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It was billed as a strategy conference and boasted an impressive line-up of guest speakers, but the only narrative truly advanced by Bicom’s UK-Israel policy event in London on Monday was that Israeli politics is a mess.
The Knesset is an uncomfortable place these days. The government has a majority of one and in the horse-trading that preceded the creation of the current coalition, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was forced to hand out roles on the basis of whether MKs would support him in Knesset votes rather than whether they were best suited to the position.
Enter the conference’s headline speaker, Silvan Shalom , who has three day jobs: Deputy Prime Minister, Interior Minister and head of any future peace talks.
Despite his latter role, he has never publicly supported the principle of two states for two peoples, and has even expressed his opposition to a Palestinian state. His appointment was so odd that it even went against Mr Netanyahu’s widely recognised need for a more doveish figure who can mollify growing international criticism of Israel on settlements and the stagnant peace process.
Mr Shalom could barely conceal his lack of enthusiasm for his new brief. Asked whether he still thought that settlements outside the main blocs should be removed as part of a two-state solution, he replied that there was “no sovereignty in the West Bank… Israel is a democracy, if anyone — Labour, Likud, Zionist Union — decide on that policy, then it will happen”. He added in a later briefing: “I don’t ask them [the Palestinians] to accept my ideas in advance”.
Several times he made the oft-repeated point that any deal will “require painful concessions on both sides” but refused to discuss what they might be. “We won’t negotiate now, we will do it with them. All the issues have to be dealt with at once. If we discuss borders now we remove the incentive for them to make concessions.”
Mr Shalom was not the only politician tying himself in knots to fit in with the current political reality.
Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog is in the difficult position of being Mr Netanyahu’s probable first choice of foreign minister — the position remains technically vacant — while trying to lead an effective opposition.
Mr Herzog did describe Mr Netanyahu’s statement ahead of the election that the Arabs were “voting in droves” as “unacceptable”, but tempered his attack by saying that the Prime Minister’s words were “used” by enemies to attack Israel.
Mr Herzog’s discussion of BDS also smacked of compromise. While apparently concurring that the boycotters posed a danger on a par with Iran and Hizbollah — a refrain of the right — he agreed that some in the Israeli government had exaggerated the issue and “could have treated it differently”.
With the Iran deal looming and the boycotters moving up through the gears, one might have thought this week to have been an opportune moment for a strategy conference. In the event, any real shifts in thinking were subsumed by political exigencies.
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