"Israel has never had a better friend than you." The statement, more gross had it been made in the Prime Minister's native Hebrew, would seem cheap to the point of absurdity made in a sheer guise of flattery, in a private situation caught by one of the many handheld macrofiers veering into, and preying on the private life. But officially stated by a man so calculated as the Rosch haMemshala, now only months from a record longevity in that job and in that sense having earned being identified with the institution itself, to any man or woman living. Just stop for a moment, and think of the great patrons of the persecuted and beleaguered state-nation, from Cyrus to Bolesław, Raoul Wallenberg and - surely - the great Robert Kennedy and Anwar Sadat, who both took bullets in the wake of explicit and, in starkly different ways, groundbreaking support for the Zionist cause when its polity was truly beleaguered, and decidedly more deserving of sympathy. And let's add to that her domestic friends and patrons, such as the great native son Yitzhak Rabin, christener of the Six Day-War (whose simple but awesome logic my brain could not comprehend for many years), twice Prime Minister and the last to talk seriously of Shalom as less than something of a convenience or necessity - to the same fault. I draw no distinction between gunmen of different nationalities or ostensibly rivaling causes, of the different sons of Jacob by the zealotry of shared Biblical antecedent warrior-prophets. But there is something in the cocksure and yet servile statement, "never had a better friend than you", directed at the Orange one, the trumper of the other great office of better beholders, fitted with an eery splendour to the times. O tempora, o verbi.
No better friend than you. Of all time. Whereas the bond of friendship has lasted, to be strengthened, the result emerging under its grace is contentious, including among American Jewry, most of whom support the Democratic party. As Thomas Friedman put it, and well before, the emerging de facto one-state solution will displace either the notion of demos, of self-government, or the core identity of the Jewish state, so recently affirmed in spite of crass realities.
More upsetting, once you think about it, are the patrons absent from this proclamation, and the diplomatic, social and politico-cultural upset implied, with striking veracity, by this statement. Surely the record-breaking Chancellor of Germany, who never opened her lips but for praise and solemn defence of the integrity of Israel, or of Macron, equally staunch crusader in lieu against local enemies, or of previous presidents, more eloquent or consistent in Christian duty and upholding the great truth set by Speaker Pelosi, that on matters of Israel, Democrats and Republicans may still, in the end, share a common opinion. Not anymore. Though the bonds may last for this statement to remain valid, the breaking between Likud leadership and Democrats in the twilight of Obama's departure, a solid but not unconditional friend, will prove as apparent as those with Europeans, and force a new ground of diplomatic realities which may hurt as much as groundbreaking. For this reason as much as the 2016 election, there was reason to follow the resulting contest of yet another ragtag coalition of the progressive and liberal forces of Israel, now united under the soldier and gentleman Benny Gantz, struggling to muster enough against Likud, previously out for count in the wake of its very historic, and very groundbreaking - no matter the truth or plausibility of Sharon's last gambit - split.
Dual victors? Gantz, a virgin in politics but with a long, harsh and faithful service spanning many governments seemed, if for a moment, to have cleared the seemingly unassailable task of surpassing the party of power of the post-negotiation era. Could - however unlikely - the executor of the Gaza onslaught of 2014 wrestle power from its architect, and restart the era of hope and duality - however unrealistic?
Now, for the fourth consecutive time and with a predictability also fitted to times of supposed great upsets, the steersman of the fate of the most dynamic and state of the Middle East, takes the stage to proclaim victory. The election seemingly elevating - I should say confirming - Netanyahu to the state of Ben Gurion, not merely in the chronological, but also as the architect of her state for a generation. The confirmation of Likud as the party of power, rather than a contestant as strong as Ben Gurion's Mapai (and its successor haAvoda, "Labor") once was, will sear the diplomatic and geostrategic conditions for the maturing state definitely. We know, since 2009, that a Prime Minister Netanyahu has been ready to capitalise on the peaceable intents of Mr. Sharon in his sanguinary, if eerily promising term in office, since 2013 that he was prepared to offer terms to extremists of any shade that, in the European theatre, would at least then seem conspicuously dystopian, and since 2015 that he was to disown openly - unfathomably - the two-state fiction upon which the mainstream has relied for the generations since Israel transformed from a beleaguered state indeed, a David surrounded by Philistines of awesome strength and conspicuously foul intentions, into an occupier-protector of the displaced, disowned and disenfranchised Palestinian nation, or the bulk of it at any rate (at any time). For the first generation, realistic to the point of cynicism but modest in the mold of Herzl to contend with the one, and slightly smaller piece of a tripartite jigsaw puzzle set to replace the anachronistic British Palestinian mandate. The refusal to reject annexation of Arab lands to form the Israel of 1949 was only barely made, from the historic background of the immediate, and very brisk, rejection of any lands for a Jewish homeland. This has been traded, in part an achievement of Arafat as rare as any, for a mirroring David - now grown astute, powerful and scarred - and Yalut, and an in many ways more chilling rejection by the new political alignment (deliberate choice of term) by the reality, as much as in name, of Palestinian statehood. Whereas, when Netanyahu - previously one of the relatively pathetic, unstable Roschim of the 1990s, only to be ousted from party as well as power by his much older, more hedonistic rival - entered the premiership, one could detect the shades between the smart, soft-spoken, diplomatically astute leader and his foul-mouthed cronies, now one cannot. Whereas Netanyahu won't cheaply denounce be here will be no serious talks of peace, and the proposal - previously glinted at - that there will be no realisation of the Arab piece of the puzzle, however mauled, under his leadership, has grown into that there may be no two-state solution forever, the stage already set for a set of competing versions of the one-state, binational solution. Within this framework for all its simplicity and with an unsheltered eye to the demographic question, liberals can only accept one conclusion, and it is the one Netanyahu, and his predecessors, has sold as the cold and irreconcilable alternative to his politics. As Thomas Friedman succinctly put it, there can be no Jewish state, if it is also to maintain its unique status as a democratic one (for a brave, if often deplorable, argument against this three-prongs-be-made-two dilemma, see this spirited debate).
With the alleged patron-enabler of 21st century Hungarian fascism, in the garden of Raoul Wallenberg, protector of the Jewish nation. While relations between his and the land of so many that he saved have crumbled, largely due to diplomatic insensitivities but also a drastic rightward shift best embodied in this pose, the moment felt may not be forgotten. A legacy to outshine his own, of an accomplishment to best even the better Netanyahu.
How, to discuss this possibility in a paragraph, one is to contend with a Jewish authoritarian (let's leave the comparisons with post-1948 South Africa and its overused, over-mispronounced epithet out for now, as pre-1969 Rhodesia is a finer comparison and yet utterly obscure) state, whether governed by an orbanised Israel, an ethnocracy dominated by Likud coalitions and tightening security measures for at least a generation or a semi-militarised, technocratic hybrid regime - once you think about it - is interesting as well as eery. For what, having accepted the death of Fukuyama's version of history (as he himself has, and at least contended in his 1992 volume) may be exciting to the calculating beholder than this turn of events, just as the current challenges - democratic in substance, if not beholden to a liberal-democratic (or, if one is more critical, "liberal-authoritarian") framework - to the supposedly unbreakable Western European family of values? For one, I conclude that the new, third Israel will pose as interesting a challenge to follow and scrutinise, if not for the inexorable path towards a diplomatic realignment in the path of a political one. One is as a, roughly speaking, liberal forced to contend critically in either case, as the relative benefit of citizens - Arab as well as Sephardic, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi, and the Druze recently forced to conclude their allegiance to their "new" tenant both permanent and preferable to Assad's now very rheumatic embrace - weighs light against the doom proposed, even if compensated with unlikely material improvement, by the permanence of the Likud peace theorem and the paradigm it has allowed to arise, or allowed its conclusion. There will never be a just state for the de facto subjects or denied citizens (let us call them thus) of the Western Bank without a change in the leverage exerted against the government reluctantly in responsibilities asserting itself over them, and - at the same time - no genuine security for the Israelis, including of their more entitled brethren, but without a peace process aimed at compartmentalisation. I am not an adherent to the Eurabia (or, more absurdly, "New Muslimania" in the case of an Australian volunteer crusader) hypothesis proposed by Western masochist-chauvinists and conspiracy theorists, its antonym of brutal white tutelage over the "new" citizenry after a complete breakdown of civil society being far more likely than a peacefully established monolithic Swedish (let alone French) Khilafah rid of Kurds, Iranians and Sami as well as the dispossessed hosts... not to speak of the neighbouring Finns and NATO-hosting Norwegians. Only one infected with the Jihadi mentality could plausibly believe it, within half a thousand years, and I for one will not live to see it, obey it, submit to it, if that needs to be said. In the Israeli case, one is forced to contend with real numbers, and realities of parties and actors pursuing their goals rather openly. Israelis will never subject themselves to a majority similar to that in Palestinian 2006, or Egyptian 2012 elections, as much as we may be forced to conclude that outcome in a truly unitary democratic state. Perhaps, thus, the challenge posed by the new paradigm, and the price it will exact from (rather than flowing unilaterally from) Netanyahu, the pimp of policy as well as other currency, will be a real one to contend with, for Western evaluation as well as Palestinian reality. The briskest commentary will be a sordid one, which will unmake the great effort of Ben Gurion and others, the sacrifice of so many more, to accomplish a state worthy as well as open to (I will reserve from using the term "reserved for") Jews of all lands gentile. In this, by attempting to resolve the conflict by ignoring it, Netanyahu may have buried the great door opened by political Zionism turned reality, the grandeur of a democratic secular nation state, of aspiring citizens flowing in by the thousands and millions to build the shining city in a desert; political, social and cultural as well as geographic. It still stands this test, but as the wells of Arab autocracy and a band of emirates (including those donning either more superb titles or the desperate chant of Jumhuriyah) are quaking in despair before whatever is to follow, the uniqueness of Medinat Yisra'el, so modest in its name, is threatened as much from within as by outer aspirations and hopes. For this, one may hope the grand villains are not to be forgiven, if they cannot be snubbed by their own designs, as values, legacy and institutions are grazed and may crumble yet.
Melekh haYisra'el... seemingly so impossible a title. But who could displace him, from without - or within? The growing influence of religious right in a once secular, quite radical young democracy is an old truth, but the current of religious politics has, if arrested, seen a lock on power for the most conservative and irredentist hard right, as well as its hardening. The support to the parliamentary right has shaped both its aspirations and identity. Having done that, will it last, or find a better patron? Even in the most tribalised democracy, loyalties live on a strain of demand.
What about the challenger? Mr. Gantz, erstwhile commander, has vowed on almost every point to uphold a hawkishness not unfitted to his past, including the contentious issue - in Israel, not so much - of the Iranian nuclear program, and even settlement annexation. The last question may be necessity as much as proclamation of enmity as far as the peace process is concerned, lately enamoured - well, let's be fair and say tolerated - by Lieberman of Yisra'el Beiteinu, the hardline imago of Israeli hard right-wing (res)sentiment of my mind, now in a shift not unlike that of a Hungary also realigned between a moderated, sense-speaking Jobbik of the valiant opposition and a gradually slipping Fidesz, the party of power. Perhaps, in reading Gantz' prospect of the seemingly inhuman task previously - if infinitely - accomplished by Barak and Sharon, of displacing the strongman before his time, the mutual realignment of Beiteinu, Shas or haTorah haMeuhedet for the usual currency of its scions; representation and cash payments, will shift the stage conversely and break the seeming unassailable broadness of the Likud establishment. At the same time, the story of shift towards the hard and relentless right is the same old one, of birthrates and migration of Jewish communities more recent, dispossessed but strong in faith, hard placated in the want for peace, and gradual devouring of all forces decent or reasonable. The other strong factor, however, capable of swaying the most hardline of any representative polity, is the support form abroad. With perhaps the first cost-free, subsidised occupation paid by US support and a crazed (in its ineptitude if not in substance or geostrategy) downfall to relentless, far-from-Bush Sr. (requiescat in pacem) cause of messianic, and often apocalypse-chanting rightward debt to the Jewish state. This sentiment, for all its stubbornness, is younger than my parents, and may yet see revision and - if not - the destruction of its beneficiary (the close, after all, the messianic Christians crave).
The mathematics, at any rate, do not favour an alternative short of the de-alignment so dearly craved, by Israeli democratic integrity if not by a divided electorate. Gantz, or rather the quadrivirate, would have to court Arab parties, successfully drawing out the foulest commentaries Bibi has yet made public, to receive the blessing of President Rivlin for any sustainable majority, thus making the result - if contending with the other small but vital actors on an emerging two-party scene - either extraordinary as well as extraordinary weak, or outright impossible. Either result is likely to fail, and certain only to be frail. The affairs of the Jewish state, even in the high times of the Mapai, the party that literally build the land, has always been one of rocky roads, contentious coalitions of many bumps, ejections and hitchhikers and to a goal of no certainty, and the seeming stability recreated may rather spell out downfall of the Israel we thought we knew, or an establishment of the illiberal democracy looming in Europe from both a technocratic center and the authoritarian right.
But fail Netanyahu is also far from certain not to, and from more precipitous heights (one may well, in a twinge of Schadenfreude if not outright bliss, think of David Bar Giora, defender of Jerusalem united and eternal). With looming court cases, the ridiculous - as well as outrageous, once brought onto the table - proposal to elevate the Prime Minister to a Roman-style immunity, after the fact, it is possible - and perhaps to be desired, even without another seat transferred in the government - that his fall will come sooner and as the sacrifice of this supposedly momentous victory. Likewise, it may even with the most heinous crimes in- and outside the verdict, be far less desirable in face of what this party, the brainchild of Begin - Begin of the garrote and the letter-bomb - has become. For now, it is only known that nothing is known of what is to come. But will the institutions of power unelected uphold their duty? If nothing else, Israel is a state of press and judiciary eager to snap its jaws at the government's feet and shins, and hold it out for the voters for inspection. Previous holders of the office, and the highest one, and with a certain predominance of this first Prime Minister's party comrades, have faced disgraceful fall and the jail sentence so relatively absent in European democracies, certainly in Sweden. All to no avail, even after a momentous career. The question of guilt, with demands even from within that normalcy is impossible and a hard four-year mandate not secure, is impossible to escape. The question is, when the opportunity arrives, will the voters care - after all this?
"The program speaks for itself." Shaded in green, Moshe Feiglin's hard last-ditch effort to court voters above an altering, and ignominiously raised threshold apparently failed a possible state of deal-breaker. In addition, or perhaps as a starter to the core points of annexing the Palestinian territories as well as Israeli-administered territories (such as settlements), expelling Palestinians and building a grand Third Temple, Zehut's prime electoral and supposedly non-negotiable pledge to legalise cannabis fell short. In a political landscape rapidly shifting, where the first two options are never the same as last time, Zehut boasted a peculiar heterodoxy that reached eager, but inadequate ears... or noses.
What is then to follow? Without a part in government, and perhaps as likely with such a turn, the left will fragment again, the center unable to hold. In a healthy democracy, as well as some decidedly unhealthy ones, the shift of power yanked eventually, and sometimes aggressively, by an unappeased electorate is a premier quality, always undercutting the ambitions of any strongman. By an Erlanderesque finesse, if not the grace and neuroses or his humor of this fine length of a premier, the first Prime Minister of Israel may serve for yet another term, and then perhaps another (invested with the Kohl-like grandeur of a second political lifetime, having finally "united" the uneasily divided homeland) before retirement. It would be preferable to see a vacancy, followed by hard negotiations, the peek of a something else, even if it is unlikely to hold and may thus doom the settlement of any viable rival to the new Likud as the Labor of this century.
A snap election may not be impossible. A grand coalition, less likely but not to be overlooked. And after, with or without Yonatan's brother (one must, whatever next to pass, imbue in the name some great etch of honour and duty) at the helm, and whatever the state and composition of the rivaling flagship, whatever the platform held up against the emerging new ethnocracy, and its hardline political baggage, and the religious zeal sustaining the walk of the occupation into eternity (though unlike Xinjiang and Tibet, it cannot reach a decisive point, its crude facts undercutting its own weight) there will be time, as well as reason for old allies to reconsider, and perhaps new - less salient - ones to be found. In this, I have a hard time wishing the alternative, the officer-gentleman, a nice try or even the best of wishes, though it would be well to remember the hardness of this new reality may be disowned by those at its very midst. The satisfaction of the voters will never be reached, and the dynamism and sustained opposition of the Jewish state will never fade, so with the last half century fresh in mind, and the darkest expectations for the next, we can turn the page and expect as much as wait. No Messiah could ever ask for more. A Messiah he is not, and the likes of Kahane better fit the mold of David. This is conservatism at its worst, and at the same time most ingenious, and any alignment will eventually find its just as stubborn rival. As Victor Hugo observed, and stronger than any army, is the idea fitted for the time. As the time of Melekh Bibi passes into the pages of history, of the sublime number but want of any great victories or achievements beyond his own, it may be as good to ask already what content that idea will bear.
The young and the old, but both bearers of the new. With Likud solid on the right and a myriad of "progressives" of uncertain ground on the left, and a new paradigm rising - its unquenchable loyalty slipping, if equally in want of something new - on the other side of the Atlantic, the future is up for grabs. With either in, or on top of either government, how will policy shift in the land of common heritage?
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