EconoMonitor

Last Days of Rome

A Wider Debate in Israel?

The deal that will free Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held by Hamas since his abduction in 2006, should be welcomed by everyone. As always with these deals, the trade in question is disproportionate: 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, including some serving life sentences for terrorist murders, for one Israeli.

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu may well have ulterior motives — cutting a deal with Hamas undercuts the man giving him real trouble right now, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who has tired of the endless “talks about talks” and pushed for U.N. recognition of his statelet. Hamas and Abbas are the rival standard-bearers of the Palestinian cause, the former ruling the Gaza Strip, the PA ruling the West Bank. In spite of the fact that long-term Israeli interests obviously look better served by a PA-run state (which recognized Israel’s right to exist) rather than a Hamas-istan (which, even in its statement on the Shalit deal, vowed to push Israel into the sea), cynicism is nothing new in either Israeli or any of the region’s foreign policy dealings. And eye for an eye, after all, says nothing about whose eyes are involved. A better motto for this kind of thinking might be: the enemy of my potential friend is my friend.

But promise lurks in this deal in spite of the cynicism and propaganda “victories” each side will claim. In his public description of why Israel cut the deal now after similar offers over years of Shalit’s captivity had been on the table, Netanyahu said the following:

“With everything that is happening in Egypt and the region, I don’t know if the future would have allowed us to get a better deal — or any deal at all for that matter. This is a window of opportunity that might have been missed.”

From his lips to God’s ears. Israel under Bibi is deeply in denial about the need to recalibrate its assumptions about the long-term viability of building walls and relying on its U.S. big brother’s veto. Nothing suggests that such a major reassessment is under way; to the contrary, the short-sighted decisions to obstruct the Palestinians understandable desire for observer status at the UN, the petty campaign to hurt Abbas politically, the foolish public jousting with Turkey – all undermine Israel’s long-term prospects, not the Palestinians.

The U.S., during an election year, is unlikely to do anything that forces Israel to face up to this denial of reality. Indeed, the GOP’s kowtowing to evangelical paranoia about the Holy Land will do precisely the opposite. But Bibi’s comments on the Shalit deal indicate he can, at the end of the day, see that “a window of opportunity” in the Middle East may be closing. The problem is, it is a much bigger window that he has so far acknowledged.

******

(BTW: Speaking of realism from Israeli sources, The New York Times interview with the Israeli general who commands the IDF’s troops on the West Bank is worth a look: “Stability in the region includes the ability of the Palestinian Authority to pay its salaries,” General Nitzan Alon said this week in a rare on-the-record interview, reflecting a consensus among Israeli defense officials. “Reducing the Palestinians’ ability to pay decreases security. American aid is relevant to this issue.”

The standard GOP line on this, of course, is:

a) surprise and outrage that U.S. aid goes to the Palestinian Authority;

b) calls for an immediate cease to that aid.

Par for the go-kart course that is American political discourse).

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