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Israel Post-Elections: an Uncertain Future

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Israel Post-Elections: an Uncertain Future Transcript Israel Post-Elections: An Uncertain Future Jonathan Freedland Journalist, Author and Broadcaster Dr Toby Greene Director of Research, Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre Yossi Mekelberg Associate Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Programme, Chatham House; Programme Director, International Relations, Regents College London Chair: Sophie Long Presenter, BBC News Channel 18 March 2013 The views expressed in this document are the sole responsibility of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of Chatham House, its staff, associates or Council. Chatham House is independent and owes no allegiance to any government or to any political body. It does not take institutional positions on policy issues. This document is issued on the understanding that if any extract is used, the author(s)/ speaker(s) and Chatham House should be credited, preferably with the date of the publication or details of the event. Where this document refers to or reports statements made by speakers at an event every effort has been made to provide a fair representation of their views and opinions, but the ultimate responsibility for accuracy lies with this document’s author(s). The published text of speeches and presentations may differ from delivery. Transcript: Israel Post-Elections Sophie Long: Good evening ladies and gentlemen. My name is Sophie Long and I am a journalist and presenter for BBC News. It's my great pleasure to welcome you here to Chatham House on this miserable Monday evening – well done for braving the weather. Now as usual, it has taken what some may consider to be an eternity, but finally they did it – 1.2 billion Catholics may be able to settle on their leader in less than 72 hours, but it took Israel, a country of around 6 million voters, more than seven weeks to sort out their leadership. But then forming a government in Israel has never been an easy task, and given my experience of BBC production meetings, I'm going to say that introducing a television presenter to the proceedings probably didn't make things any simpler. Still, the political deck in Israel has been reshuffled, and whether it was a slap in the face for Benjamin Netanyahu or a slap on the wrist, he has responded by waving goodbye to the ultra-orthodox parties and saying hello to Yesh Atid. There is indeed a future, but it is a very uncertain one. Here this evening to explore what all this might mean in practice is Dr Toby Greene, who is director of research at BICOM. He's also written online for the Guardian and New Statesman, among other publications. We also have with us Yossi Mekelberg, who many of you will know is an associate fellow in the Middle East Programme here at Chatham House, but he's also programme director of international relations and social sciences at Webster University, Regents College and is also on the London Committee of Human Rights Watch. Lastly this evening we'll be hearing from the award-winning journalist, author and broadcaster Jonathan Freedland, who's written on the subject for too many publications to mention, and is also presenter of the BBC Radio 4's The Long View. Now the aim of the game this evening is to hear from our very knowledgeable panellists but also to hear as much from you, the audience, as possible… So without further ado, I will hand over the lectern to Dr Toby Greene. Toby Greene: Well thank you Sophie, and thank you to Chatham House for inviting me to speak on this panel. It's a real honour to address such a prestigious audience. Since I'm based in Israel I want to spend a few minutes trying to convey a flavour of what the impact of this election and this new government means for www.chathamhouse.org 2 Transcript: Israel Post-Elections Israel internally, before moving on to highlight some of the foreign policy implications. The headline here is that this election has really brought about a dramatic change in internal Israeli politics in a way that may not be obvious on the surface. It may not look like a dramatic change at first glance because the key decision-maker, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, remains the same. But beneath the top level, Netanyahu is working with a dramatically different set of forces. Israel's political party system has the remarkable capacity of completely reinventing itself almost overnight, and that is what happened in this election. So what are the kinds of changes I'm talking about? Well first of all, we have a completely transformed Knesset: 53 of the 120 members of the last Knesset were replaced; 47 of the new entrants are brand new and have never served before in the Knesset; 26 members are women, which is a record for the Knesset, including the first Ethiopian-born woman MK, and three of the 12 party leaders are women. We have a ruling party, or ruling partnership, which is considerably weakened, as Sophie mentioned. Avigdor Lieberman is personally weakened because he is now on trial and his role as foreign minister has been put on ice for him until that trial is concluded. He merged his Yisrael Beiteinu faction with Likud for the elections, and the two parties combined went from 42 seats to 31 seats. They lost some of their support to the right and Naftali Bennett's Jewish Home party, but they lost more to the left, to Yair Lapid’s centrist party. We also have a new-look coalition and new ministers. Firstly we have a coalition without the ultra-orthodox, which is the big power change to have come out of this election, and nine of the 22 cabinet members have never served in ministerial office before. In Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid, not a single member has ever served in the Knesset before, of the 19 of them, and it now controls the treasury and the key domestic portfolios of health, education and welfare. Now you might think that this is a little bit scary, putting a bunch of people with little or no experience of national government in control of all these ministries. And in the case of Yair Lapid, with no political and economic experience – and with all due respect to television news presenters – it is a little bit scary. But inherently for many people in Israel I think it actually feels quite refreshing. So how and why did all this happen? And with this I'm going to start referring a little more to the question of foreign policy. Well first of all we have to go back to the social protest movement that swept Israel in 2011. This was the root of the change. The basic story of the social protest movement was that Israel's secular, centrist middle class was mobilized onto the streets in www.chathamhouse.org 3 Transcript: Israel Post-Elections protests for the first time around domestic socio-economic issues and not around foreign policy issues or the peace process. In the past, masses came onto the streets in Israel to support the peace process or to oppose the peace process, but in the last few years there has been in effect almost no peace process to speak of, so there has been nothing to mobilize for or against and the middle class fell politically quiet. The most immediate effect was to decimate the Kadima party, which under the leadership of Tzipi Livni was primarily about the peace process, and was suddenly rendered politically irrelevant. Tzipi Livni survives: she was dumped by the Kadima party but created a new party around herself, dedicated primarily to the peace process, and she's in the coalition with responsibility for the peace process with six seats. But politically she's a weakened figure. Kadima itself has largely been replaced by Yair Lapid's centrist party which is much more focused on the issues that brought people onto the streets in 2011: costs of living, reform of the political system, and of course the headline issue of ending the exemption from the military draft for ultra-orthodox Jews and trying to integrate them more into society and the workforce. The social protest movement had other key effects – it made Labor raise its flag of social democracy more prominently than the peace process flag, and Shelly Yachimovich, the leader of the Labor Party, is staying out of the government, principally on economic grounds. The next effect was to create a new and surprising political alliance between the national religious camp – which is pro-settlement and right wing on the peace process, represented by Naftali Bennett and the Jewish Home Party – with the secular centrist middle class – represented by Yair Lapid and Yesh Atid, which is pro-two state and believes in the peace process. And as a result, the National Religious [Party] broke from its former alliance with the ultra-orthodox, despite the fact that they seemed more naturally aligned on the issue of the peace process. So the Israeli centre stopped voting on the peace process and started voting on its socio-economic interests. But also the National Religious, [now] Jewish Home, also downplayed foreign policy. People in the UK, in as far as they were talking about Naftali Bennett, were talking about his foreign policy and his opposition to two states. But that's not what Bennett was talking about in the election, or subsequently. He was talking – and is talking – about the same socio-economic issues as Yair Lapid and Yesh Atid. So now Bennett's anti-two state party has joined a government where Tzipi Livni, the leader in effect of the Israeli peace camp, has been given the job of negotiating with the Palestinians.
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