#dnaEdit: Pyrrhic victory

Pinyamin Netanyahu’s electoral victory seems to have come at a heavy price. His flip-flop on a two-State solution — he said there will be no Palestine State a day before the election on March 17, and he said in an interview with US television channel, Fox News, that he did not retract from his commitment made six years to a Palestinian State a day after the election. The moot question is whether Netanyahu’s Likud got the impressive 30 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, the Israeli parliament, because of his repudiation of the Palestinian State? There is no doubt that the issue of security weighs rather heavily on the minds of Israeli citizens, and Netanyahu would have thought that he could reinforce his and his party’s commitment to the issue of national security. But neither Netanyahu’s reckless statement nor the vote for him based on that statement — if it was that, in the first place — ensure Israeli security. 

It has become clear that West European governments and the United States cannot support an Israel that refuses to accept a Palestinian State.  Despite the influential Jewish lobby in the US, Israel cannot defy world opinion for too long. The reality is: right or left, an Israeli government has to accept a Palestinian State and respect the Oslo Peace Accords of 1991. That is the demand from the US, Israel’s closest ally, and all other Western powers. The US is getting ready to move a resolution in the United Nations that makes it explicit that Israel has to go back to the 1967 borders.

This cannot be good news for Netanyahu even in his moment of victory. This is not just a demand from the Obama administration. It is the US stance, and even the extreme right-wing Republicans will not be able to alter that. A future Republican President will have to keep in  mind sensibilities of the oil-producing Arab governments in the Gulf region while dealing with Israel. It should be noted that the Oslo and Madrid talks got off the ground after the First Gulf War of 1991. It was a concession that the Americans had to make. 

Netanyahu has said that he is open to a two-State solution which involves a “demilitarised” Palestinian State, recognition of the Jewish State and that the Fatah faction led by Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas should cut off relations with “terrorist” Hamas, now in power in Gaza. Now this is plain Israeli posturing. Hamas, too, takes a similar extreme stance towards Israel, not retracting verbally its earlier stated position of destroying the Jewish State. But this is the grandstanding of warring groups in West Asia, whether it is Arab or Jew. At the end of the day, Israel and Hamas will have to confront each other at the negotiating table. 

There was a time Israel refused to talk to Yasser Arafat and his Fatah group, calling them “terrorists”, especially after the killing of the 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972. Netanyahu’s bid to eliminate Hamas from the peace process will be foolhardy. It is a sure way of delegitimising Abbas and Fatah. Netanyahu and Israel will have to take a hard decision about West Bank settlements. West Bank cannot be a buffer zone between Israel and Palestine. Israel cannot dictate the terms of peace in spite of its military clout. Netanyahu will have to back off to ensure Israel’s security.