old elites closed ranks, and, with the support of the Clinton administration, they forced Netanyahu into another deal with the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. The 1998 Wye River memorandum—the last formal agreement [8] that Israel and the Palestinians have signed to this day—triggered early elections in May 1999, after several small, hard-right parties abandoned Netanyahu’s coalition in protest. Barak and the Labor Party emerged victorious.

Both Barak, a decorated former head of the IDF, and Sharon, who replaced Netanyahu at the helm of Likud and became prime minister himself in 2001, represented a return to the Ben-Gurion model of farmer turned soldier turned statesman. Their ascent thus restored the old order—at least temporarily—and made Netanyahu seem like a historical fluke.

Sebastian Scheiner / Pool / REUTERS Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a weekly cabinet meeting in the Golan Heights, April 2016.                          

A MODERATE MASK

But Netanyahu saw things differently, and he spent the next decade plotting his return to power. Following Sharon’s reelection in 2003, Netanyahu become finance minister, although he resigned on the eve of the August 2005 unilateral pullout from Gaza. When Sharon created a new centrist party, Kadima (Forward), shortly after the withdrawal, Netanyahu took over the remnants of Likud. But he lost the next election, in March 2006, to Ehud Olmert, who had replaced the ailing Sharon as head of Kadima.

Olmert had pledged to follow through on his mentor’s vision by withdrawing Israel from most of the West Bank. But in July, his plans were disrupted when he let Hezbollah draw him into a pointless and badly managed war in Lebanon. His subsequent effort to negotiate a comprehensive peace deal with the Palestinians, launched in Annapolis, Maryland, in late 2007, led nowhere. Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s credibility and popularity were boosted that same year when Hamas, well armed with rockets, seized control of Gaza—just as he’d predicted. So when Olmert announced his resignation over corruption charges in the summer of 2008 (he ultimately went to jail earlier this year on different charges), Netanyahu was ready to pounce.

His revival was further aided by the sudden appearance in 2007 of what would become the most important of what Netanyahu called independent sources of thought. Israel Hayom (Israel Today) is a free daily newspaper owned by the American casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, and ever since its launch, it has provided Netanyahu with a loud and supportive media megaphone. By 2010, Israel Hayom had become the country’s most-read weekday newspaper, printing 275,000 copies a day. And its front page has consistently read like Bibi’s daily message: lauding his favorites, denouncing his rivals, boasting about Israel’s achievements, and downplaying negative news.

With Olmert out of the picture, Netanyahu returned to office on March 31, 2009. Eager to prove that he was no longer the scandal-plagued firebrand who’d been voted out of office a decade before, however, and fearing pressure from the new U.S. president, Barack Obama, he once again was forced to shelve his long-term plans for elite replacement. Instead of undermining his enemies, he shifted to the center, recruiting several retired Likud liberals to vouch for the “new Bibi” and join his cabinet, and forging a coalition with Labor under Barak, who stayed on as defense minister (a job he’d held under Olmert). Together, Netanyahu and Barak spent much of the next four years working on an ultimately unrealized plan to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities.

In June 2009, ten days after Obama’s Cairo address, Netanyahu sought to reinforce his new centrist credentials by endorsing the idea of Palestinian statehood in a speech. True to form, however, the prime minister imposed a condition: the Palestinians would first have to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, instantly rejected the idea. But the move enhanced Netanyahu’s moderate credentials anyway.

And it helped get Obama off his back—but not before the U.S. president convinced Netanyahu to accept a ten-month freeze on new residential con­struction in the West Bank settlements. The freeze was meaningless, however, since it didn’t change the facts on the ground or facilitate serious peace talks. And soon after it expired, Republicans won control of the House of Represen­tatives in the U.S. midterm election, creating a firewall against any further pressure from Washington. Obama soon lost interest in the thankless peace process. Although his rocky relationship with Netanyahu led to many juicy newspaper and magazine stories, it had little effect on Israel’s internal politics, since most Israelis also distrusted the U.S. president, and still do; a global poll released in December 2015 found that Obama had a lower favorability rating in Israel than almost anywhere else, with only Russians, Palestinians, and Pakistanis expressing greater disapproval.

Any remaining pressure on Netanyahu to pursue peace with the Palestinians evaporated soon after the Arab Spring [9] erupted. Hosni Mubarak’s regime in Egypt collapsed, threatening a cornerstone of Israel’s security strategy; Syria sank into a bloody civil war; and a terrifying new nemesis, the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), appeared on the scene. These events unexpectedly bolstered Israel’s position in several ways: Russia and the United States ultimately joined forces to eliminate most of Syria’s chemical weapons, and the conservative govern­ments of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and (after the 2013 counterrevolution) Egypt strengthened their ties with Jerusalem (albeit unofficially in most cases). But the regional carnage and turmoil horrified Israeli voters, who told themselves: if this is what the Arabs are capable of doing to one another, imagine what they would do to us if we gave them the chance.

Nonetheless, peace and security played an uncharacteristically minor role in the next election, in January 2013. Instead, the race was dominated by social issues, including the rapidly rising costs of housing and food staples in Israel. Such concerns helped usher in a new class of freshman politicians, who replaced old-timers such as Barak. But none of them was able to overcome the incumbent’s experience and savvy, and after reengaging with his right-wing base and merging with another conservative party led by former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Netanyahu won the election.

In the summer of 2014, following one last push for peace with Abbas (this time led by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry), war broke out between Israel and Hamas. The discovery of dozens of tunnels dug by Hamas into Egyptian and Israeli territory put another big scare into the Israeli public and prompted a prolonged ground operation—the bloodiest conflict of the Netanyahu era. During 50 days of fighting, more than 2,000 Palestinians and 72 Israelis, mostly soldiers, were killed. Israel’s Jewish population over­whelmingly supported the war, but the fighting caused communal tensions in the country to explode. Thousands of Arab Israelis [10]—who identified with the suffering in Gaza and were tired of their own abuse by the police and their increasing marginalization under Netanyahu—protested against the war. Hundreds were arrested, and other Arabs employed in the public sector were reportedly threatened with firing after criticizing the conflict on Facebook.

Israel has already become far less tolerant and open to debate than it used to be.

THE NEW RIGHT

Around the same time, personal animosities within Netanyahu’s coalition started to pull it apart. Netanyahu was unable to prevent Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, from electing Reuven Rivlin, a longtime Likud rival, to the largely symbolic presidency. And several of the prime minister’s erstwhile allies, including Lieberman, endorsed a bill that would have forced Israel Hayom to start charging its readers. (The bill never made it past a preliminary hearing.) In December, the government finally collapsed, and the Knesset called an early election.

Likud went into the 2015 race trailing in the polls. The public was angry with Netanyahu over a small-time financial scandal involving his wife and over the stalemated result of the war with Hamas. The Zionist Union, a new centrist coalition led by Labor’s Isaac Herzog, seemed poised to form the next government. But the uncharismatic Labor leader proved no match for his wilier, more experienced adversary. Netanyahu tacked right—scoring an unprecedented invitation to address the U.S. Congress (which he used to denounce the nuclear deal the Obama administration was negotiating with Iran) and stealing votes from smaller conservative parties by promising not to allow a Palestinian state to be established on his watch. Then, on election day, he released a video in which he claimed that “Arab voters are heading to the polling stations in droves. Left-wing NGOs are bringing them in buses.” The statement wasn’t true, but it effectively tapped into Jewish voters’ anxiety and racism and won Likud the election: Likud emerged with 30 seats; the Zionist Union earned 24.

In Israel’s fractious parliamentary system, votes alone don’t determine who takes power, however; that gets decided during the coalition-building process that inevitably follows each election. In this case, the electoral math left Netanyahu, who was 31 seats short of a majority, with two choices: he could form a national unity coalition with Herzog and the ultra-Orthodox, or he could forge a narrow but ideologically cohesive alliance with several smaller center- and far-right parties.

Choosing Herzog would have created a wider coalition and allowed Netanyahu to show a more moderate face to the world. But the prime minister, who was sick of acting like a centrist, picked the latter course instead. That left him with a very narrow, one-seat majority in the Knesset. But it also gave him his first undiluted hard-right govern­ment since his 2009 comeback—one that would finally allow him to realize his long-deferred dream of remaking Israel’s establishment.

Although Netanyahu is both secular and Ashkenazi, his new allies are mostly Mizrahim—long ostracized from Israel’s centers of power, even though they represent a large segment of the Jewish population—and religious Zionists, who are known for their knitted yarmulkes, are fiercely committed to (and often live in) West Bank settlements, and have, in recent years, come to hold many prominent positions in the army, the security services, and the civil service.

These groups are most vocally represented by three members of the current government: Likud’s Miri Regev, the minister of culture; Naftali Bennett, the minister of education and head of Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home), a religious Zionist party that he built out of the ashes of the old National Religious Party; and Ayelet Shaked, Bennett’s longtime sidekick [11]and now the minister of justice. Regev is Sephardic—her family came to Israel from Morocco—and a former brigadier general in the IDF, where she served as chief spokesperson during the Gaza pullout. Bennett, the son of American immigrants, served in the Israeli special forces and then made a fortune as a high-tech entrepreneur. He is both a model product of the “start-up nation” and the epitome of the religious, fiercely nationalist, pro-settlement leader (although he himself lives comfortably within the Green Line). Shaked, meanwhile, was a computer engineer before joining politics; despite her membership in the Jewish Home, she is neither religious nor a settler. Both she and Bennett worked directly for Netanyahu in Likud a decade ago, when he was the opposition leader, but they broke with him over personal quarrels in 2008.

AMIR COHEN / REUTERS

Changing of the guard: Netanyahu at a memorial service for Ben-Gurion, November 2014.

Like the prime minister, Regev, Bennett, and Shaked are skilled, media-savvy communicators. In keeping with Israeli tradition, all three have complicated, “frenemy” relationships with Netanyahu. Regev climbed the ranks of Likud without the prime minister’s sponsorship, and Netanyahu has never forgiven Bennett and Shaked for their betrayals; the two are never invited to join him at his residence or on his plane. Yet so far, they have not let their personal grievances block the pursuit of their shared interests. Netanyahu needs Bennett and Shaked to keep his coalition afloat, and he needs Regev to maintain his support among Sephardic Israelis, an important Likud constituency. And there are no real ideological differences among the four politicians. Netanyahu is thus happy to let the others lead the charge against the old guard—and to take the heat for it as well.

Since taking office last year, the three ministers have readily obliged him. Regev—who likes to rail against what she calls “the haughty left-wing Ashkenazi elite” and once proudly told an interviewer that she’d never read Chekhov and didn’t like classical music—has sought to give greater prominence to Sephardic culture and to deprive “less than patriotic” artists of government subsidies. Bennett’s ministry has rewritten public school curricula to emphasize the country’s Jewish character; it recently introduced a new high school civics textbook that depicts Israel’s military history through a religious Zionist lens and sidelines the role of its Arab minority. In December 2015, Bennett even banned Borderlife, a novel describing a romance between a young Jewish Israeli woman and a Palestinian man, from high school reading lists.

Shaked, for her part, has vowed to reduce judicial interference in the work of the executive and the Knesset by appointing more conservative justices to the Supreme Court next year, when four to five seats (out of 15) will open up. She has also made good use of her position as head of the cabinet committee on legislation, which decides which bills the executive will support in the Knesset. The committee has recently promoted several draft laws designed to curb political expression. One, aimed at non-Zionist Arab legislators, would allow the Knesset to suspend a member indefinitely for supporting terrorism, rejecting Israel’s status as a Jewish state, or inciting racism. Another, which Shaked has personally championed, would shame human rights groups by publicly identi­fying those that get more than half their funding from foreign governments. (So far, none of these bills, or even more restrictive measures put forward by Likud backbenchers—such as one that would label left-wing nongovern­mental organi­zations “foreign agents” and another that would triple the jail sentence for flag burning—has been passed.)

Meanwhile, Netanyahu is doing his part as well. After last year’s election, he insisted on holding on to the communications portfolio himself, giving him the last word on any media-related legislation. This move has given him unprecedented leverage over Israel’s television and telecommunications networks, which have grown leery of doing anything to alienate the prime minister.

Many of the government’s recent actions, such as Regev’s promotion of Sephardic culture, seem designed to address the traditional disenfranchisement of Israel’s Mizrahim and citizens living in the country’s “periphery” (that is, far from the central Tel Aviv–Jerusalem corridor). Other measures are aimed at promoting social mobility. Yet virtually all of them have had a clear political goal as well: to reduce, if not eliminate, the domestic opposition to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, which Netanyahu and his allies want to make permanent. By portraying the shrinking peace camp and its supporters as unpatriotic stooges of foreign anti-Semites, the government hopes to delegitimize them and build a consen­sus around its hard-right policies.

The strategy seems to be working. One example: in a poll conducted last December of Israeli Jews, 53 percent of those surveyed supported outlawing Breaking the Silence, a veterans’ group that aims to expose the harsh realities of the occupation by publishing wrenching testimonials of soldiers who have served in the West Bank.

DAGGERS DRAWN

Late last summer, after years of relative quiet, violence erupted in the West Bank and inside Israel. The first intifada (1987–93) was characterized by mass protests and stone throwing; during the second intifada (2000–2005), organized Palestinian suicide bombings and large-scale military reprisals by Israel caused thousands of casualties. This time, the so-called loners’ intifada has taken a more privatized form. Acting on their own, young Palestinian men and women have used knives and homemade guns to attack Israeli military and police checkpoints or civilians at flash points such as the settlements and Jerusalem’s Old City. So far, 34 Israelis have died in these assaults. Almost all the perpetrators have been arrested or shot on the spot—to date, about 200 Palestinians have been killed—but more have kept coming.

The loners’ intifada has presented the current government with its toughest test so far. Netanyahu has always claimed to be tough on terror and has portrayed his opponents as softies. Yet he and his top aides have seemed clueless in the face of the rising violence. Instead of stanching the bloodshed, they have redoubled their attacks on those they deem enemies within: human rights groups and Arab Israeli politicians. And the center-left parties, worried about looking unpatriotic, have gone along with him. In April, Herzog urged Labor to “stop giving the impression that we are always Arab-lovers.” And Yair Lapid, the head of the opposition Yesh Atid (There’s a Future) party—another centrist faction—has called on the army and the police to ease their rules of engagement and “shoot to kill whoever takes out a knife or a screwdriver or whatever.” Highlighting the danger of such rhetoric, in late March, B’Tselem, a respected human rights group, released a video taken in Hebron showing an Israeli soldier executing a Palestinian suspect [12] who had already been shot and was lying, bleeding, on the street.

Instead of remorse, the Hebron shooting unleashed a wave of ugly nationalism among many Israeli Jews. The military high command quickly detained the soldier and declared his action immoral, unlawful, and undisciplined. Yet in a public opinion poll conducted several days after the incident, 68 percent of respondents supported the shooting, and 57 percent said that the soldier should not face criminal prosecution. Far-right politicians, including Bennett, defended the killer, and Netanyahu, who had initially sup­ported the military brass, quickly closed ranks with his right-wing rivals and called the shooter’s parents to express his support. When Moshe Yaalon, the defense minister, nonetheless insisted on a criminal investigation, he was roundly attacked on social media for his stand. After Netanyahu seemed to side with Yaalon’s critics, their quarrel escalated, and in May, Yaalon resigned. Announcing his decision, Yaalon remarked, “I fought with all my might against manifestations of extremism, violence, and racism in Israeli society, which are threatening its sturdiness and also trickling into the IDF, hurting it.”

Netanyahu's government will keep trying to cement as many changes as possible to Israeli society and the Israeli establishment.

That Yaalon of all people could be subjected to such treatment shows just how much Israel has changed in recent years. A Likud leader and former IDF chief of staff, Yaalon is no leftist: he supported Oslo but later changed his mind when, as the head of military intelligence, he witnessed Arafat’s duplicity firsthand. Yet Yaalon believes in the importance of a secular state and the rule of law. That marked him as one of the last of the Ben-Gurion-style old guard still in office. And those credentials were enough to incite the online mob. It didn’t matter that he had an impressive military record, opposed the peace process, or supported settlement expansion. In Netanyahu’s Israel, merely insisting on due process for a well-documented crime is now enough to win you the enmity of the new elite and its backers.

THE PERMANENT PRIME MINISTER

One of the ways Netanyahu has retained power for so long—he’s now Israel’s second-longest-serving leader, after Ben-Gurion—has been by tailoring his politics to match public opinion. In 2009, he leaned toward the center because he feared Obama and wanted to dispel his own reputation for reck­lessness. In recent years, as the Israeli public has shifted rightward, so has he—which has allowed him to more openly indulge his true passions.

Throughout this period, Netanyahu has benefited from one other key asset: the lack of any serious challenger, either inside or outside Likud. Since returning to power in 2009, he has consistently beaten all other plausible candidates for prime minister in public opinion polls—by large margins. Within Likud, Netanyahu has managed to sideline a series of aspirants, such as Moshe Kahlon, Gideon Saar, and Silvan Shalom. And the opposition has failed to produce a credible alternative of its own. After leaving office in 2001, Barak undermined his standing by adopting a lavish lifestyle deemed unseemly for a Labor leader. Meanwhile, Tzipi Livni [13], Olmert’s foreign minister and his successor as the head of Kadima, actually beat Netanyahu’s Likud in the 2009 election, winning 28 seats to Likud’s 27. But she was unable to build a large enough coalition to form the next government, and her subsequent weakness as opposition leader damaged her popular appeal.

Bennett is now trying to position himself as a younger and more populist version of his one-time mentor. There’s no doubt that Bennett is charismatic and has grown quite popular. But he leads a small party with a limited base that cannot win an election unless it unites with Likud. Nir Barkat, the right-wing mayor of Jerusalem, is another former high-tech entrepreneur who harbors national aspirations. But he lacks charisma and remains unknown to the public outside Israel’s capital city.

Netanyahu’s strongest current challenger is probably Lapid, the former columnist and TV anchor who established Yesh Atid as a centrist party in 2012 and won a spectacular victory in 2013, earning Yesh Atid the second-highest number of seats in the Knesset. Lapid joined Netanyahu’s cabinet after he and Bennett forced the prime minister to drop the ultra-Orthodox parties. But Netanyahu soon outmaneuvered him, pushing Lapid to the Treasury—a well-established graveyard for ambitious politicians, since it often involves making unpopular moves such as raising taxes and cutting benefits. Lapid accomplished little while in office, and in 2015, after a tough fight with Herzog and his Zionist Union over the same voters, Yesh Atid lost almost half its seats. Since then, Lapid has improved his public standing—popularity polls now put Yesh Atid second, after Likud—by appearing to be more religiously observant and by talking tough on terror. Lapid is a moderate (he supports a Palestinian state and opposes the expansion of remote West Bank settlements), is an excellent commu­n­icator, and is an astute reader of public sentiment. But he is hypersensitive—he tends to overreact when criticized—and he lacks security experience, a huge impediment in Israel.

None of this means that Netanyahu is invulnerable, however. In March, Haaretz published a poll showing that a new, imaginary centrist party led by Gabi Ashkenazi (a popular former IDF chief of staff), Kahlon, and Saar would beat Likud in an election held tomorrow. But unless its coalition crumbles, the government doesn’t need to call a new election until November 2019, and the nonexistent party remains a fantasy. In the meantime, Netanyahu continues to maneuver. He has tried to entice the smaller right-wing parties into forming a new, broader party with Likud (so far, none of them has shown much interest). And this past spring, he held negotiations with Herzog over the formation of a unity coalition, only to back off at the last moment and offer his former ally Lieberman the post of defense minister. With Lieberman inside the government, the ruling coalition—more right-wing than ever—would get an expanded parliamentary base and more room to breathe.

Until the next election does come around, Netanyahu’s government will keep trying to cement as many changes as possible to Israeli society and the Israeli establishment. The prime minister and his allies will push to appoint more conservatives to the Supreme Court and more religious Zionists to key gov­ernment and academic positions. They will maintain their support for Mizrahi culture and West Bank settlements, will impose more restrictions on left-wing organ­izations, and will work to increase tensions with Israel’s Arabs.

Regardless of who wins the next election, at least some of these changes seem likely to become permanent. The country has already become far less tolerant and open to debate than it used to be. The peace camp has withered, and very few really challenge the status of the occupation anymore. Arab-Jewish relations are so bad that they would take outstanding leadership and enormous effort to fix. And the United States’ retrenchment has strengthened the sense among many Israelis that they can go it alone and no longer need to worry about pleasing Washington. It’s hard to see how a new Israeli prime minister—or a new U.S. president—will be able to reverse many of these shifts.

No matter who wins the US election, the door stays shut to Palestinians

Fadi Nicholas Nassar

Wednesday 2 November 2016 18:18 UTC

Last update: 

Friday 4 November 2016 10:46 UTC

 

 

“While there are differences between the parties’ beliefs on how to achieve their objectives, Democrats and Republicans share a common vision: Israel is to be provided with unconditional financial, military and diplomatic support, Palestine is a word that is rarely (if ever) articulated publicly or addressed substantially, and the Palestinians - their lives, concerns, and rights - are invisibilised and, if recognised, only so in the shadow of Israel’s security interests.  “

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Trump and Clinton may clash on many issues, but they both give unconditional support to Israel while denying Palestinians a voice

Presidential elections offer a brief but critical window to examine the different and often competing visions over which direction the country should take regarding the economy, foreign policy, and key domestic issues. The 2016 presidential elections are perhaps the most divisive in the country’s modern history, a probable consequence of the extreme polarisation between the Republican and Democratic parties.

What will be the implications of a Trump or Clinton administration on Palestine and the Palestinians?

Despite these rising tensions, in the realm of foreign policy, the approach to Israel, Palestine and the Palestinians is arguably one of the most inflexible and entrenched positions in Washington.

While there are differences between the parties’ beliefs on how to achieve their objectives, Democrats and Republicans share a common vision: Israel is to be provided with unconditional financial, military and diplomatic support, Palestine is a word that is rarely (if ever) articulated publicly or addressed substantially, and the Palestinians - their lives, concerns, and rights - are invisibilised and, if recognised, only so in the shadow of Israel’s security interests.  

Nevertheless, the current race to the Oval Office has been one that has defied most expectations and understandings of the workings of US politics. Against the backdrop of a US that is reorienting its strategic gaze from the Middle East, what will be the implications of a Trump or Clinton administration on Palestine and the Palestinians?

A Shared Vision: Trump, Netanyahu and the GOP

In February, Donald Trump attracted much attention when he broke from decades of zealous Republican commitment to Israel by promising to be a “neutral” negotiator in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. As Trump’s popularity kept rising regardless of taking such an atypical stance on Palestine and Israel, he caught the attention of key Republican donors like Sheldon Adelson, a longtime supporter of America’s special relationship with Israel.

In December 2015, in the heat of the primary battle, Adelson and Trump met privately. Soon after, Trump eagerly told Reuters, that "Sheldon knows that nobody will be more loyal to Israel than Donald Trump."

Trump continued to fall back in line with traditional Republican positions on Israel and Palestine when in March 2016, during his address to AIPAC, he referred to Hamas as the “Palestinian ISIS”, denounced the United Nations as not being “a friend to freedom” or a capable intermediary, promised to immediately invite Netanyahu to the Oval Office and swiftly move the American embassy to “the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem.”

Throughout his entire speech, Trump only referred to Palestinians within the framework of terrorism. With respect to the contours of any future peace deal, he said that the Palestinians “must come to the table knowing that the bond between the United States and Israel is absolutely totally unbreakable.  They must come to the table willing and able to stop the terror being committed on a daily basis against Israel. They must do that. And they must come to the table willing to accept that Israel is a Jewish state and it will forever exist as a Jewish state.”

And while Trump’s speech hit most of the standard Republican notes, his use of the word “Palestine” drew the ire of his rival Ted Cruz, who evoked cheers from the audience when he started his speech by insisting that “perhaps to the surprise of a previous speaker, Palestine has not existed since 1948”.

It is that comment that perhaps best captures the GOP’s approach to Palestine - even its mention is considered blasphemous. This is evidenced with their 2016 platform that no longer calls for the two-state solution and boldly signals to international organisations like the UN that the GOP opposes “any measures intended to impose an agreement or to dictate borders or other terms and we call for the immediate termination of all US funding of any entity that attempts to do so”.

It is that comment that perhaps best captures the GOP’s approach to Palestine - even its mention is considered blasphemous

The platform also recognises Jerusalem as the “eternal and indivisible capital” of Israel, calls for the US embassy to be moved there, insists on maintaining Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge, and identifies the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement as “anti-Semitic” in nature with the intention of “destroying Israel”.

Should Trump lose the election, the positions of the GOP on Israel are clear and will mean that on the legislative level, it will strongly back Netanyahu’s policies regardless of their costs to Palestinians or the fragile state of the peace process. This should come as no surprise, given Netanyahu’s particular dedication to tightly aligning the GOP with Israel.

Indeed, the shared vision between Netanyahu and the GOP is not limited to policies in Palestine and Israel; as Trump continuously points out, Israel epitomises the success of some of his controversial propositions on profiling and immigration control.

For instance, in the wake of the Orlando shootings, Trump supported his suggestion that the US adopt profiling to thwart terrorist attacks by citing Israel as a country that does it “successfully”.

Consequently, a Trump presidency would be focused on providing unconditional support for Netanyahu. But delving deeper, the compatibility between Trump and Netanyahu points to very similar outlooks on national security, immigration, and racial and religious profiling.

Democrats: Hillary Clinton, a fragmented party and an inflexible vision

Ted Cruz was not the only presidential hopeful to challenge Trump on his less fervent commitment to Israel. In the morning before either Republican candidate’s speech to AIPAC, Hillary Clinton indirectly referenced Trump’s changing position and denounced the possibility of neutrality on the issue of Israel and Palestine.

As emphasised on her campaign site, Clinton has made a point to advertise her firm support for Israel and amity with Netanyahu. On the security front, Clinton promises to increase support for defence systems like Iron Dome and David’s Sling and renew the US-Israel Memorandum of Understanding, “providing a 10-year US commitment to provide Israel with the security assistance it needs to maintain the most capable military in the Middle East.”

Like Trump, Clinton also pledges to thwart any attempts to isolate or weaken Israel’s standing in the diplomatic arena. With regards to the peace process, Clinton visibly distances herself from any position of impartiality by affirming that, while she supports a two-state solution, the angle of a Clinton presidency will be to “partner with Israel to advance the two-state vision of a Jewish and democratic Israel with secure and recognised borders”. 

For a two-state vision, there is only reference to partnering with Israel, a complete elision of Palestinian rights and expectations, and despite the different communities living inside any such state, a focus on an exclusive ethnic and religious identity to Israel.

A party divided? 

While such rhetoric and posturing closely resembles that of her Republican rival, Hillary Clinton’s approach to the Palestinians was a divisive issue in the Democratic primaries. Bernie Sanders, leading an anti-establishment movement, publicly challenged Clinton’s AIPAC speech and general approach to Israel and Palestine in the Democratic debates in April.

Ultimately, it was an exchange that forced a conversation on and recognition of the suffering, aspirations and dignity of the Palestinian people. In it, Sanders insisted on highlighting the biased role that the US is playing, the carte blanche given to Netanyahu, and the detrimental consequences such a “one-sided” approach is having on the peace process.

After Sanders criticised Clinton for failing to refer to the Palestinians in her AIPAC speech, Clinton openly acknowledged Palestinian concerns and reluctantly acknowledged that an agreement would have to be fair to both the Israelis and the Palestinians. Nevertheless, she maintained that it would have to be dependent on Israel’s security. 

While the debate brought a much-needed conversation on Palestinians and their rights, it also demonstrated the worrying defence Clinton used concerning Israel’s actions in Gaza. What’s more, when referring to Gaza, Clinton called it a “terrorist haven” and one that emerged when “Israel left Gaza”.

Such language is troubling. It dehumanises those living in Gaza, fails to recognise that Israel’s military withdrawal from Gaza did not end its control of Gaza’s economy and vital resources such as water and electricity, and puts the onus for Palestinian suffering on the Palestinians themselves. It echoes Clinton’s rigid defence of Israel’s policies in the Gaza War during Jon Stewart’s the Daily Show, revealing a pattern in legitimising and justifying any Israeli policy, regardless of its impact on Palestinians. 

Cornel West passionately argued that '[Israel’s security] can never be predicated on an occupation of precious Palestinians... wrestling with occupation for 50-some years, demeaned, devalued, dominated, exploited'

Sanders would continue to advance his progressive objectives for Palestine by appointing three pro-Palestinian figures to the Democratic platform committee - Cornel West, James Zogby and US Rep Keith Ellison (D-Minn).

The move beyond rhetorical support for Palestinians to giving Palestinian voices a seat at the table sparked hope that the Democratic Party could witness an historic change regarding its approach towards the Palestinians and Palestine.  Sanders’ camp tried to broaden the conversation beyond the unconditional support of Israel and ended up fiercely fighting over “occupation and settlements.” In a fiery debate with Robert Wexler, a Clinton surrogate, Cornel West passionately argued that "[Israel’s security] can never be predicated on an occupation of precious Palestinians... wrestling with occupation for 50-some years, demeaned, devalued, dominated, exploited.”

But Clinton’s uncompromising commitment won out in the final platform. And while the platform incorporates more progressive stances on issues pertaining to immigration reform, racial justice and prison reform, it maintains a similar outlook to the Republican platform on Israel, Palestine and the Palestinians.

One major difference is that the Democratic platform commits itself to a two-state solution. But despite using more opaque language, the rest of the platform is pretty similar to the GOP’s regarding Israel. It calls for Jerusalem to remain as the capital, a commitment to retaining Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge, and staunch opposition to any effort to delegitimise Israel, including at the UN or through BDS.

Another distinction with the Republican platform is its conclusion that the “Palestinians should be free to govern themselves in their own viable state, in peace and dignity”. The statement is carefully phrased to recognise that Palestinians “should be” free to have their own state - rather than “must be” - dodging any obligations by the party or Clinton to ensure the realisation of such a state.  

The platform reflects the rigidity of Clinton’s stance, the unwillingness of the Democratic National Committee to incorporate dissenting voices on Israel, Palestine, and the Palestinians, and the limited capacity of progressive actors on these issues to effectively transform the party’s inelastic approach.

Moreover, as the presidential election has intensified and the fear of Trump heightened, Clinton has faced less criticism from progressives within the party and has been given more leeway to advance her current positions and move further to the right, especially on matters of foreign policy. These factors, combined with the relative absence of any substantial conversation on Israel, Palestine, or the Palestinians in the national election, signal a need to be cautious about any optimism fostered during the Democratic primaries for the party’s policies towards Palestinians.

Vision for Palestine decided by everyone - but Palestinians

In the midst of the chaos surrounding the 2016 presidential saga, the differences between the expertise and rhetoric of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump could not be greater. The split is so profound that Clinton has used Trump’s intolerant rhetoric and anti-immigration positions to paint him as antagonistic to American values. Beyond their cults of personality, the candidates’ ideological clashes are also reflected in their respective parties’ general strategies and aspirations for the country’s future.

Yet while the parties and their candidates have opposing perspectives on the prison system, immigration, and the economy, they share a common vision for Israel, Palestine and the Palestinians.

Ultimately, both prioritise support for Israel financially, militarily and diplomatically. Palestine is a word rarely if ever mentioned, and while Democrats and Republicans differ slightly in their rhetoric of the two-state solution, both preface any conversation on Palestinian statehood as feasible only if it is considered in the interests of Israel. Both Clinton and Trump continue to invisibilise the Palestinians, elide their suffering, and sideline their concerns. Consequently, Clinton and Trump's common vision is one that is tightly aligned with that of Netayanhu.

As both candidates paint one another as occupying opposite ends of the political spectrum, their shared embrace of Netanyahu’s vision exposes the contradictions in the Democratic Party as well as the growing ideological parallels between the GOP and Israel's attitudes towards forced detention, militarised borders, profiling, and a general shift to the right. 

Clinton and Trump's common vision is one that is tightly aligned with that of Netayanhu

Trump has already pointed to Clinton’s double standards. “Hillary Clinton said that it is OK to ban Muslims from Israel by building a WALL, but not OK to do so in the US. We must be vigilant!” he tweeted. It is a moral and ideological inconsistency that progressive Democrats have also raised, albeit for different purposes.

As Rosario Dawson, a prominent Sanders spokesperson, asked: “Trump is a horrible person because he wants to put a wall between [the US] and Mexico. But that’s okay with [Hillary] when Netanyahu says he wants to do that between Israelis and Palestinians?”

In light of these developments, the following implications and recommendations are offered:

1) Netanyahu has carte blanche:

Both presidential candidates have articulated their unwavering support for Israel and presented themselves as being the right choice to “fix” the relationship impaired under Obama. And while the rhetoric from Clinton or Trump differs slightly from that of Obama, the implications of such continuous unconditional support can be seen with the recent expansion of Israeli settlements shortly after finalising a $38bn package of military aid. As Mark Toner, the State Department’s deputy spokesperson, stated, the consequences of such actions will result in “cementing a one-state reality of perpetual occupation”.  

2) Growing contradictions between the US’s domestic and foreign policies leave spaces for grassroots movements:

As issues of racial justice and immigration reform become greater priorities on the US domestic agenda, Israel's continued rightward path and support of walls, settlements, racial profiling and the prison industrial complex will widen the ideological ties between marginalised communities in the US and those in Israel and Palestine, while intensifying the links between Israel and the GOP.

The current crisis in the Republican Party is a telling sign not just of the lack of sustainability of such right-wing visions but also of its weakening ideological force in the US. Advocates for Palestinian justice should continue to build solidarity with groups such as the Movement for Black Lives that declare their connections with global liberation movements and underscore the urgency of dismantling systemic violence at home and when it is sanctioned by the US abroad. What's more, these solidarities will be critical in resisting the pressures of a future administration that will aim to crack down on Palestinian advocacy groups.

3) A continued one-sided approach to a two-sided issue:

Calls for a Palestinian state by the next president should be taken with extreme caution and skepticism. Neither candidate aspires to be a neutral party or an honest broker for peace. Moreover, both Trump and Clinton are adamant that any conversations on Palestinian statehood can only happen - and should only happen - in accordance with Israel’s interests. In any such process, the needs of the Palestinians are considered secondary and the contours of any future Palestinian state will be determined by Israel, not the Palestinians themselves. 

- Fadi Nicholas Nassar

is a Doctoral Fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy focusing on international mediation, peace-keeping, conflict resolution, and post-conflict reconstruction. He started his academic journey with a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service and a certificate in Islam and Muslim-Christian Relations from Georgetown University. He also holds a Master of Public Administration with a concentration on international conflict resolution from Columbia University as well as a Master of Philosophy in War Studies from King's College London, where he is currently completing his PhD. His current research is directed towards understanding the limitations and possibilities for UN mediation in civil wars. At different capacities, Fadi has worked with the United Nations Development Programme in Lebanon as well as in Peru, the Holy See’s Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Lebanon. He has also written for Univision and his articles can be found in English and Spanish. 

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.