Nixon in China or Nixon in Cambodia: Bibi?s Choice

Nixon in China or Nixon in Cambodia: Bibi?s Choice

Jo-Ann Mort: Bibi’s Choice

The disastrous situation emerging from the flotilla mishap highlights Israel?s global isolation and the complete lack of regard of the current Israeli government for diplomacy as a means to an end.

I have no illusions about some of the people from the flotilla, nor about some of their sponsors. They were not all peace-loving human rights activists, though some of them?if not many of them?were. But that is not the point. This is a P.R. disaster for Israel that so easily could have been avoided. Were Israel truly negotiating with the West Bank-based Palestinian government, it would find itself in a different situation with Turkey, not to mention with Europe and with the United States. But the sad truth is that the current Israeli government–under the leadership both of Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak–has taken an attitude of shoot first, and talk later.

Just think of the split screen images. Next week, the Palestinian Authority will be sponsoring an economic conference in Bethlehem, with over 2000 participants from around the world (including a U.S. delegation led by State Department top staff from the Mitchell team) to trade ideas and business cards, as part of an ongoing effort to boost an increasingly transparent and growing Palestinian private sector.

Additionally, the PA has just launched a campaign to disengage from Israel?s settlement economy, a smart move if they are to wean themselves off of the dependency that the post-Oslo years created, and also if they are to build their own state. Meanwhile, Israel?s response? Rumors abound about how everyone from the Prime Minister himself to those around him continue to engage in a whispering campaign questioning the honesty of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, a former World Bank economist. His perch in Ramallah is fairly regularly threatened by the Fatah old guard (who actually are not honest), precisely because he is promoting an honest regime. And the current Likud ministers have taken the side of the settlers, attacking and intentionally misrepresenting the parameters of the anti-settlers? goods campaign to make it appear that the PA is condoning a full-blown boycott of Israel, which they are not.

The irony of the Gaza fiasco is that until now, Israel had the tacit support of Egypt and the PA in maintaining the blockade, as inhuman as it is. While neither power would ever give the nod in public, the reality is that privately, Egypt fears a run of their own border with people trying to exit Gaza–and, in fact, there are people profiting from the black market tunnel economy that has arisen on both sides of the Rafah border between Egypt and Gaza. The Hamas regime is the Palestinian Authority?s arch-enemy, and they are perfectly happy to say one thing publicly while?counterproductively?keeping Gazans behind the Israeli lock and key. The PA had hoped to quietly figure out a way to reconcile with Hamas while also taking their constituency away from them?but with Israel?s present actions, Hamas comes out the winner.

When I was in Gaza last summer (I went with a press card issued by the Israeli government, one of the only ways that you can get into Gaza), it was obvious from those interviewed that patience with Hamas was running out. But now, Israel has handed the Hamas leadership a second chance.

The only answer to the disastrous actions of this week would be for Israel?s government to engage immediately in robust, serious negotiations with the Ramallah-based Palestinian government, with an eye toward a two-state settlement that the Palestinians can sell by referendum to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and that the Israeli government can sell to its own people. Were they to spend even a third of their time promoting peace instead of protecting the ill-fated settlement project, this Israeli government could change things dramatically for the better. Indeed, with the Israeli left political parties in tatters, Bibi Netanyahu could be Nixon in China as some of us had hoped he might be; instead, he is Nixon mired in Cambodia. What a shame.