Livni and Barak. Guilty of cooperating with Netanyahu's deception
Photo: Gil Yohanan
Former Minister Haim Ramon
Photo: Gil Yohanan
It’s not Netanyahu, it’s the left-center leaders
Barak, Livni, Lapid and Herzog are all to blame for cooperating with the prime minister’s deception. As long as the leaders of the Zionist left and center avoid confronting Netanyahu, they are abusing their position as heads of the Jewish state camp.
After Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister the second time, a political affair developed between him and late President Shimon Peres.
After pleading with Netanyahu to renew the peace negotiations, Peres became convinced that there was a high probability the prime minister would lead Israel to a peace agreement.
Following Netanyahu’s Bar-Ilan speech in June 2009, in which he declared his alleged commitment to the two-state solution, and following his conversations with Netanyahu and his wife Sara, Peres believed that Netanyahu had changed and that he would not act the same way he did in his first term as prime minister.
During that period, I used to meet with Peres regularly. “Bibi understands that reality forces him to make history. He is experiencing what happened to (former Prime Ministers Menachem) Begin and (Ariel) Sharon,” he said to me repeatedly. He insisted that Netanyahu had undergone a dramatic change: From a person who refuses to make any territorial concession, he has turned into a pragmatic leader who seeks to end the conflict with the Palestinians and is prepared to take the main required step – in other words, to give up on the 1967 territories, subject to land swaps which will leave the settlement blocs in Israel’s hands.
Prime Minister Netanyahu (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg)
As I was aware of Netanyahu’s solid ideological commitment to the Greater Land of Israel vision, and I was convinced that Peres’ forecast would be proven false. I knew that Netanyahu does not change his ideology in order to survive, but makes an effort to survive in order to fulfill his ideology.
I reiterated to Peres that “Bibi will not sign any agreement with the Palestinians. He is deceiving you. He is strongly against the two-state solution and will not give up an inch of the 1967 territories. Bibi is like (former Prime Minister Yitzhak) Shamir. He is willing to lie for the Greater Land of Israel. In order to endure internal and international pressures, the real Bibi pretends to be willing to advance the peace process.”
I told Peres that Bibi hadn’t changed since his speech at the Likud Central Committee against the establishment of a Palestinian state, even if he occasionally put a moderate mask on his radical face.
The arguments between us often reached very high tones, but to no avail. Peres became Netanyahu’s advocate in Israel and around the world. From every possible stage, Peres explained that Netanyahu was sincerely working to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians. In one of our meeting, he revealed to me that Netanyahu had permitted him to hold secret negotiations with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. I insisted that “it won’t happen, there will be no agreement,” but as far as Peres was concerned, I was captured by a wrong conception regarding Netanyahu.
One humid summer day, Peres’ hopes were shattered. On July 28, 2011, he was supposed to sign a diplomatic agreement of principles with Abbas in Amman. Peres’ driver had already started the car in order to leave for the Jordanian capital, but then, at the last minute, Peres received a phone call from Netanyahu ordering him to stay at the President’s Residence, explaining that it was too early to sign an agreement. The old and familiar Netanyahu, who escapes the chance of an agreement like he would escape a fire, revealed himself once again.
Since that day, Peres finally let go of his illusions about Netanyahu. Nonetheless, he avoided criticizing Netanyahu in public, not just during his term as president but also afterwards. In the two years since he had left office, Peres harshly criticized Netanyahu in private meetings, but kept quiet in public. He avoided revealing his opinion that Netanyahu was leading Israel to destruction, was bringing its end as a Jewish and democratic state closer and was isolating it from the family of nations.
All I have said here does not contradict, of course, my huge appreciation for the man and his work.
Failing to learn from Peres’ experience
Peres’ bitter experience with Netanyahu should have been ingrained in the memories of other leaders from the Zionist left and center and should have taught them that Netanyahu is the flesh and blood of the radical right. But that is not what happened. To this very day, leaders of the leftist-centrist camp keep deluding themselves and the public that if they cooperate with Netanyahu it will be possible to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians.
That is what Ehud Barak did after his colossal failure in the 2009 elections. He granted Netanyahu a seal of approval, gave him a moderate image and explained that he had joined the coalition so that he and Netanyahu would lead to a peace agreement together. He stuck to Netanyahu even when it became clear that the political stagnation would continue and when the number of settlers outside the settlement blocs grew by dozens of percentage points. When demands in the Labor Party that he leave the coalition increased, Barak split the party and created the transitory Independence party just so he could stay in the coalition, while continuing to provide Netanyahu with full backing.
Next was Yair Lapid, who after the 2013 elections decided in favor of a Netanyahu-led government. Lapid, who openly supports the two-state solution, even created a “brotherhood alliance” with Naftali Bennett and gave the Bayit Yehudi party all the key positions in the government pertaining to the settlements, thereby reinforcing the future of the settlements, which are aimed at preventing the two-state solution. Even today, from the opposition, Lapid avoids attacking Netanyahu for sticking to the political status quo and fails to present a plan to save the Jewish and democratic state, which Netanyahu is working to destroy.
Herzog (R) and Lapid. Continue to sin (Photo: Motti Kimchi)
Tzipi Livni, as the leader of Hatnua party, joined the Netanyahu-led coalition as well in 2013, contributing her share to maintaining the unfounded conception that Netanyahu is a partner to a peace process. She deluded herself that Netanyahu should be given another chance and held peace negotiations on his behalf, which naturally ended in nothing. One of the reasons was that Netanyahu refused, as he has done since then, to give his agreement in principle to any territorial concession.
Opposition leader Isaac (Buji) Herzog has been working incessantly to join the government, claiming that Netanyahu wishes to lead peace initiatives which depend on Herzog teaming up with the government. How unfounded.
Herzog and Lapid’s conduct is completely crushing the political opposition to Netanyahu. The opposition’s job is to present his real face: The face of a leader who opposes the establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside a Jewish and democratic state. But while Netanyahu ls leading Israel to a binational apartheid, Herzog and Lapid are presenting one big void.
Netanyahu is torchbearer of the binational camp which seeks to establish the Greater Land of Israel that will have more Palestinians than Jews between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. He recently said, for example, at the Herzliya Conference, that he would not give up an inch of the West Bank territories. That is his real stance. But unlike others in the binational camp, such as Bennett, Netanyahu is creating a smoke screen around his opinions so as not to lose the support of the public, the majority of which is interested in the two-state solutions.
Arranging seats on the Titanic
As long as the leaders of the Zionist left and center avoid confronting Netanyahu and cooperate with him, they are abusing their position as heads of the Jewish state camp. This camp objects to turning Israel into a binational apartheid state and wants a Jewish state. But those among the left-center who cooperate with Netanyahu are not working to mobilize the public opinion to discuss this fateful issue and are helping push the urgent political problems to the margins of the public discourse. This is illustrated very well by Lapid and Herzog’s campaigns in the latest elections, which focused on social-economic issues.
Yes, Barak and Livni, you were guilty of cooperating with Netanyahu’s political deception. Yes, Lapid and Herzog, you continue to sin. You would rather arrange the seats on the Titanic than fight for the steering wheel commanding the State of Israel, which is about to crash into the bi-nationality iceberg.
Let us hope that in the new year that has just become, Israel will get a party and leaders who will work to save Jewish Israel.
Haim Ramon served as a member of the Knesset and a minister between 1983 and 2009 on behalf of the Labor Party and Kadima.
