Conventional wisdom is wrong

If you think it is simple to predict the year ahead, just try it

Alan D. Abbey|Published: 10.06.05 , 15:12

The new year is here, and that means a columnist must sit back, put his feet up and cogitate about the year past, or put on his rose-colored glasses and peer into the dim future.

This column is going to "press" (sorry for the antiquated reference; I'm an antiquated writer) too close to the new year for me to get away with an easy review of last year. Anyway, not much happened last year, right? We only pulled out of Gaza, weathered political storms and scandals, won a European basketball championship and restarted the historic Jerusalem-Tel Aviv train line.

But that's history; we're much better at looking ahead in Israel - to many people's dismay, children in school in Israel don't learn much history. It's not until university that they will begin to discuss the much-disputed history of Israel and the Zionist enterprise.

So, let's look ahead at 5766. The first thing to say is that a conservative, "straight line" prediction is the one least likely to come true. That is, simply projecting out from current trends is sure to be wrong.

Opposite experts

It's related to the other proposition you must follow if you want to be correct about predicting the future: the conventional wisdom is always wrong (Latest example: The CV last week was that Bibi Netanyahu would beat Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the Likud Central Committee vote on moving the party primaries forward. Wrong.).

Where does that leave us? First, the experts, who "should know" are saying opposite things: Former IDF Chief of Staff Moshe "Bugi" Yaalon predicted major explosions of terror and violence after the pullout from Gaza. So far, at least, he's been proven wrong (a weekend hailstorm of rockets that harmed few to the contrary).

On the other side of the separation fence, as it were, former Shin Bet (General Security Agency) director Avi Dichter predicted peace and quiet. He's been wrong, in a way, too (see above).

Both Dichter and Yaalon likely have political stars in their eyes, so we must filter their comments through that screen, as well.

With the experts in disagreement, that leaves it open to us amateurs without political agendas to make the predictions.

First, domestic politics: Sharon will survive all challenges thrown at him by Netanyahu, Uzi Landau, and others, and will remain head of the Likud Party. He will bring it into elections roughly when they are supposed to occur, and it will be Netanyahu and his right-wing supporters who will bolt from Likud, not the other way around. Hedging my bet a little, I will say that if the right-wingers do not leave Likud, they will leave Netanyahu in the woodshed for a little while longer.

Don't count out the MIT MBA with the American accent, though. Politicians in Israel are given second, third and even fourth chances, and Netanyahu is only in his mid-50s. His hair isn't quite gray enough, yet. He'll be back when his hair is as white as Sharon's and Shimon Peres'.

Second, the Palestinians: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will survive, but his ruling coalition, such as it is, will include a somewhat demilitarized Hamas, over Israel's and America's objections. Hamas leaders will tone down their rhetoric.

Israel has already shown it can pound them pretty hard without a great deal of opposition from the international community. Leaving Gaza gives Israel a relatively free hand in dealing with "cross-border" activity (Smart move by Sharon, there).

Third, domestic social relations: The "orange" people who either were resettled out of Gaza or supported the settlers will for the most part reintegrate into society, and channel their energies into productive areas. But they will have to do it mostly on their own. The government is not going to help them much (stories of how they are being ignored already are legion); nor will most of mainstream Israel have much sympathy for them.

The hardest of the hard core are a lost cause, though, and we must be wary of having a small rejectionist element stewing in their isolated yeshivas and kollels (adult Talmud study houses). It's something for the new Shin Bet director to keep an eye on (Here's an easy prediction: he's already doing that.).

Finally, a few "non-linear" projections:

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will not last the year in office.
Libyan President Muammar Qadafi will visit Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Maccabi Tel Aviv Basketball team will not win the domestic basketball championship, ending a string of victories (nearly 30 victories in the last 30 years).
Oil will finally be found somewhere in Israel or close to our shores, putting the lie to the old joke of why it took the Israelites 40 years in the desert before they made it to the Promised Land (It took 40 years to find a place in the Middle East without oil, wags say.).
The situation in Iraq will improve measurably, democracy will begin to take root there, and U.S. President George W. Bush's ratings will improve until further financial, crony capitalism, and no-bid contract scandals put him on the road to impeachment.

Final prediction: Despite the use of electronic datebooks and automatic "tickler" files in their email programs, no one will actually put this column in a file with a reminder to check on it a year from now and crow over all of the predictions that did not come true.