In an oft-quoted remark Henry Kissinger observed that “Israel has no foreign policy, it has only a domestic policy.” Israel keeps on proving Kissinger right and by now his bon mot has become a sad truism. But recently the truism has turned to farce as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu relentlessly takes apart Israel’s Foreign Ministry and its professional Foreign Service.

In an act of political payoff, Netanyahu did not appoint a Foreign Minister in his new cabinet at the request of Avigdor Lieberman, the former Foreign Minister, who is currently standing trial for Breach of Trust and fraud. Netanyahu has decided to keep the position open for Lieberman until the end of the trial. In the meantime, he himself is acting as the Foreign Minister. Needless to say, the Prime Minister hardly has the time to manage the daily matters of the Ministry, though he started his public career as a diplomat, and a very adept one.

Additionally, to further weaken the ministry, Netanyahu redistributed many of the traditional responsibilities of the Foreign Ministry among other ministries, some of them new and bogus creations, such as the gimmicky Ministry of International Relations. Other related ministries include the Ministry for Regional Cooperation, a Minister for Diasporas, and a Justice Minister, Tzipi Livni, who is also responsible for diplomatic initiatives and peace talks with the Palestinians. Considering that Prime Minister Netanyahu keeps for himself and in his office some key aspects of Israel’s foreign relations, what we get is a beheaded and enfeebled Foreign Ministry, lacking political backing, which competes with several artificial and bogus ministries. Why is this so? Why does Netanyahu sacrifice the Foreign Ministry with its years of experience and professionalism?

One may argue that by weakening the ministry and establishing evermore competing entities, Netanyahu is trying to divide and rule, a well-worn strategy of playing all against all, so as to ‎secure his own agenda. However, in my judgment, there is no agenda as it appears that in Israel, everyone is in charge and no one is in command.

There are two possible alternative reasons for the establishment of these “bogus international ministries.” The first is the deep-seated animosity Netanyahu bears towards what is called the “old elite.” This animosity was very explicit in his first administration, between 1996 and 1999, and was targeted at various strongholds of the old elites, like the Supreme Court, national media, and academia. Though more restrained in his second and third administrations, it seems that his stand towards the diplomatic service still echoes with this rancor. The second reason for the proliferation of ministries is related to Netanyahu’s weakness. Contrary to the widespread perception of him as a strong leader (see, for example the May 2012 Time Magazine coverage of “King Bibi”), he is in fact a weak politician who is coerced and arm-twisted rather easily. The political spread of these various “international bogus ministries” is a sure sign of this weakness.

The minister charged with regional cooperation, Silvan Shalom from the Likud is a harsh internal opponent of Netanyahu, who every now and then receives some political goods to keep him at bay. The Minister of International Relations (whatever that may be) is Yuval Steinitz, a close ally and devotee of Netanyahu who had to be compensated for being “robbed” of his post as Finance Minister. The creation of the Ministry of International Relations serves no other purpose. The minister in charge of the Diasporas, Naftali Bennett, is the head of the Jewish Home, the right-wing partner in Netanyahu’s coalition. While Tzipi Livni, on the other hand, is the head of the splinter centrist party, the Movement. Each got his or her share of the spoils. And on top of them all, presides Lieberman who for years now has successfully wrested most of his wants and whims from Netanyahu, including his demand not to appoint a Foreign Minister in his place.

All these facts are a bit tedious, especially to theorists who tend to look at the macro level and examine the structure of global politics. But boring as they are, the facts are crucial in understanding and explaining Israel’s international behavior (think Goldfarb’s The Politics of Small Things and Putnam’s two-level-game). The appointments, driven as they are by various political moves and calculations, create an impossible political mosaic; impossible, that is, in terms of forming and executing coherent agendas and policies.

I doubt anyone can identify Israel’s preferences regarding the negotiation with the Palestinians and what its vision is for a final settlement. I wonder: Does John Kerry think he does today after his recent experiment in shuttle diplomacy?

Prime Minister Netanyahu declares every now and then his commitment to a two-state solution. On June 5^th 2013, for example, he called on Abu Mazen not to miss yet another opportunity, asking him to “give peace a chance.” Yet, the same month it was revealed that more housing plans were being approved and built in the Occupied Territories. At the same time, Likud’s MP and Deputy Minister of Defense, Danny Danon, mocked the idea of a two-state solution. The same goes for many other Likud MPs and other coalition members who oppose any negotiation. This duplicity clearly hampers efforts by international actors, such as Kerry’s. He, like many others, receives mixed, confusing and practically impossible signals to decipher from the Israelis (as well as from the Palestinians).

The same duplicity was evident in a recent attempt to craft a joint Israeli/Polish declaration prior to Netanyahu’s official visit to Poland. Mid-level bureaucrats met and published a very moderate declaration approving the two-state solution. Not a day passed before Netanyahu distanced himself from the statement and effectively voided it. Maybe if the professional and skilled diplomats of the Foreign Ministry had been involved in the process, none of the subsequent diplomatic embarrassment would have occurred. But nowadays who consults the Israeli Foreign Ministry? No wonder the frustrated Israeli diplomats have been on strike for the past three months or so, partly because of their deteriorating salaries and partly as a result of the steady gutting of their ministry. It should not come as a surprise that the Prime Minister (who is also the Acting Foreign Minister) does not even meet with the striking diplomats. It seems that no one in the government really cares.

But then again, how could the diplomats, skilled as they are, solve those problems if no one provides them with a coherent agenda and agreed upon policies? And those agendas and policies will not be formed by themselves. They must be developed by a government that acts as Plato’s Captain of the Ship. And the seas that Israel rides, it should be noted, are rough indeed and full of existential challenges; but also, we should not ignore, of opportunities. The regional seclusion of Israel that has lasted for decades is being challenged now by changing circumstances, for example the Arab uprisings and the recent discoveries of Eastern Mediterranean gas. Thus, there are those in Israel who call upon the government to rethink its position in the region following the Arab Spring, to embrace the Arab Peace Initiative, and adopt a more regional integrationist position. This was, for example, the message of Meir Dagan, former head of the Mossad, in his address at the Israeli Presidential Conference, on June 19th 2013. However, also those calls fall prey to the aimless drifting of the ship.

Without a captain and without a skilled and trusted crew, such as the Foreign Ministry diplomats, the Israeli ship would appear to be hazardously drifting to the shoals. ‎

This post is an abbreviated version of a working paper published by The Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI).

In today’s “in-depth” post, Hilla Dayan provides critical insight into the Israeli political landscape, following the recent elections. She paints a stark reality. The elections in her judgment have a “Groundhog Day” quality. Once again, a centrist, anti-religious, patriotic party appeared from nowhere. Once again, the left was not a significant factor, and once again the right-wing ruling party prevailed to form the coalition. Dayan presents a much more radical response than did Michael Weinman in his inquiry into the future prospects following the elections for Israel. Weinman foresees a fundamental challenge to Israeli democracy, worries about theocratic and authoritarian dangers, and sees in the modest quest for a normal society a possible key for a democratic future.

In Dayan’s account, in contrast, the key question is whether the strong anti-democratic agenda of the far right will proceed, whether Israel’s present regime, combining an unsteady and receding liberal democracy for Jewish citizens and second class Palestinian citizens, with dictatorship over the Palestinians in the occupied territories, will be replaced by a more pure authoritarian indeed fascist regime, with the potential of a genocidal approach to the Palestinian other.

While for Weinman hope lies in the internal dynamics of Israeli society, for Dayan hope can be found in the potential common project linking the post if not anti-Zionist left within Israel and in the occupied territories. Both see the elections as indecisive. Both see real dangers. Yet, both also provide some grounds for hope: Weinman in the possibility of incremental steps toward a two state solution, between now and a better then, Dayan in the radical step that must be taken for a just secular one state solution.

My ambivalent response: as a matter of temperament and personal experience, I am attracted to the quest for a normal society as a wise political end in the face of gross injustice.  I know from my experience in Central Europe that this quest involves more than its critics imagine, especially because it can be realized immediately, its self limiting means can constitute its end. This project would be especially powerful if it included Palestinians.

On the other hand, the degree of injustice and suffering among Palestinians, clearly calls for a radical resolution. The peace process over the past decades has only intensified this for many if not most Palestinians, as Nahed Habbiballah has highlighted here. The peace process has led to few improvements for Palestinians, especially when considering their longing for a normal life.

Hilla and Michael are both former students, colleagues and friends. I learn from both of them, in these posts and in their other writings. Their reflections on the election results both require serious and deliberate consideration. My intuition tells me that their shared deep concerns are more important than their differences. More on that in an upcoming post.

To read today’s In-Depth post, “Israel Against Democracy: Post-Elections Analysis,” by Hilla Dayan, click here.

The massive vote for Lapid, riding on a general discontent with politics, made it painfully clear how sectorial the “social justice” protest in the summer of 2011 was after all, which drew primarily on middle-class frustrations with dwindling economic prospects for future generations. The amazing creativity and energy of many young and more radicalized 2011 protestors dissipated much too soon. Difficult yet promising alliances forged at the time between Mizrahi neighborhoods in Tel Aviv and Palestinian activists in Jaffa found no political expression. The summer of 2011 was a moment when hundreds of thousands poured to the streets to demonstrate against the rule of the so-called “tycoons,” Israel’s business oligarchy. This seemed to have the potential to lead to an even broader, more threatening mobilization against the existing order. It didn’t happen. No serious opposition to the reign of the neoliberal hawkish right emerged from this outburst. The 2011 protest did not generate any visible crack in the tectonic structures of Israeli politics. The main players on the Israeli political map remain Netanyahu-Liberman, a spineless, inflated center, and a disproportionately strong settler-dominated extreme right. Together, and with the ultra- orthodox parties in opposition for the first time in decades, they form the next coalition government. The so-called capital-rule [Hon-Shilton] nexus is under no serious threat, at least for the time being.

What remains to be seen is whether Yesh Atid, with its newcomers plucked from the media, cultural and business elite will manage to prevent this Knesset session from finishing off the attack on the liberal foundations of the state. In the past four years, the Israeli parliament has orchestrated a legislative blitz, introducing dozens of anti-democratic bills undermining basic rights, attacking minorities and civil society organizations in particular. The anti-Zionist left was the focus of concerted persecution. The vicious campaign was utterly disproportionate, considering how tiny, fragmented and largely politically disorganized the anti-Zionist left is. The new MKs of Yair Lapid, although a significant block, are inexperienced in dealing with the extreme-right legislators’ tactical use of the law as a tool for political persecution and will have a difficult time matching their political cunning. Yair Lapid himself, in a gesture complacent with the extreme-right agenda, mocked Palestinian Member of Knesset Hanin Zoabi immediately after the elections, denouncing her as a political pariah. And so the question remains: will this patriotic center save the Israeli liberal order by pushing back racist legislation? Will it cooperate with political persecution or choose to protect the Palestinian minority against its own ethnocentric inclinations, merely for the sake of maintaining some semblance of the rule of law?

If the de-democratization trend continues, it would be interesting to see what impact it will have on the twin pillars of the Israeli system of rule, namely, the Israeli dictatorship. I am referring here to the political system that the ‘average Israeli’ perceives as something external to themselves, existing in the twilight zone of the occupation, when in fact it is integral to the political order in Israel/Palestine as a whole. The 45-year-old denial of voting rights and rule over the Palestinian population was of course irrelevant to the Israeli media covering the elections. Mainstream US and international media, devoting pages towards the Jewish-Israeli ‘left’, ‘center’ and ‘right’, also completely ignored it. The irrelevance of the occupation to the Israeli voter in these free and democratic elections must be understood as being painstakingly manufactured. The occupation grinds on as if taking place in an unrelated, autonomous universe. During the week of the elections several so-called ‘shooting incidents’ occurred, in which four innocent civilians were killed in the West Bank. One of them was a 16-year-old boy, who was shot point-blank by soldiers near the separation wall south of Hebron. And just before the elections the army violently evacuated hundreds of Palestinian activists from the so-called ‘E1 zone’ in the West Bank, where they had erected a makeshift settlement to protest Netanyahu’s plan to build more illegal Jewish settlements.

This new non-violent method of resistance in the occupied territories not only gave rise to a new social category – the Palestinian ‘settler’ – but more profoundly tore the mask of hypocrisy off the Israeli regime of separation, with its rigidly separate mechanisms of ruling over citizens (Jews and the Palestinian citizen minority) and disenfranchised out-groups (Palestinians in the occupied territories). The methodology employed by the Bab Al Shams activists draws attention to this dual system of rule specifically and makes its existence impossible to deny. The few times the state orchestrated an evacuation of Jewish settlers from “illegal outposts,” these were media spectacles showing soldiers shedding tears (rather than shooting tear gas) and hugging settlers in broad daylight. The violent beatings and mass arrests of the Palestinian settlers in the Bab Al Shams outpost, conversely, were conducted in the dead of night, and not before the army had first removed all Israeli and foreign journalists from the area in the usual dictatorial fashion.

Israel’s regime of separation must continuously separate the democratic from the dictatorial and conceal their relations of dependence, and ultimately their systemic unity. What would happen, however, if the gradual erosion of the liberal order continues, and the democratic space for both Jews and Palestinians, who are luckily still somewhat protected by the democratic order, continues to shrink? Will it take its course until there is no liberal order to speak of? What would happen to a regime, whose entire edifice leans on the two pillars of democracy and dictatorship, if the democratic pillar collapses? Ironically, the de-democratization process, which is marked by anti-democratic legislation, a sustained attack on basic civil liberties, the repression of dissent, the denial of cultural autonomy for minorities and the decimation of organized opposition, is a serious threat to the stability of the regime. It is threatening because it logically leads to a regime collapse, but what exactly would this regime collapse scenario entail?

Critics of the Israeli regime argue that the occupation, combined with the ethnic cleansing ideologies and the racist agendas touted by candidates in the Israeli elections, make it difficult to call the Israeli “democracy” anything but a façade for an apartheid system. Skeptics of Israeli democracy rightfully point out that a democracy for Jews only cannot be seriously called a democracy. But, what this perspective fails to appreciate is exactly how critical it is to the Israeli system of rule to maintain both democracy and dictatorship in tandem. What is lost is how democratic legitimization enables the permanent dictatorship, not as a mere façade but as a fundamental logic of the state, a raison d’état. What follows then from the fact that liberal institutions and above all the parliament and elections are being turned into mere instruments of brute force is some sort of a totalitarian fascist mobilization. In such a scenario there is no room for disagreement, no vaguely centrist middle ground, and only one shade of extreme right. We are then faced with a sovereign that declares itself to be beyond the law, representing directly the “will of the people.” Israel indeed puts the demos above the law often enough to deserve the label of crypto-fascist state. But my idea is that what this analysis ultimately entails is different from what defines the current regime of separation, operating within the logic of inclusive exclusion, the logic of control and containment. For, when Israel becomes a truly fascist state, it is likely to transform itself into a regime operating with a totally different logic: the logic of cleansing, and taken to its most logical extreme – of genocide. In my careful estimation, notwithstanding the indiscriminate shooting of civilians and the killing of 140 civilians in Gaza this October, we are not quite there yet.

Sure enough, the scenario of mass fascist mobilization (perhaps as a backlash of the progressive mobilization of the summer of 2011) is not entirely implausible. Yet, it seems remotely likely also because the white middle-class Yair Lapid voters, the everyday type of “salt of the earth” patriots, are all major beneficiaries of the status quo. Any change to the status quo is going to be perceived as unfairly aggravating their “share of the burden” to use a Yesh Atid-like slogan. It will be resisted as unnecessarily steering the country away from what this rather homogenous group covets for securing a Western OECD-level quality of life. So there is reason to believe that with their 17 seats in the Knesset, Yesh Atid will be compelled to put up a strong fight for maintaining the status quo if only to block the deterioration of the liberal order and the collapse of the regime of separation. More than anything, this election proved that Israeli society is not yet ready for the alternative scenario, one in which society enters the permanent crisis that Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci identified as “terminal,” a trigger for “crossing a regime threshold.” Mass mobilization in 2011 did not generate such a political crisis. It did not lead to the emergence of new resistance to the powers that be or to new power blocs. In fact, the recent elections buried the existing chance of hegemonic change, though hopefully not for good.

For the majority of Jewish-Israelis the recognition that the current regime of separation is evil and unsustainable and that a more just and inclusive democratic order must come about is beyond the pale, not something that in Gramsci’s terms they can “identify” with. Instead, in this election, despite strong undercurrents of criticism directed at the current socio-economic order, perhaps the most radical to date, many more chose to passively accept the existing political order as fait accompli.

This is not to say that there is no alternative reading of the political reality. It does exist, and is largely shared within the milieu of Israeli civil society organizations, but it is not widely shared beyond its narrow confines. This alternative reading demands that Jewish-Israelis give up their special privileges as Jewish citizens of the Jewish state. Most Israelis cannot identify with this, not simply because they are too racist, crudely put, but because they do not consider themselves as particularly privileged. As Israeli sociologist Nissim Mizrahi succinctly put it, for many, the only card they can play to better their situation is the claim that the state is theirs. We have to ask why: why is Israeli civil society perceived as representing nothing but itself, and the socio-economic privilege of its members? Why are the critical perspective and the democratic alternative it promotes so vehemently rejected? Why has civil society played such a minor role in the summer of 2011 protests, and why have we not managed to connect the popular struggle for social justice to the struggle to end the occupation? Why have we not been able to produce entrepreneurs of hegemonic change with an agenda that can actually convince the majority that dismantling the dictatorship and truly democratizing Israel/Palestine is the way forward?

I have no clear answer to these questions, only some painful realizations. Firstly, that progressive forces in Israel need to find a more authentic language for political opposition than the lofty language of universalisms and human rights, which rings hollow to so many ears. Secondly, that Israeli civil society must look critically at its own usefulness and contribution to the separation regime and the maintenance of the status quo. Finally, and most devastatingly, we must consider that even while undergoing this process of self-reflection, a future scenario of a terminal crisis leading to a process of genuine democratization may not involve Israeli civil society in any meaningful way.

I do not wish to paint here a picture of Israeli society and its civil society as immune to change and under the firm grasp of the current regime. One should always consider the opposite: that the regime is relatively stable but that there are already social undercurrents strong enough to constantly threaten its stability from within. I believe that we can speak of a movement in the direction of “terminal crisis” in the Gramcian sense only if and when opposition from within Israeli society joins that from out-groups in the occupied territories. Moreover, it is imperative that we look at the state of the Israeli liberal democracy as a sort of seismographic indication for the stability of the regime. At the moment, it seems that the incurable contradictions of democracy and dictatorship have not matured yet into a full- blown crisis, a political earthquake.

To end on a more hopeful note, in case the process of elimination of Israel’s liberal democracy continues after the elections, this process will inevitably bring us closer to the moment of truth. If the extreme right in power successfully completes its mission, it will unwittingly bring down the separation regime. This will be a clear wake-up call for mass mobilization. This time for a whole new order, fascist or not.

In Israel, for over three weeks, there have been demonstrations initiated by young people. They were first directed against the high cost of living, but they seem to be developing into something much larger, a movement for a systematic social change, addressing  the growing disparities between rich and poor and the difficulty of living well, concerned about issues of social security and the deterioration in the provision of education and health care. What had begun with a consumer uprising against the high prices of cottage cheese over a month ago, leading to a boycott on dairy products (since in Israel they operate as a cartel, not open for competition), appears to be  the beginning of what Rosa Luxemburg describes as ”an exercise in democratic action.” I observe the exercise as an Israeli living in Berlin, basing my commentary on newspapers, blog posts and conversations with friends at home.

The “cottage cheese revolt” is no trivial or accidental thing. Israeli dinner tables usually contain this staple, together with a salad. The most popular cottage cheese, Tnuva, has an illustrated home on its package and a well known advertising trope: “the cheese with the home.” Fighting for home is not only for affordable housing or the cost of living. The protesters also talk about the quick decline in the freedom of speech and of the Israeli democratic system under the current government.  However, the demonstrators delay, for the time being, what they see as “political demands” for possible negotiation with the government.  They fear this would compromise the call for “social justice,” and more immediately, could scare off some of the right-of-center demonstrators. According to Ha’Aretz today (August 2), “a document setting out the demands of the tent protesters in the areas of housing, welfare, education, health and economic policy is being drawn up by the movement’s leaders.”

The tent city in Tel Aviv was started by a twenty five year old, Daphne Leef,  who demonstrated against the cost of housing and living on Rothschild Boulevard, calling on her Facebook friends to join her. These demonstrations spread and have been non-violent (she compared them to Woodstock), the first massively successful demonstrations in Israel not connected to the military, wars or specific laws. I would be happy to hear more connections made between the decline in democracy and respect for human needs and the occupation, but that, apparently and unfortunately, cannot be addressed now by a generation that must declare itself “not political” in order to be listened to. Yet, ironically, the demonstrations are of profound political import.

A few of the commentators pointed to the fact that the young leading this uprising is nihilist and self-centered. For example, Eva Illouz in Ha’Aretz sees calls for social change to improve their own hedonistic consumer power, and not in solidarity with the weak and silenced groups, certainly not comparable to the social commitment seen in historical revolts in the fifties and sixties. That might have been true of the first round of the cottage cheese revolt, but it’s no longer the case. The periphery and the poor parts of Tel Aviv are as central and strong to the movement as the wealthy Tel Aviv quarter. The major labor unions, the municipal employees’ union, and the student union have all joined in the protests. The difference between the first protests,predominantly transpiring on Facebook and “at home,” in the form of an economic boycott by private individuals of a mass produced consumer good,and the later actions, in which hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets, remaining for hours of the day and night, in some cases sleeping in spaces coded as “public,” is precisely the one that Arendt illuminated in The Human Condition. In her terms ,the movement has turned from the social to the political, from concerns over “political economy” to a movement of the spontaneous action of human beings in their plurality addressing issues of common concern, Israelis not as settlers or pioneers but as citizens of a state with problems. As David Grossman said in the demonstration on Saturday, the chief problem is: “people are loyal to the state but the state is not loyal to them”. Daphne Leef stated that it is not the government but the “rules of the game” that they wish to change.

In looking at the “tent cities” protest as it has developed, one certainly does not just see the Ashkenazi leftist elite living in Tel Aviv, bragging about how expensive it is to sustain the good life they got used to. Not that that should be so damning a critique: why not live well, consume culture and have individual opportunities for growth?  Avigdor Lieberman and other conservatives called the protesters “spoiled,” perhaps meaning that it is better to not live well, that one should fight for the basics, as the settler  do in the territories, or the way that their predecessors did as young people realizing the Zionist dream.

The Zionist dream was questioned long ago first by intellectuals and minorities, including Palestinians. Now fundamental questions are being raised by a majority that needs to carry the burden for groups (the ultra orthodox) that do not work or serve in the military, in a concentrated market economy that is stable due to high taxes on the hard-working middle class, who feel crunched by the privatization of public services in the past twenty years. This “consumerist occupation” of the public space, in cities large and small all across Israel, calls all that into question in a manner that already appears irreversible.