A retractionist-retentionist discourse

[Middle East News Service comments: Regular readers of this News Service will be aware of my view that Daniel Levy’s analysis is an indispensible tool for those who wish to understand the Israel/Palestine conflict. This contribution is no exception: Levy argues that for practical purposes there are four political currents in Israel (and among its supporters in the Diaspora). There are the “soft retractionists” those who pay lip service to withdrawal from the Occupied Territories but are unwilling to take any real step to bring about and the “soft retentionists” who will take action make a two-state solution impossible but again pay lip service to the two-state solution. The vast majority of those involved Israeli politics belong to these camps. But the ones that matter are two extremist camps:

“Hard retentionists know they will have to rewrite the rules of democracy, and plead a special exemption clause for "Jewish democracy" and for the elevation of Jewish-only rights. Palestinians are to be dehumanized, human and civil rights groups and international humanitarian law excoriated and a vocabulary created for laundering and justifying an apartheid reality.

“Hard retractionists will need to stand up for (long-ridiculed) Jewish values, ethics and morality, for the unloved "other" in society, hold up a mirror to the nations' warts, and ultimately support international campaigns that distinguish between Israel proper and the occupied territories.”

Essential reading for those who want to understand Israeli politics (and decide whom to support) – Sol Salbe.]

Read the full article here: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1149369.html

In his keynote address at last week's Herzliya Conference, Ehud Barak summoned up the most dramatic case for changing the status quo: "If, and as long as between the Jordan and the sea, there is only one political entity, named Israel, it will end up being either non-Jewish or non-democratic ... If the Palestinians vote in elections, it is a binational state, and if they don't, it is an apartheid state."

This quote is particularly remarkable for the specific wording chosen by Israel's defense minister: He (perhaps unintentionally) suggested that the existing situation could already be described as apartheid.

Considering the Labor Party's collapse, one may dismiss its leader's comments, but Barak's speech does matter, not because of its author, but because it articulates the core narrative of the centrist-pragmatic trend in Israeli-Jewish politics - from Likud realists like ministers Dan Meridor and Michael Eitan, to Kadima and the remnants of Labor and Meretz. Let's call it the "retractionist camp" - ready to support a withdrawal from the occupied territories that meets the minimum necessary requirement for the creation of a dignified and viable sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel, and therefore a sustainable two-state solution.

Read the full article here: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1149369.html

[The independent Middle East News Service concentrates on providing alternative information chiefly from Israeli sources. It is sponsored by the Australian Jewish Democratic Society. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the AJDS. These are expressed in its own statements

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