Israel Matzav

Benny Morris on the demise of the Labor party

Some of you might not have even noticed, but the Labor party, which dominated Israel's political scene from the 1930's to the 1970's, fell apart this week. Benny Morris, argues that like himself, many Israelis stopped believing in peace with the 'Palestinians' and left the Labor party with nothing to appeal to its members.

But there can be no serious argument about what transpired in July and December 2000, when Arafat sequentially rejected comprehensive Israeli and Israeli-American proposals for a two-state solution which would have given the Palestinians ("the Clinton Parameters") sovereignty and independence in 95% of the West Bank, all of the Gaza Strip, and half of Jerusalem (including half or three-quarters of the Old City). And there can be no serious argument either about Abbas's rejection of the similar, perhaps even slightly better deal, offered by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008. (Indeed, these rejections of a two-state solution were already a tradition set in stone: The Palestinians' leaders had rejected two-state compromises in 1937 (the Peel proposals), 1947 (the UN General Assembly partition resolution) and (implicitly) in 1978 (when Arafat rejected the Sadat-Begin Camp David agreement, which provided for "autonomy" in the Palestinan territories).

In the first decade of the third millenium, the Palestinians—Arafat and Abbas (and, needless to say, the fundamentalist anti-Semitic Hamas)—had, again, rejected not so much a set of proposals as an idea, a principle, the two-state solution. They wanted all of Palestine, and not an inch for the Jews.

And it was this rejection that destroyed the Israel Labor Party, which lost, and lost big, in all the general elections that followed Camp David. In 2000, the Israeli electorate grimly came to understand that there was no "peace partner", that the Palestinians would not, would never, sign on to the existence of a Jewish state in any part of Palestine, and that what Labor stood for—a two-state solution—was a sad delusion. So the electors voted for the hard right, the soft right, God's various anti-Zionist and ultra-Zionist parties, even a pensioners' list, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni, anything and anyone but Labor and its conciliatory affiliates. The electorate had moved, perhaps irremediably, to the right.

Indeed.

In The Jewish State, Yoram Hazony devotes much of the first 100 pages to the Labor party. He argues that Labor was a very different party before Oslo and was much more in line with the Israeli center and even with the religious parties. When Labor turned to the peace process, it became hostile to anyone to their right, both politically and religiously. They thought they could get away with it. Now, they're paying the price.

Labels: Benny Morris, Ehud Barak, Ehud fled, Labor party

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:36 AM