A stronger Israel is very much embedded in the rationale for war against Iraq… a fantasy quietly cherished by the neo-conservative faction in the Bush administration and by many leaders of the American Jewish community... The fantasy involves a domino theory. The destruction of Saddam’s Iraq will… change the basic power equation in the region. It will send a message to Syria and Iran… It will send a message to the Palestinians too: Democratize and make peace on Israeli terms, or forget about a state of your own… It will lead to the collapse of the wobbly Hashemite monarchy in Jordan and the establishment of a Palestinian state on that nation’s East Bank. No one in the government ever actually says these things publicly...¹

 - Joe Klein, Time.com

As the world continues to be preoccupied with the Iraqi crisis, massive popular anti-war demonstrations, and mounting tensions in the Korean peninsula, the brutal policies of the Israeli government and the accompanying Israeli elections went largely unnoticed over the last month. Some Arab apologetics had been hoping that the victory of the Labor Party in Israel would signal an end to Israeli violence and a quick return to the so-called “peace process,” forgetting that the trend towards more repression and violence by Israeli troops has grown steadily over the past sixteen years regardless of which party has been in power. In fact, some Palestinian Authority officials went as far as to openly criticize the Intifada, hoping that a Labor victory might lead to a return to the prestige and material privileges they had enjoyed during the Oslo days.² 

Despite Arab optimism, the same day the Israelis went to the polls, the Palestinians were locked up even more tightly than usual into their towns, villages and refugee camps.³ In Gaza, where on January 26^th the Israeli army had mounted its deepest incursion into Gaza City since 1994, Palestinians buried their dead and dug ditches in the hope of warding off an Israeli invasion. In the meantime, the Israeli army was busy blowing up Palestinian homes and metal workshops, destroying factories, and setting ablaze market shops and stalls. Israeli forces have been reportedly operating something they call “the lottery,” in which they detain Palestinians and order them to choose from pieces of paper labeled with punishments such as “broken leg” and “smashed head.”⁴

The significance of Israeli policies is that they come at a time of identical strategic thinking between President Bush and Ariel Sharon concerning the Middle East. As many analysts pointed out, Israel and the United States share a common view on “terrorism,” peace with the Palestinians, war with Iraq and more. In a recent meeting, Ariel Sharon thanked President Bush for understanding Israel’s security needs and for promising a multi-billion dollar security aid package for Israel. Sharon also thanked Bush for collectively working out the so-called “Road Map” peace plan and for providing Israel with the “required leeway” in its “ongoing war on terrorism.”⁵

The Bush administration’s alignment with Sharon is bolstered by strong supporters such as evangelical Christians, a large part of American Jewry, and the close decision-making circle surrounding Bush, manifested in his national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Vice President Dick Cheney, who collectively believe that Arabs only understand the language of force.⁶

Election Results

The 2003 elections witnessed a return to the old voting system, where the prime minister is not elected directly, but is chosen based on votes for Knesset parties in one major election. Previously, Israel had a two-tier electoral system, whereby Israelis elected the prime minister and Knesset members in two separate elections.⁷

The latest vote reflected a great deal of apathy on the part of the Israeli electorate, the lack of a clear sense of direction in Israeli politics, and the instability of the system as a whole. This was Israel’s fourth national election in seven years as no Israeli government has served a full four-year term since 1988, and Sharon’s coalition survived less than two years.⁸

The elections also reflected one of the lowest voter turnouts in Israeli history. The Central Elections Committee said shortly after the polls closed that only 68 to 69 percent of Israel’s registered voters went to the polls.⁹ This is down from 78.7 percent in the Knesset elections of 1999, reflecting the apathy of a large percentage of Israel’s 4.7 million potential voters. It was also a clear reflection of dismay with their electoral choices after 28 months of war with the Palestinians, leaving 720 Israelis dead in Palestinian reprisals. The polling process itself was testimony to the lack of security in Israel, with an estimated 30,000 police, soldiers and guards patrolling the country’s polling booths, city streets and public areas. Israel also experienced the worst economic crisis since the installation of the state in the heart of the Islamic world, as tourism slumped and unemployment rates skyrocketed.¹⁰

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his hard-line Likud Party won a decisive victory, claiming 36 seats in Israel’s 120-member parliament, up from 19 seats in the outgoing Knesset.¹¹ Ex-army General Amram Mitzna and his left-center Labor Party captured an estimated 18 seats. Right-wing parties captured more than 70 seats in the Knesset, which could allow Sharon to form a right-wing coalition, pulling the government’s policies further to the right.¹² 

Meanwhile, the current elections illustrated the ongoing decline of the Labor coalition and the organizational inefficiency of its leaders. The Labor party won 44 seats in the 1992 election, dropped to 34 seats in 1996 and slid to 25 in 1999.¹³ It was undermined by other factors as well, including the deep antipathy towards Labor, coming from two key groups: Among the Oriental Jews who still perceived Labor-led governments as favoring European Jews with subsidies and jobs, and among the 1 million Russian immigrants who associate the leftist orientation of the Labor Party with oppressive Communism in their previous home countries.¹⁴ The Labor also had problems presenting itself as a credible alternative to Likud, because of its 20 months as Sharon’s junior coalition partner in the previous national unity government.

The Arab citizens of Israel also lost ground in the Knesset as 40% of Arab voters boycotted the elections.¹⁵ As a result, Arab parties lost one parliamentary seat, shrinking their legislative clout to only nine out of 120 members of the Knesset. With most Israeli governments ignoring the presence of Arab members in coalition building, the Arab citizens of Israel face incredible disillusionment as they feel that their voice is worthless in an electoral system that does not take their concerns seriously. Moreover, Arab infrastructure, schools, and housing systems are very much neglected in Israel and unemployment rates are highest in the Arab villages and towns.

Patterns of the Israeli System – The Culture of War

Election results illustrated that the Israeli voters, especially during times of crisis, prefer familiar right-wing leaders and military-security figures that are able to pursue “iron fist” policies towards the Arabs. This is due to the fact that public opinion leaders in Israel are usually Orientalists with a security background, having deep antipathy toward Arabs and Muslims. This leads to the pervasiveness among the masses of a dual feeling of supremacy toward Arabs, on one hand, and fear from them, on the other. In other words, the Israeli citizen is constantly “socialized” to despise the Arab and fear him/her at the same time.¹⁶

The supremacy of the state and the need for public mobilization to further its interests was enhanced by the sense of insecurity that Israel continues to experience. Throughout the history of Israel, there have never been wide social protests against wars since “wars are conceived by most Israelis not as having been engendered by the particularist interests of the ruling elite but as resulting from an external political and military reality.” Furthermore, “the ongoing state of emergency then enables the elites to proclaim the need for national consensus.” 

In other words, the state of being at war or preparing for war was perceived as an existential reality. This created throughout the political elite “a seemingly fatalistic attitude that Israel was destined to be engaged in wars.” This feeling was propagated by the political elites to overcome the schisms between European and non-European Jews and to unify Jews of different background towards one cause.

Leaders from both sides of the political spectrum believe that Israel’s militarism is always justified and that all of Israel’s acts of aggression and “iron fist” policies were nothing more than wars of necessity. In Ariel Sharon’s worldview: “emerging from a war situation for short periods was possible, but a long-term enduring peace constituted… nothing but a dream.” In his opinion, the Middle East is characterized by constant warfare that demands a constant state of alert, even with regards to Egypt which has signed the Camp David accords.

It is also important to note that similar views have been expressed from the so-called more “moderate” side of the Israeli political spectrum. Shulamit Aloni, the leader of the leftist Citizens’ Rights Movement, also known for her “dovish” views, described all of Israel’s wars as wars of necessity.

Labor leader Haim Bar-Lev justified Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 saying that “there was no alternative to military action, whose purpose was to free the northern settlements from the threat of the terrorists’ artillery.”

Israel’s political elites’ propagation of the idea that war is both necessary and inevitable has strengthened state-society relations and has further enhanced the “collective will” of the nation and the necessity of serving the state. In other words, the elites propagated a “Manichean view of the world – they and we – in which the ‘they’ pose a perpetual threat to the ‘we.’” ¹⁷

They also propagated the idea that Israel’s wars are existential ones that have always been an outcome of Arab hostility and the rules of inter-state behavior that characterize the Middle East. This has fostered a strong sense of unity in Israel, hostility towards the “other,” a tendency to choose more militant leaders in times of crisis, and a great deal of skepticism towards the possibility of peace in the region.

Historical trends also reflect no significant difference in terms of the overall long-term ambitions of both Labor and Likud. Both parties are interested in establishing Israel as the dominant hegemonic power in the region and have no genuine concerns for peace. The Israeli “right” favors a simple policy of domination, exploitation and territorial expansion, in which Arabs live under the “iron wall” of Israeli power (as Jabotinsky expressed in the mid-1920s).

On the other hand, the Israeli “left” is more interested in “cultivating” Arabs who support Israeli policies. A manifestation of this trend were the Oslo Accords, engineered by politicians from the Israeli “left” who saw in the rise of an “Israeli cultivated” Palestinian Authority, locked up in Gaza and Jericho, an important step towards establishing a symbolic “entity” that is subservient to Israel and lacks any outward signs of sovereignty or legitimacy.¹⁸ In other words, the Israeli “left” envisioned a less costly means of extending the occupation.

Conclusions

Most analysts agree that the results of Israel’s current elections do not signal any meaningful change in Israeli policies towards the Palestinians. If anything, they tend to reaffirm Israel’s historical trends of insecurity and militarism magnified during times of crisis. More importantly, trends suggest that Israeli policies are more likely to become more brutal and militant, given the strong working relationship between Ariel Sharon and President Bush and their identical views vis-à-vis the politics of the Middle East. Interestingly, a war on Iraq would be a golden opportunity for both leaders to practically implement their twisted designs for the region – designs which would be fulfilled only when the Zionist fantasy of Greater Israel is established amidst a fractured and demoralized Arab world living in perpetual fear.

Some political analysts speculate that Sharon will even wait as long as possible to form a coalition, gambling that the United States would attack Iraq. In that event, he would call for all political parties to join him in an emergency government.¹⁹ In the meantime, Palestinians have no better strategic option than to continue the Intifadah – in all possible forms – until Sharon’s military solution fails to bear fruit. Only then will the Israeli public conclude that the leaders they have elected have only brought them more destruction.

Kareem M. Kamel is an Egyptian freelance writer based in Cairo, Egypt. He has an MA in International Relations and is specialized in security studies, decision-making, nuclear politics, Middle East politics and the politics of Islam. He is currently assistant to the Political Science Department at the American University in Cairo.

1- Joe Klein, “How Israel is Wrapped Up in Iraq,”  Time.com  February 5^th, 2003

2- Ali Abunimah, “Elections in Israel : Palestinian Perspective,” Washington Post  January 29^th, 2003

3- “To the Trenches,”  The Economist  February 1^st, 2003

4- “A Brutal Routine,”  Washington Post  January 3^rd, 2003 : A18

5- Robert G. Kaiser, “Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical on Mideast Policy,” Washington Post February 9^th, 2003.

6- Joe Klein, “How Israel is Wrapped Up in Iraq,”  Time.com  February 5^th, 2003

7- Majid Kayyali, “Israel’s Labor Party Can Win,”  Mideast Mirror  November 29^th, 2002

8- “Sharon Wins Israeli Election Contest,”  LA Times  January 28^th, 2003

9- “Sharon Claims Great Victory,”  CNN.com  January 29^th, 2003

10- Molly Moore and John Ward Anderson, “Sharon Wins Decisive Victory, TV Polls Report,”  Washington Post  January 28^th, 2003

11- “Sharon Wins Israeli Election Contest,”  LA Times  January 28^th, 2003

12- Molly Moore and John Ward Anderson, “Sharon Wins Decisive Victory, TV Polls Report,”  Washington Post  January 28^th, 2003

13- John Ward Anderson, “In Israel, Travails for Labor,”  Washington Post  January 28^th, 2003

14- “Sharon Wins Israeli Election Contest,” LA Times January 28^th, 2003

15- Megan K. Stack, “Israel Election Leaves its Arabs Cold,” LA Times  January 30^th, 2003

16- Mostafa Kabha, “Background, Dimensions, and Reflections: Israeli Elections 2003,” Al-Jazeera.net January 23^rd. 2003 (In Arabic)

17- Gad Barzilai, Wars, Internal Conflict, and the Political Order: A Jewish Democracy in the Middle East (Albany: State of New York University Press, 1996): 209.

18- Israel Shahak, Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies (London: Pluto Press,1997): 162.

19- “Sharon Claims Great Victory,” CNN.com January 29^th, 2003  

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• The Israeli Elections & the Future of the Region 
• “Why Change One … For Another?”: Voices of Apathy Cloud Israeli Elections