Caroline Glick: Natanyahu's Grand Coalition

This is an eye opening article. This is just one more reason why Obama is
not good for the Jews. I saw it coming, but while about 78% of Americans
in Israel voted for the other candidate almost 60% of American Jews in
America voted for Obama. I stand with the people of Israel against U.S.
aggressive policies towards Israel and an imposition of a terrorist state
on her borders. NO to a divided Israel. No to peace with terrorists.
  Hank Roth

December 12, 2008

Netanyahu's grand coalition

    The "international community" is eagerly anticipating the incoming
    Obama administration's policy toward Israel. It is widely assumed that
    as soon as he comes into office, US president-elect Barack Obama will
    move quickly to place massive pressure on the next Israeli government
    to withdraw from Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in
    the interests of advancing a "peace process" with the Palestinians and
    the Syrians.

    Giving voice to these expectations this week was this year's Nobel
    Peace Prize laureate, Martti Ahtisaari. The former Finnish prime
    minister used his prize ceremony to call on Obama to make contending
    with the Palestinian conflict with Israel his chief focus during his
    first year in office. This is the same Ahtisaari who recently demanded
    that the West recognize Hamas as a legitimate political movement.

    People who have been in close contact with Obama's foreign policy
    transition team have privately acknowledged that the widespread belief
    that Obama will move swiftly to put the screws on Israel is fully
    justified. According to one source who has spent a great deal of time
    with the transition team since last month's US elections, Obama's
    people are "scope-locked" on Israel.

    The source reports that Gen. Jim Jones, Obama's designated national
    security adviser, is Israel's most outspoken critic. The source, who
    held a two and a half hour meeting with Jones, told his associates
    that Jones is keen to deploy NATO forces, perhaps including US troops,
    to Judea and Samaria.

    Jones's plan, which is vociferously opposed by the IDF, would make it
    impossible for the IDF to carry out counterterror operations in the
    areas. As a practical matter, the lives of hundreds of thousands of
    Israeli citizens who live in the areas would be imperiled. Just as
    Hizbullah has used UNIFIL forces in south Lebanon as a shield from the
    IDF behind which it has rearmed and reasserted control over the border
    zone, so too a NATO force would facilitate an empowerment of Hamas and
    Fatah, which would unify, arm and organize free from the threat of IDF
    counterterror operations.

    Jones's plan is not new. In a 2002 interview, Samantha Power - who has
    been one of Obama's closest foreign affairs advisers for years and now
    serves as a member of his transition team for the State Department -
    called for US forces to be deployed to Judea and Samaria as "a mammoth
    protection force" to protect the Palestinians from Israel, which she
    claimed was guilty of "major human rights abuses."

    Obama's team, like its supporters in the international foreign policy
    establishment, is dismayed by the Israeli opinion polls that show that
    Likud, led by Binyamin Netanyahu, is favored to win February 10's
    general elections by a wide margin.

    In anticipation of Likud's expected electoral victory, they have been
    piling on against Netanyahu and the party. This was most recently
    evident at last week's Middle East policy conclave in Washington
    organized by the pro-Obama and post-Zionist Saban Middle East Forum at
    the Brookings Institute. There, both secretary of state-designate
    Hillary Clinton's surrogate, former president Bill Clinton, and
    current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice castigated Netanyahu's
    assertion that peace must be built from the bottom up through the
    liberalization of Palestinian society, rather than from the top down
    by giving land to terrorists.

    Netanyahu foresees Palestinian liberalization coming through economic
    development in an "economic peace process."

    Both the former US president and Rice attacked his plan, claiming that
    it is antithetical to the sacrosanct "two-state solution."

    As far as they and their many colleagues are concerned, the only thing
    that remains to be discussed is when Israel will vacate Judea, Samaria
    and Jerusalem. The fact that there is no significant Palestinian
    constituency willing to peacefully coexist with Israel is irrelevant.

    In light of the incoming Obama administration's palpable hostility
    toward Israel, and particularly toward Israel's political realists,
    the results of the Likud primary this past Monday were especially
    significant. In selecting the party's slate of candidates for Knesset,
    Likud members favored sober-minded politicians who use their common
    sense to guide them over those with records of support for the
    fraudulent "peace processes" so favored by the local media, Kadima,
    Labor and the international jet set.

    Likud politicians who warned of the dangers of then-prime minister
    Ariel Sharon's decision to withdraw from Gaza and expel some 10,000
    Israelis from their homes in Gaza and northern Samaria were elected to
    the top of the Knesset slate. Those who supported Sharon's withdrawal
    and expulsion plan - which is now widely recognized to have been
    Israel's most disastrous strategic move in recent history - were
    either rejected out of hand, or demoted.

    The men and women selected by Likud's voters will provide Netanyahu
    with the political strength to stand up to pressure from the Obama
    White House. They will support him when he is forced to reject US
    demands that Israel give away vital territory to Fatah and Hamas
    militias and to Syria's Iranian-sponsored regime. They will support
    him when he is compelled to refuse US demands to deploy NATO forces to
    Judea and Samaria. They will back him when he says that Fatah is not a
    peace partner for Israel but Hamas's partner for war against Israel.

    That the general public shares the sensibilities exhibited by Likud
    primary voters is made clear by the fact that Likud's standing in the
    polls has not significantly diminished since the primary. If, as the
    media warned, the public would reject a list comprised of sober-minded
    realists, one would have expected that support to drop. Instead, it
    remains steady even as Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni castigates
    Likudniks as naysayers and opponents of peace and Prime Minister Ehud
    Olmert scandalously invites the nations of the world to turn against
    Israel if Likud wins the elections.

    One might have intuited that the striking contrast between the
    sober-minded Likud party and the delusional and defeatist Kadima and
    Labor parties that was brought so prominently to the fore by the Likud
    primary would have been the central message that Netanyahu chose to
    convey in the days that have followed Monday's vote. But sadly, one
    would be wrong to think that.

    Disturbingly, rather than drawing distinctions between his party and
    its rivals, Netanyahu has spent the days since the primary drawing
    distinctions between himself and a minor player in his own party. Both
    ahead of the primary and in the days since, Netanyahu has devoted the
    majority of his time to attacking his sharpest critic within the party
    - Moshe Feiglin, who heads the far-right Jewish Leadership Forum in
    Likud and won the not-particularly-senior 20th position on Likud's
    Knesset slate. On Thursday, Netanyahu succeeded in pushing Feiglin
    down to the 36th spot.

    Feiglin has more in common with the Left he abhors than with his party
    members. Like the Left, Feiglin bases his strategic and economic
    notions on a complete denial of reality. Whereas the Left ignores the
    Arabs, Feiglin ignores the West. Feiglin's religious adherence to his
    views has made him few friends in Likud or elsewhere in Israeli
    politics. The threat he constitutes to Netanyahu is negligible.

    Given Feiglin's inherent weakness, Netanyahu's post-primary focus on
    him is shocking. Netanyahu has argued that Feiglin will lose votes for
    Likud. But assuming that is true, the last thing Netanyahu should be
    doing is placing a spotlight on Feiglin. Rather, Netanyahu should be
    emphasizing his strongest suit: the clear distinction between Likud on
    the one hand and Kadima and Labor on the other hand.

    In focusing the public's attention on Feiglin, Netanyahu appears to be
    reacting to foreign pressures rather than domestic ones. One of
    Netanyahu's most difficult challenges during his tenure as prime
    minister from 1996 to 1999 was handling his relations with the hostile
    Clinton administration. From the moment Netanyahu was elected until
    the moment he left office, the Clinton administration's Israel policy
    was devoted entirely to bringing down his government. In close
    collusion with Netanyahu's political opponents and the local media,
    for three years Clinton worked steadily to overthrow him. Clinton's
    assault culminated in the 1999 elections when he sent his own campaign
    managers to Israel to lead the Labor Party's campaign against
    Netanyahu and Likud.

    No doubt, it is in the hopes of building better relations with the
    incoming Obama administration that Netanyahu now seeks to distance
    himself from Feiglin and advocates forming a broad governing coalition
    with his political foes in Kadima and Labor. Apparently, in his view
    only such a broad coalition will insulate him from a US presidential
    assault. In the interests of forming such a coalition, while
    highlighting his disputes with Feiglin, Netanyahu has sought to
    obfuscate his ideological differences with Kadima and Labor.

    Although Netanyahu's motivations are understandable, his mode of
    operation will bring him results exactly opposed to the ones he seeks.
    It is true that to withstand pressures and even an all-out assault by
    the Obama administration Netanyahu will need a broad coalition. But
    that coalition cannot be based on a simple will to power, as Olmert's
    coalition and previous leftist coalitions have been. To survive a
    hostile White House, Netanyahu will require a broad coalition founded
    on support for his ideas and his party's policies, not a broad
    coalition populated by political and ideological opponents dedicated
    to undermining his ideas and policies.

    Rather than obfuscate the differences between Likud and Kadima/Labor,
    Netanyahu must highlight them. He must convince the Israeli electorate
    to vote for Likud on the basis of these distinctions. Likud must be
    perceived as the party of commonsense ideas and clear-minded policies
    that inspire, attract and convince the Israeli public to support it.
    And Netanyahu and Likud have those ideas and policies.

    On a strategic level, Netanyahu and Likud have made clear that they
    stand for three main principles. First, they are committed to
    establishing defensible borders for Israel by securing Israeli
    sovereignty over all of greater Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, the
    Samarian Hills and the Golan Heights.

    Second, they recognize that the Palestinian society that elected a
    terror group to lead it is a society that is uninterested in peace
    with Israel. Consequently, any future negotiations must be preceded by
    a full reorganization and reform of Palestinian society.

    Third, they reject the Kadima/Labor fantasy that foreign militaries
    and international forces can be expected to protect Israel in place of
    the IDF.

    If Netanyahu runs on these policies, he will not merely win the
    elections. He will win a clear mandate to govern. And only if
    Netanyahu runs on these policies will he have a chance of blunting the
    pressure that will certainly be brought to bear by the Obama
    administration. For although it is clear that like Clinton, Obama will
    have no problem opposing the will of an Israeli government, he will be
    hard pressed to oppose the will of the Israeli people.

    Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.