When it became clear that Bibi Netanyahu was going to be the next Prime Minister of Israel, a lot of people understandably wanted to know what the Israelis thought they were doing, voting for such a patent anti-peacenik who'd already committed himself to forming a coalition with the unsavoury, if not unhinged, likes of Avigdor Lieberman. There was a lot of don't they realise this and can't they see that, which was funny because actually more people voted for Livni's Kadima than did for Likkud, so obviously quite a number of people inside Israel are not as stupid and belligerent as it seems. The obvious historical parallel here is with the Gore victory of 2000, an electoral endorsement that for a variety of political reasons got subverted and ended up delivering the wrong president to just over half of Americans - which didn't stop them being blamed and ridiculed for electing him by people outside the US who don't really understand how the system works (or just really don't like Americans).

Which is pretty revealing, because Bibi is a dyed in the wool neocon. He's an extreme market liberal who went a very long way towards deregulating the Israeli financial system during his time as Sharon's Minister of Finance, generally trying to turn the Israeli economy into a clone of the US one. He's also one of the most US-centric politicians we've ever thrown up; very openly proud about his close relationships with a bunch of conservative think tanks and universities in the US, he goes there more often than any other Israeli politician, has lived there for a while (it's vanishingly rare, and would normally be damaging, for Israeli politicians to have emigrated even temporarily, so this is a bigger deal than it might appear) etc.

So him becoming the PM five minutes after the American people had delivered a ringing bitch slap to neo-conservatism and all it represents, when both the ideology and the administration were sat there blinking in the harsh glare of the open toilet door as they're scrambling to get their trousers back up, was always going to be interesting. It didn't take very long for things on that front to start going theatrically wrong, and now a lot of ink is being spilled on the subject of the "crisis" in US-Israeli relations. What basically happened is that Obama told Bibi "the settlements have got to go", and Bibi told Obama a plain "no". Both sides are shocked, hurt and traumatised. This has never happened to them before!

Michael Tomasky has an interesting blog piece up on why Obama is concentrating on the settlements and not the many other barriers to peace (violence in Gaza, roadblocks in the West Bank, cultural oppression, there's no shortage). He's also got some interesting poll results up from the Israeli public on various questions connected to the "crisis" and to the settlements in general.

I think Obama is right to concentrate on the settlements, but for different reasons to Tomasky's.

There's this dogma in the West, that there's a simple algorithm for "solving" the "problem" in Israel/Palestine. You can spot it prevalence by counting how many articles and statements on the subject contain the words "if only Israel" and "only if Israel", and goes something like this:

End occupation => Palestinian statehood => Peace => Survival/prosperity for Israel

For "end occupation" read "dismantle settlements", at least in most contexts.

The first and largest flaw with this thinking is the reality that Israel's survival doesn't depend on peace. If it did, the whole country wouldn't be here by now, since it never had five minutes of peace in its whole existence. Which is exactly what underwrites the arrogance of right wingers like Bibi, and why "peace" is unfortunately not a convincing rallying cry for a lot of Israelis.

Next problem is that ending the occupation and achieving statehood for Palestinians don't have such a simple causal relationship. Even under the most perfect conditions of complete and utter withdrawal to the last inch and total removal of all Israelis and any physical traces of them, you've got the Palestinians themselves to contend with. Statehood is not in the gift of anyone from outside, they'll have to make it work for themselves, and currently the internal divisions they suffer from are so violent as to make that a big open question.

There's also a logical flaw with how the settlements fit into this picture in the first place: after all, you can leave them where they are and still end the occupation, the settlers then becoming citizens of Palestine, or having dual citizenship. I'm aware that for ideological reasons that's highly unlikely to actually happen, but the important part is that it could. There is nothing inevitable about dismantling the actual bricks and mortar. In that light singling out the settlements, from a purely Palestinian Statehood point of view, seems like a strange choice; surely getting Israel to recognise the Palestinians' right to a state is a more important first step than controlling the Jewish population in the West Bank?

Israelis are fully aware of these contradictions in a way that Western publics aren't, because they see them played out every day in the news. So previous US administrations' blathering about peace and prosperity and two states for two people rang very hollow for them - they could, frankly, tell that these guys have no idea what they're on about. Same goes for a lot of "diplomacy efforts" in Israel - they fail because the people who front them are full of shit, neither understanding or even acknowledging the Israeli reality. The argument from self interest breaks down once you acknowledge that peace is not a necessary condition for Israel, but international diplomacy has nevertheless continued to ignore that elephant in the room, with the result that the argument for Israelis to change their stance on the occupation is really from Palestinian self interest. Which might be legally/ethically correct, but is pragmatically speaking bullshit. Nobody's ever changed their entire way of life and philosophy because that would be better for somebody else, and demanding that Israel do just that is just a wanking exercise from the moral high ground.

In order to effect change in the Middle East, it's imperative to effect change in Israeli thinking, and the way to do that is by reframing the question from the point of view of their own (real) self interest. This means acknowledging that what really threatens the survival of Israel as a democratic state isn't war. It's the possibility that it will turn itself into some kind of dystopian Jewish theocracy cum fascist state where adherence to a moral evil (the occupation, reified as a value in its own right) overrides the rule of law and pluralistic values. This is incredibly, terrifyingly close to happening.

The right kind of diplomacy in this context should encourage the already widespread understanding inside Israel that the settlements  must go not because they're an "obstacle", but because they are morally wrong, ideologically divisive and economically non-viable. That their existence undermines the rule of law by pitting the Judicial arm against the Executive arm in a debilitating struggle over Israel's commitment to human rights and democratic process. That they represent a radicalised sub culture that sees itself as separate from and superior to the Israeli commonwealth, with which it does not make common cause on economic, political and religious issues. That the need for military defense of them indoctrinates almost all young Israeli people into the mindset of segregation and discrimination, an attitude that is not simply discarded once National Service is over, but is carried over into civilian life - with consequences that are visible in Israeli society.

The settlements are not a picking bone in the conflict between Israel and the rest of the world. They are in conflict, with Israel itself, as well as the rest of the world. We need to jettison them before they turn on us. Most people in Israel already dimly realise this. The last question on the poll, which Tomasky didn't quote, is whether people would help settlers resist the occupation. 85% of respondents said no, which to me indicates that while they are in sympathy with the settlers, they don't see them as enough of an integral part of Israeli society that they would defy the state in solidarity with them. Democracy and the rule of law still come first for many.

What I'm hoping Obama can do is work a little bit of his Change(tm) magic to coax that respect for democracy and the rule of law out into the open, to succor it and turn it from an abstract afterthought into something that the Left in Israel can rally around. He's given US progressives a much needed shot in the arm, at a time when it was all but impossible to imagine that the world is not run along the monstrously inhuman moral lines of fundamentalist Christian capitalism; the Left in Israel is all but dead, too, and could really do with a bit of the same medicine.

Saying all that, it looks like Obama's official policy on Israel is lifted straight from the preceding administration. The most destructive part of that policy (and all such policies since Nixon) is the so called "military aid", which essentially functions as a retainer for Israel to perpetuate a state of war as an outpost of US interests in the region; before Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel was the pilot light that kept the low flame of US interventionism alive in the Middle East, and it has got to go. But that's a whole other post.