The End of the “Peace Process,” and Dissolution of the Historical Political Regimes in Israel and Palestine

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By Sergio Yahni, The Alternative Information Center (AIC) Wednesday, 25 February 2009

Because Islamic organizations, such as Hamas percieve themselves more as resistance organizations rather than part of the state building process, they have been able to weather the Israeli offensives.

Though there is continued talk about an ongoing, though perhaps stalled, Israeli-Palestinian “Peace Process,” for all intents and purposes it ended more than eight years ago, on 29 September 2000, with the beginning of the Israeli offensive against the Palestinian people in the wake of the collapse of the Camp David negotiations. Since that time, all attempts by the international community to revive the process, including the Arab initiative, have failed.

The counteroffensive by Palestinian Armed Non-Governmental Organizations (ANGO), characterized by suicide attacks, in addition to the Israeli invasion of the Palestinian Authority (PA) controlled areas in the West Bank and the consequent collapse of its limited attributes of sovereignty, led to the dissolution of all but the superficial aspects of the Palestinian political system.

Since the Islamic organizations perceived themselves as resistance organizations and not part of the state building process, they were comparably better prepared to face the hardships of Israeli repression. They managed, consequently, to survive the Israeli offensive and maintain their political structures.

The Israeli political system also went through a process of disintegration. Despite Israel’s facade of stability, its political system has gradually fell apart, as short lived successive governments have continually failed to resolve the crisis of sovereignty in the oPt.

As a consequence, the public in Israel has largely lost its faith in the political system. All major political parties have forfeited their significant historical parliamentary representation, as the Israeli public moved toward backing non-political alternatives, at first, and authoritarian parties later.

In addition, both in the Palestinian and the Israeli cases, the military bureaucracy increasingly assumed the attributes of a political party, or a powerful political lobby. In the Palestinian case, this process was a quasi-intentional outcome of the reform of the Palestinian military forces under the guidance of the U.S. Pentagon. In Israel, this process evolved unintentionally.

Without the essential attributes of sovereignty, the future of the PA is likely to be irrelevant for understanding long-term regional politics. The Israeli offensive has transformed it into a body that merely manages the life of the Palestinian population under Israeli occupation. As such, it assists Israel to reduce the costs of the cost of its occupation policies. Alternatively, it is the relations between Israel and the Palestinian resistance that will determine the future situation in the region.

The Palestinian resistance was not defeated during Israel’s offensive against the Palestinians in Gaza, neither was it seriously damaged despite the general destruction of infrastructures and the large scale assassination of civilians. On the contrary, subsequent to the offensive, the resistance has actually increased its ability to prescribe conditions to the regional powers, Israel and Egypt.

Israel may choose to ignore the conditions demanded by the resistance, but then it will face the rage of its public opinion that insists on the liberation of the Israeli soldier imprisoned at the hands of resisting factions. Moreover, by ignoring the demands of the resistance to open the border crossings, thus recognizing, de-facto, the existence of a sovereign territory liberated by armed struggle, it will create a permanent focus of discontent in the region that endanger its allies: Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. Conversely, by accepting the demands of the Palestinian resistance, Israel will mark armed struggle as the most successful path for liberation for the Palestinian people.

Two forms of authoritarianism are developing within the Israeli political scene: one military and one civilian. Military authoritarianism in Israel is interested in maintaining the current weak government structures that allow an ample field of action but is not interested to be involved directly in governing the country. This excludes the possibility of a coup d’etat. However, the civil authoritarianism in Israel, is interested in changing the legal regime. Politicians who endorse civil authoritarianism, such as Avigdor Lieberman, who’s Yisrael Beiteinu garnered 15 seats in the most recent national elections, are interested to concentrate power in the hands of the executive, and reducing the competencies of the parliament and the judiciary. While those politicians market their reforms through a populist anti-Arab discourse, their main intent is to remove anti-corruption legislation.

The collapse of the Israeli Left in the last elections symbolizes the end of the state established by them and its parliamentary system, although the system may survive for some years yet. While the labor movement managed to establish the state, its strategy of the “Iron Wall” to legitimize it by force has failed. Neither the Palestinians nor the Arab countries were ready to accept the continuous expansion of the Israeli state and its violent supremacist policies.

The features of the regime emerging in Israel appear to be more authoritarian; however it is unlikely it has the power to demand from Israeli citizens the sacrifices required to implement its policies. On the other hand, in parallel with the authoritarian features of the emerging regime, we can see the emergence of new dissidences, already stripped of the allegiance to Zionism. It is here, within these movements, that any chance of significant internal change in Israel is possible.