Before the peace process, during the peace process, and after the peace process appears to have collapsed, the conflict between Israeli Jews and the Palestinians has persisted. Try as the principals may to imagine a solution, often with considerable agreement about its basic contours, as was envisioned in the Geneva Accord, there seems to be no way to get from here to there, no alternative to the injustice of the way things are, no exit.

It is within this maze that we respond to the latest news: the surprising results of an election, in which the ruling party has been humbled, and once again a centrist party has emerged from nowhere, followed by Obama giving a moving speech on his first official visit to Israel, also once again, one of his best. The more things change, the more they stay the same?

It does indeed seem that nothing changes. I, thus, especially appreciate how Deliberately Considered contributors, Michael Weinman, Hilla Dayan and Nahed Habiballah have pushed themselves to provide independent critical perspective (see here , here, and here). Though they hold different positions, I am struck more by their common sensibility, their pursuit of the normal as a realistic though perhaps utopian project. Their differences are marked, but of less significance. I think that perhaps it is their common sensibility that might be the basis for common political thinking and acting against despair.

Weinman observed the most positive side of the election. He doesn’t approve of “the winner,” Yair Lapid and his Yesh Atid (“there is a future”) Party, but he thinks there was hope in the election results, a suggestion of a possible future:

“Let me be clear: I am no fan of Lapid, I wouldn’t have voted for him in January had I had the chance, and I haven’t liked him on Facebook, either. But I do recognize that he represented and represents the hope of many young and youngish people that Israel can be ‘a normal country.’”

This may be clear to Dayan, but she takes exception. On my Facebook page, she noted; “my biggest disagreement with Michael Weinman is that I do not believe Israel could ever ‘go back’ to being a normal liberal democracy, since it never was. From it’s inception it had the twin pillars of democracy and dictatorship…” For her the election was profoundly disheartening. The radical promise of the Israeli protests of 2011 was lost:

“The summer of 2011 was a moment when hundreds of thousands poured to the streets to demonstrate against … 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.”

Dayan demonstrates in her post how political freedom and repression are the two sides of the Israeli polity. “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.”

This is harsh stuff, so harsh that I misunderstood it. I read Dayan’s post as implicitly supporting a one state solution as the only way out. But she corrected me: “I am not for ‘one state’ but for democratisation, in whatever form (be it federal, bi-national, power sharing, what have you).” A wise position: I fully agree, and I imagine so would Weinman.

Habiballah might also, although her view of the conflict comes from a very different place, as she put it in her title, it is “from both sides of the wall” and really up close and quite personal. She views Israeli politics as a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, living in Amman, visiting her parents home bi-weekly, just on the wrong side of the Wall (very much a wall and not as it is sometimes euphemistically called by apologists as a separation fence), a wall and separation that has fundamentally disrupted the normality of her life as she precisely describes. As she moves from her present residence to visit family, and as she thinks about her family home cut off from Jerusalem and her native grounds in the Nazareth area, she is constrained, with her dignity compromised each way she turns.

Habiballah on the elections:

“Palestinians living in Israel might have been perceived by many during the election period as apathetic, but I think what could be more appropriate is a state of alert. They have lost confidence in the democratic nature of the state. This feeling is strengthened with proposing new laws by government officials and sometimes passing such laws in the Knesset (such as the law of allegiance which requires all citizens to pledge allegiance to the state as a Jewish one). This result is the further alienation of Palestinians living in Israel from the rest of the society and jeopardizes their right to exist in their home country.”

Living with dignity in ones home country, (Habiballah), seeking democracy by any means possible: one state, two states, federated states or anything else (Dayan), living a decent middle class life, the aspiration of the typical Lapid voter, “Riki Cohen,” the Israeli Jane Doe (Weinman), but also the aspiration of the typical Palestinian who wants to securely be at home in her own land (Habiballah), these are struggles for normality. This is the common sensibility that cuts across the Palestine – Israel divide.

Sometimes the normal appears as the utopian. This is when it is of critical importance, something I came to know in Central Europe in the good old bad days of the Soviet empire. I think an open publicly shared commitment to and struggle for this utopia, among Palestinians and Israelis, is the precondition of a “Peace Writ Small,” perhaps the only way out of the maze.

Suspecting that Michael, Hilla and Nahed don’t see themselves as holding a common view, particularly as I have suggested it, I look forward to their responses.

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 the immediate aftermath of the latest elections in Israel, my (somewhat snide, but really felt) response was “good thing there is a future; there’s surely no present.” Meaning, I suppose, something like: nice to see that folks really made a statement that the current political system is fundamentally broken (by voting in droves for the newly-minted Yesh Atid [i.e., there is a future] party), but that doesn’t mean that anything has actually changed, or can be expected to change, any time soon. I had wanted to try to develop that reaction into a sustained thought, but failed. Then, in the build-up to Obama’s visit and the drama of Netanyahu’s troubled, but ultimately (and predictably) successful, attempt to forge a coalition, I thought that there was a real moment to expand on my initial response. I failed again. Obama’s visit itself would have been a nice occasion to revisit my thesis and see how it was holding up against “facts on the ground.” But, alas, that moment passed as well.

Who would have thought that the “critical mass” would have been reached through a seemingly benign, almost anodyne, gesture by Yair Lapid (head of the afore-mentioned party) in saying that any structural changes to Israeli economic and fiscal policy—and such changes, it is universally agreed (and, seriously, now, how often is universal agreement reached on anything in Israel?)—must first of all resolve the difficulties faced by the “ideal typical” family of “Riki Cohen” who (it so happens) is said to hail from Hadera, the suburban semi-city between Tel Aviv and Haifa where my wife’s parents have lived for 25 years.

So, I am sitting here in their house in Hadera, looking over the pages and pages devoted to “Rikigate” in the thick Friday [think: Sunday] editions of Yediot Ahronot and HaAretz (including prized positions on the front covers thereof), and I realize: this is the evidence that the January version of me would have wanted to rip from the near future and point to in making my comment about the lack of a political present in Israel. Basically, it seems to me, the situation is like this: a relatively (and surprisingly) broad swath of Israeli society got together to say that while there is no organized left worth voting for anymore in Israel, and while the centrist parties of the 1990s and 2000s have shown themselves to be equal parts feckless and selfish opportunists, the domestic policies of the right and further-right are fundamentally disastrous for the modern, liberal Israel these folks believe themselves to live in and be a part of. These people agree about this, and this is not nothing, but it is by no means the basis of a platform around which the kind of structural reformation of public policy and economic development that was the demand of the massive protest movement in the summer of 2011. And so, to the extent that Lapid and his party have been given more or less a free hand to set the domestic policy of the current government—a costly but necessary concession given that he and the nationalist “Bayit HaYehudi” [Jewish Home] party leader Naftali Bennet formed an “in government together or in opposition together” pact, which meant that Lapid effectively controlled as many seats as Netanyahu at the time of the coalition negotiations—he now gets to face the same stalemate we saw in the time of the Trajtenberg Committee. Israelis know that the current state of affairs is untenable, but there remains no consensus about the concrete steps that need to be taken in order to stand the country on legs that can actually carry it to the future. “Yesh atid,” you might say, but we have no (shared) idea of how to get there.

And this brings us to Riki Cohen from Hadera. Maybe you haven’t heard of her, but she’s been the beginning and/or the end of news broadcasts here in Israel throughout the week I’ve been visiting. (Pretty impressive for someone who doesn’t exist!) Basically, Lapid said this: there are a number of families in this country like this imaginary case I have for you. You have a pair of working parents with, say, two or three children. They are professionals and successful. They earn well above the average annual income in Israel (which includes the far too many un- and under-employed), and a decent amount more than the average income for families with two working adults. (This turns out to be the source of much of the controversy, but it is critical to Lapid’s thought experiment.) They bring home enough to keep paying down the house, to keep their cars on the road (fuel is very expensive in Israel, remember), to feed the family, and (and here, again, much controversy) to travel once every two years to a destination outside Israel. But they have no chance to buy a house for any of their kids, and no security for their retirement. The economic and fiscal policy of this government, said Lapid in the meeting where he introduced this character, will first of all take into consideration the need to improve the situation for families like this.

And what followed? In the phrase of my dearly departed mother: a shitstorm. A shitstorm that perfectly shows why there is no present in Israel. All kinds of different constituencies jumped on this one. There are those (and there are many) who assail Lapid (from the left, I suppose) for speaking about people who bring home something like3500 USD/month after tax, when there are many working families that bring home something like 2000 USD/month after tax. There are those (and there are many) who assail him (from the right) for speaking about trips abroad and buying a house for the kids, when we are at war and always at war, and people have sacrificed and will sacrifice much more than a trip to Venice for the sake of the continued existence of Israel. Both of these responses are predictable: they are the source of the stagnation of the past generation. And both of them fundamentally miss the point.

Let me be clear: I am no fan of Lapid, I wouldn’t have voted for him in January had I had the chance, and I haven’t liked him on Facebook, either. But I do recognize that he represented and represents the hope of many young and youngish people that Israel can be “a normal country.” These people don’t all agree (maybe even: don’t agree at all) about the conflict with the Palestinians, or about “the Iranian threat,” and they might very well disagree about tax and spending policy if they were transplanted to the US or to a European country. But they agree that, given Israel’s current realities, people who are more or less advocates of a limited government (neo-) liberal economic model and people who are more or less advocates of a continental European-style social democratic economic model need to make common cause to “rescue” the state from (on the one hand) its vastly too great financial commitments to some sectors (read: the ultra-religious and the settlers, two populations with a fair amount of overlap, but less than you would think) and, on the other hand, from its vastly too advanced (under Netanyahu I and Netanyahu II) program of “economic liberalization” with respect to other sectors.

At the risk of seeming tendentious, I’d like to call these people (the Lapid voters and, say, the people who see why the Lapid voters voted for Lapid) “the adults.” The adults face a stiff challenge: political discourse in Israel is rich and multifarious. All those statements about Israel being a flourishing democracy (albeit with the horrific stain of the occupation, which must end “speedily, speedily in our days”) are true. But the discourse is also often beside the point. If there’s one thing that can come and must come from the most recent election, it is progress on the path toward economic and fiscal normalization. And that will demand that political actors don’t return to bromides about Israel being a socialist country (on the one hand) or nonsense about the perpetual endangerment of tiny Israel meaning that “we all have to make sacrifices.” Both the left, at least in the current form of Avoda (the Labor Party) and its populist-nonsensical-obstructionist rhetoric, and the right are wrong about the future of Israel: where Israel needs to be in 25 years is neither returned to its solidarity-bootstraps (“Socialist-Zionist youth”) roots of the 1948-67 period—with “khol ha-kavod” to those “Pioneers”—and certainly not in some bizarre semi-theocracy of a center-right political faction joined together with a nationalist right and a theocratic faction. It needs to be, as the adults say (and say rightly), “a normal country.”

What is “a normal country”? In this case, at least, it must mean something like this: Israel as a moderate, perhaps somewhat (right or left) populist-leaning liberal democracy standing alongside an at least nominally independent (but economically and militarily coordinated) state of Palestine. That this is Israel’s only sustainable future is clear.  The problem is that there is next to no connection between the present and that future. A significant step in that direction would be to secure the economic future of families like Lapid’s “Riki Cohen from Hadera.” If these people (and they are the sector of Israeli society with which I am the most familiar, I confess) can’t live a life that is analogous to people living and working in economies of similar size whose educational backgrounds and career trajectories are similar to their own, then (even leaving aside “the security issue,” as one can do only ever do in abstraction), contra the name of Lapid’s party and all the interest it generated, there is no future for the State of Israel.

Not, in any case, as a liberal democracy.