Today, Explained - Israel is under new management

Episode Date: June 15, 2021

Benjamin Netanyahu is out. Israel has a new leader and a new coalition government. The question now is whether they bring anyone closer to peace. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Israel got a new prime minister this weekend, and we wanted to know what that means for the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

So we asked Alison Kaplan-Summer. I'm a journalist for Haaretz. I live in a suburb of Tel Aviv called Renana, which also happens to be the hometown of Israel's new prime minister, Naftali Bennett. And he is refusing to move to the official prime minister's residence in Jerusalem. The new prime minister of Israel, Naftali Bennett, has chaired his first cabinet meeting and has promised to heal the country's rifts. This coalition contains parties with very, very different visions of what Israel should be and what kind of a solution there should be to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The prime minister, Naftali Bennett, is on record as saying that he opposes a Palestinian state, that he believes in annexation of at least part of the West Bank immediately and kind of a creeping annexation for the rest of the West Bank. He really sees the greater land of Israel as the ultimate ideal vision for the state. But this coalition also contains parties really to the very left of the Israeli spectrum,

which believe very firmly in a two-state solution. To make things even more complicated, this is the first Israeli government coalition to include an Arab party, an Islamist Arab party, which obviously has its own point of view and feels very strongly about what kind of a state should or shouldn't exist in the land. So pretty much it's a stalemate. There's no way that these parties will ever agree on a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So it's hard to imagine anything except a maintenance of the status quo happening right now. And what exactly binds this coalition together if they can't see eye to eye on one of the most pressing issues they're facing?

What brought this coalition together was one clear mission, which is the mission that they will always be able to point to that they accomplished. And that is, after 12 years, getting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu out of power. Netanyahu was accused of bribery, breach of trust and fraud. There were allegations of gifts from millionaire friends and that he sought regulatory favours for media tycoons in return for favourable coverage in the press. Both on the left and on the right,

a majority of Israelis believed that his time has come, that he is not only indicted on charges, he is standing trial on corruption charges. He is very distracted by his personal woes. There was evidence through the COVID crisis and other political crises that his prime consideration was his own political survival and his political survival in order to guarantee a legal advantage in his cases. If Benjamin Netanyahu is able to stay in power, he could try to manipulate basically the legal system to try to protect himself from some of these serious charges against him. And so there was a consensus by many who were his political allies, many who have a similar political outlook that he does,

that his presence in the prime minister's office was dangerous for the future of the country. And that is why this really odd coalition of eight different political parties joined together and decided that they were going to end the Netanyahu era. Okay, so this coalition was successful in getting rid of Netanyahu. Now they're led by Bennett, and there's a bunch of parties in there that don't see eye to eye on this Palestinian issue. What do most Israelis want when it comes to Palestine? When you look at most polls, both Israelis and Palestinians, by large majorities, prefer a two-state solution to any other of the alternatives. In both cases, 43 to 44 percent say that their preferred

solution is a two-state solution. You know, many of them say they don't know or they don't care, etc. But when you, you know, compare it to those that actively support an alternative like one state for both people, etc., overwhelmingly they support the idea of a two-state solution. The question is whether they support taking real concrete steps towards it in the current reality. I think you would probably find a majority of Israelis opposed to doing that. And the alternative, we're talking about this one-state solution. What is that one-state solution? Is that just the state of Israel?

It depends on what kind of one-state solution you're interested in. The far right and the far left in Israel each have their own vision of a one-state solution you're interested in. The far right and the far left in Israel each have their own vision of a one-state solution. If you're on the far right, you want the annexation of West Bank territory without giving full rights and an equal status to the Palestinian residents of the West Bank, which, you know, relates to how people are saying that Israel is heading towards apartheid, if not engaged in apartheid already. Those on the left, of course, have a more American-style vision of one state with equal rights for all, with everyone having voting rights. However, most people will point out that this would result in a state that would clash with the vision of having a state that is clearly a majority Jewish state. And in the meantime, it doesn't sound like this new coalition

in Israel with, at least for the moment, Prime Minister Bennett is going to bring any significant change on this issue. No, absolutely. They are going to stay as far away from it as possible, but events will overtake them. And there are some landmines, even in the coming week, that could lead the Israeli-Palestinian issue to explode in the face of the new Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. There is a march, a nationalist flag march scheduled to take place in Jerusalem, which is going to put really a spotlight on where this new Israeli leader stands when it comes to the future of the West Bank. I, Naftali Bennett, son of Jim Yaakov of blessed memory and Mirna Lea

may she have a long life commit as the prime minister and as the future alternate prime minister to maintain allegiance to the state of Israel and to its laws Okay, so maybe the new prime minister doesn't mean big changes are on the horizon, but what would those changes look like? That is in a minute on Today Explained. Thank you. share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an AuraFrame as a gift, you can personalize it,

you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an AuraFrame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday. And she's very fortunate. She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the AuraFrame. And because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together and have them uploaded to the frame itself.

And because we're all connected over text message, it was just so easy to send a link to everybody. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions do apply. Okay, so Israel's got a new prime minister and a new coalition in power, but it doesn't appear to suggest we're going to see much progress on the Israel-Palestine conflict in the near term. But we were wondering what progress would look like, so we asked Rashid Khalidi. I am the author of The Hundred Years War on Palestine and the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University.

Rashid, with the election of this new coalition, this entrance of this Bennett character who seems to have no love for solutions, do you think the two-state solution, as it's called, is dead at this point? I don't think Bennett changes anything about the two-state solution. This is a government that is paralyzed on this issue. But the two-state solution itself faces obstacles that nobody who mouths those words ever wants to discuss. Israel has been pouring concrete for 54 years and has engaged in the largest infrastructure projects in its modern history in order to prevent a two-state solution. It has illegally exported 10% of its population into the occupied West Bank. Anybody who even uses the words two-state solution would have to say, how would we change

a situation in which 10% of Israel's Jewish citizens have been implanted in most of the West Bank? How do you change that? Let's just talk about why the entire international community is so committed to this two-state thing that doesn't seem to be working out in any way, shape, or form right now. Why is that? Well, I think it solves their consciences, frankly. There is and should be a guilty conscience about what happened during World War II, during the Holocaust.

And you can't pivot from a solution that's enshrined in UN resolutions going back to 1947. At Flushing, Long Island, the General Assembly of the United Nations has made its decision on Palestine. I mean, 1947, the partition plan of 1947 was a two-state solution. An Arab state was never created because the UN didn't really, the powers behind that resolution didn't really care, the United States and the Soviet Union. There was heated debate in the assembly. And now I think that over time,

there's a sense that something should be done for the Palestinians, but there has never really been any willingness on the part of any major international actor to get the Israelis to climb down from a position where whatever they say, whether they accept the two-state solution in principle or not, they are working tirelessly day and night to make sure that it's absolutely impossible. Pouring concrete, installing new settlers, building bypass roads, hemming in the Palestinians, confiscating their lands, and so on and so forth. Well, does it make more sense then to talk about the one-state solution? Well, the one-state solution has obstacles too. One of them is that there is this

wall-to-wall international consensus that the two-state solution is a good thing. But that is a real obstacle because it's enshrined in all kinds of UN resolutions and in the policies of literally dozens and in the policies of literally dozens and dozens of countries. Another problem that the one-state solution faces is how do you do it? How do you move from a situation where you have essentially one state, an Israeli Zionist state, created in order to privilege one people at the expense of another? And that's now part of the Israeli constitution. A law was passed in 2018, which said only one people uniquely has the right of self-determination in Israel,

and that is the Jewish people. So you really have to do a whole lot to transform that into an equal, or I should say a one-state solution in which everyone is equal, has equal national rights and civil rights and political rights and so forth. What would this one-state solution that nobody wants to humor look like? I think it depends on what kind of one-state solution you're talking about. Back in the 60s, the PLO put forward the idea of a singular democratic, secular Palestinian state where everybody, Jews, Muslims, and Christians would be equal, but where there's no recognition of the fact that an Israeli nationality or an Israeli national entity has developed or has been created. South Africa is more the first model. That's one option. Another would be some kind of binational state where you would have a formal recognition that there are two peoples here and figure out how you would arrange the adjudication of all the issues between them.

There are not many cases of the second model. You might argue maybe Belgium, maybe the Netherlands, maybe in the future, maybe Northern Ireland. People will say, well, the Middle East isn't Ireland and the Middle East isn't Belgium or whatever. Well, you know, Belgium and the Netherlands and Ireland were not quiet places a little while ago. Finally, there are other models within the context of a one-state solution, cantons, a federal system, whereby you would have one state, but you'd have enormous autonomy within that for different regions or groups. I'm not particularly wedded to any of this. I'm just throwing things out. But I think any one of those options would have to be fleshed out in great detail, and people would have to see how they would work and look at historical examples where they have worked. And so we're going to

need an original solution, but I think it should draw on these cases I mentioned, and there are others, where you have people of different ethnicities, languages, and religions who have managed some kind of arrangement. And each of them is different. Each of them has a different set of problems and a different resolution, but have similarities that I think can be drawn on. I guess thinking about this 50-year occupation of Gaza and all these questions about solutions and comparisons to Ireland and South Africa, it all feels so theoretical. I'll admit to a bias. I'm a historian.

I think people have got a lot of the history wrong or they don't understand it as fully as they might. But certainly getting the history right is part of it. Making comparisons that are useful is part of it. And, you know, you can't make a comparison to South Africa without knowing something about South Africa. I would promise you that a very large portion of the people who mouth the word apartheid have absolutely no idea about what actually happened in and what the nature of the struggle in South Africa was. And that's not a criticism. That's understandable. But if we're going to use those kinds of parallels, we have to know what we're talking about. Saying it either way is in effect

problematic for one or the other side. And I think a huge amount of persuasion and a great deal of change is going to be necessary before any solution, whether one state, two states, three states, binational state, cantonal, federal, is possible. And it's moving away from square one where we are now, which is in effect a one state, Israeli state solution. That is where we are today. People don't want to admit it, but that's where we are. Is this all as intractable as it always seems? It's intractable until suddenly it breaks. And you suddenly realize, no, it's not quite as intractable as it seemed.

I don't think anybody would have predicted the end of apartheid. A new South Africa has to eliminate the racial hatred and suspicion caused by apartheid. I don't think anybody would have predicted the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. The principle of consent is absolute and is throughout the agreement. And the breakthrough is that that is now accepted by all, North and South.

I don't think anybody predicted that Brexit might come close to breaking the Good Friday Agreement either. My point is that when these things work, they work rather suddenly. Things change very fast. You know, two months ago, I don't think you could have found a commentator worth her or his salt who said, oh, the Palestinians are united, and it's clear that they're capable of coming out and defending their rights. And then suddenly what happened starting in the 10th of May happened. Israeli settler groups have been trying to get Palestinian families evicted from their homes in this area for years. The Israeli military has confirmed that it's destroyed the building,

which houses the offices of some foreign news operations. 5,000 reservists as the military responds to rocket fire from Gaza with airstrikes. Air raid sirens have been going off for hours in the Israeli city of Ashkelon. Those things had happened an infinite number of times before. In the case of Gaza, this is the fourth time. In the case of evictions, they've been going on since 1948. In the case of the Hanam al-Sharif, I don't know how many times the Israeli security forces have charged in there

and beaten people up, fired tear gas. Yet somehow all of this came together in May. So I don't know. These things could change literally overnight. But it's going to take some, it probably will take some time. And it is certainly not easy. I think you have to know what the problem is before you can think about a solution. If you deny that there's a problem of, say, settler colonialism or inequality or whatever it may be, then of course you're not going to have a solution. Anybody who says everybody is happy in

Israel and Israel is a democracy, a perfect democracy, is taking us away from a solution rather than towards a solution. Rashid Khalidi, he's the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University. I'm Sean Ramos for him. This is Today Explained. The team includes Emily Sen, Victoria Chamberlain, Miles Bryan, Will Reed, Halima Shah, and Afim Shapiro, who's our engineer. We had some engineering help this week from Paul Mounsey, some facts checked by Laura Bullard, some music from Breakmaster Cylinder and also Noam Hassenfeld. Our editor is Matt Collette. Supervising producer is Amna Alsadi.

Veep of audio at Vox is Liz Kelly Nelson. And Jillian Weinberger is the deputy. Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Get in touch via electronic mail if you like. We're todayexplained at vox.com. Thank you.