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Signs of a Middle East Spring in Israel
Slowly the Middle East Spring has penetrated Israel and the Palestinian occupied territories. Palestine’s new membership status in the United Nations is one indication. Significant change is not always dramatic.
The US National Intelligence Council issued a December report which predicted the emergence of a Palestinian state by 2030. The Council saw a Palestine emerging “incrementally”, not through negotiations. The report anticipated “Arab-Israeli exhaustion” and “unwillingness” of both sides to “engage in endless conflict”.
The region is undergoing change everywhere.
In the uprisings of Egypt and Tunisia regime change was quick, the violence was minimal and the rebels were local. Currently political Islam leads the new regimes. It will take years to develop culturally suitable ways to integrate religion with democracy. It is hard to tell how the Moslem Brotherhood movement will evolve and how long its grip on power will last.
The role of the Middle East religious institution in politics will decline with time. Women will gain in status as people get used to seeking reform through the ballot box. The economy will test the ruler; the youth are desperate for employment and thirsty for education.
In Syria, Yemen and Libya the pace of change is slow and accompanied by intense violence. These uprisings started domestically; subsequently foreign fighters crossed the borders and intervened heavily in the bloody struggle. The quality of reform declines with external intervention.
No state will be immune from the changes that are sweeping the region.
In the Holy Land different dynamics apply. Palestinians are struggling for independence while the Zionist state is under international pressure to withdraw from the occupied territories and deal with growing discrimination against its Arab minority, which constitutes 21 % of Israel’s citizens.
In seeking independence, Palestinians in the West Bank are abandoning the use of force, relying instead on non-violent resistance and on state building. They are developing governance structures and nurturing a free enterprise economy. They are also launching street demonstrations and organizing business boycott initiatives against Israel. They are exploring unity among their political factions and fostering relations with the European Union and the United Nations.
Significant obsessions and fixations in mindset are hard to change. Hamas is a stubborn and slow learner. Just as the settlers in Israel create an insensitive sub-culture of militancy and greed, Hamas and its Jihadi allies form a militant and authoritarian subculture.
Israeli society has been shifting ideologically to the right, and more recently to the extreme right. The next Israeli cabinet is expected to be ultra-nationalist. Settlements reveal an excessive sense of entitlement to land acquired through war.
Things are not so discouraging elsewhere. There are hopeful and discreet changes taking place within the American Jewish community and the wider US society.
The American Jewish community is becoming increasingly aware of the national aspirations of the Palestinians and the growing sympathy of the international community thereto. The Jewish Diaspora is concerned about Israel becoming a South African apartheid, with one system of justice for Jews and another for Arabs. In the vast ocean of American support for Israel, many groups, especially the young generation, already question the deleterious effect of Israel’s occupation on Israel itself. Absent withdrawal from the West Bank, only more wars could temporarily protect Israeli Jews from becoming a minority within their own outstretched borders.
The growth of the US-based J Street, a pro-Israel pro-peace movement, is significant. This initiative has been effective in challenging Israel’s main lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The emergence of a parallel pro-peace lobby among Palestinian Americans is another sign of changing times.
American Jews reelected President Obama with Israel’s interest in mind: a viable Palestinian state serves the long term security of the Zionist state. The recent nomination of Chuck Hagel to the next Secretary of Defense indicates that Obama remains interested in the peace process. Hagel supports even-handed Mideast policy and represents the sentiments of a large segment of American society.
Polls among Israelis and Palestinians continue to show readiness for peace. The Middle East Spring may one day reflect the aspirations of the people on both sides of Israeli-Palestinian divide.
Ghassan Rubeiz