So Elections were held yesterday in Israel.
Who won? Well as of this morning we still don’t know. It was a virtual tie and it may not be fully decided for weeks.
So do we here in the US really care?
The simple answer is yes, absolutely.
This is a very important election on the world stage and, as always, the national news instead decided to cover the college payment scandal as their lead story.
Benjamin Netanyahu the Prime Minister of Israel, has had an array of new enemies rising up around him. He faced an unexpectedly stiff challenge from Benny Gantz, a 6-foot-4 former army chief and career soldier who could credibly take over Mr. Netanyahu’s credentials as Israel’s “Mr. Security.”
The attorney general wanted to indict Netanyahu on corruption charges, accusing him of trading lucrative government favors for positive news coverage.
A new scandal bubbled up when he revealed that he had secretly approved the sale of advanced submarines to Egypt then lied about it. Even his right-wing base was growing weary of his self-obsession.
Yet, if the election on Tuesday was a referendum on Mr. Netanyahu’s record, he was happy to run on it.
He has been on a roll, opening ties with Muslim countries in Africa, thawing relations with Sunni Arab leaders, lining up allies in Eastern Europe and forging trade ties in Latin America and Asia.
He secured President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and, just two weeks ago, of its sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
Mr. Gantz has asked voters to focus instead on the corruption, self-dealing and arrogance that have tarnished Mr. Netanyahu’s achievements.
Sound familiar?
Against Mr. Netanyahu’s potent politics of division — pitting right against left, Jew against Arab, religious against secular, working-class against rich, peripheral towns against Tel Aviv, Mr. Gantz has offered a message of unity and healing, of putting “Israel before all.”
Neither man has said much about policy. The result is that one of Israel’s most consequential elections has been one of its ugliest and shallowest.
There were no debates and few serious interviews of the leading candidates. Get-out-the-vote rallies have been replaced by Facebook and Twitter videos and anonymous texts.
Israeli politics traditionally revolves around security, economics and the role of religion in government. But this campaign has hinged largely on Netanyahu himself.
There’s some Netanyahu fatigue after 10 years of his combative style and an accumulation of scandals around him.
In February, the country’s attorney general said he was preparing indictments against Netanyahu over cases concerning gifts he’s accepted and favors he’s allegedly done for media moguls to win positive coverage.
Netanyahu’s pitch in the campaign is that Israel has never been in better shape.
The economy has grown steeply over the last decade, with unemployment down and incomes way up.
The government has increased trade around the region and the world.
Again, any of this sound familiar folks?
And though there have been conflicts with neighbors — a 2014 war with Hamas in Gaza that the United Nations said left more than 2,100 Palestinians dead, rocket attacks from Gaza and Lebanon — the toll for Israelis has been relatively low and the impact on daily life has been minimal.
But Netanyahu’s critics worry about the health of the country’s democracy.
They note passage of a law declaring Israel as the “nation state of the Jewish people,” which could undermine the standing of the country’s 1.6 million Palestinian Arab citizens.
Netanyahu says everyone has equal rights but recently also said, “Israel is the nation state not of all of its citizens, but only of the Jewish people.”
He has highlighted his close relationship with Trump, which has led to Washington backing Israeli claims to sovereignty in the Golan Heights and Jerusalem (where the U.S. opened its embassy last year).
Benny Gantz served as chief of staff of the Israeli military — the country’s highest-ranking officer — and retired in 2015.
He has little political record but has cast himself as the clean alternative to Netanyahu’s embattled administration. “There’s no more left and right. Israel before all,” says his campaign.
His campaign promises new laws barring people who have been convicted of crimes from holding office and he favors term limits for prime ministers.
Gantz’s critics have accused him of using his connections to get government contracts for a private company he headed after leaving the military. Netanyahu’s campaign questions his mental fitness.
Meanwhile, Gantz casts himself as someone ready to use overwhelming force against Israel’s enemies. An early campaign ad touted his leadership of Israel’s war against Hamas in 2014 and showed video of airstrikes.
Gantz has also promised to make peace but speaks without much specificity about a “separation” from the Palestinians. He says he’ll also reduce religious influence over Israeli law.
Netanyahu, has pledged to annex Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories if he wins his country’s election, a dramatic last-minute rallying call to his nationalist base.
Hundreds of thousands of settlers live in outposts in the West Bank, which Israel’s military captured in a war more than half a century ago and continues to rule, controlling the lives of more than 2.5 million Palestinians.
World powers consider the settlements illegal under international law, built on land confiscated from Palestinian families and squeezing them into ever-smaller enclaves.
Formally declaring the settlements part of Israel would also be seen as putting an end to fading hopes for a Palestinian state, as there would be little continuous land on which to create it.
A so-called two-state solution, which envisions an Israel and a Palestine side by side, has long been the preferred peace option of most of the international community. But growing settlement construction has dashed hopes.
Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital early in his term as US president further damaged the two-state ideal. The Palestinians see the occupied eastern section of Jerusalem as the capital of any future state, and cut contact with Washington after the declaration.
Last month, Trump recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a plateau Israel captured from Syria in the same 1967 conflict and annexed in 1981.
The move broke from the post-second world war international consensus that forbids territorial conquest during war, and Palestinians warned that it set a dangerous precedent for land grabs in the West Bank.
In Israel, Trump’s announcement was viewed as an election gift to Netanyahu.
Trump said he had made the controversial decision after getting a “quick” history lesson from his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his pro-settlement ambassador to Israel and former bankruptcy lawyer, David Friedman.
Saeb Erekat, a veteran former Palestinian negotiator, said he was not surprised by Netanyahu’s statement on settlements.
“Israel will continue to brazenly violate international law for as long as the international community will continue to reward Israel with impunity, particularly with the Trump administration’s support and endorsement of Israel’s violation of the national and human rights of the people of Palestine,” he said.
Break
Now here is another issue to consider.
Israel remains determined to continue pounding Iranian forces in Syria in a bid to keep Tehran’s forces away from Israel’s northern border.
At the same time, Russia has thousands of troops in Syria that could be caught in the crossfire—or even become belligerents if Moscow tires of its Syrian ally being pummeled.
And if Israel and Russia come to blows, would Israel’s big brother—the United States—feel compelled to intervene?
Not that Jerusalem or Moscow are eager for such a fight. “Neither of us desire a military confrontation,” a senior Israel Defense Forces (IDF) official stated during a recent interview in Jerusalem. “It would be detrimental to both sides.”
Yet Israel’s policy boils down to this: it will do whatever it sees as necessary to eject Iranian forces from Syria. And if Russia doesn’t like it, then that’s just the price of ensuring that Syria doesn’t become another Iranian rocket base on Israel’s border.
Relations between Jerusalem and Moscow are far warmer than during the Cold War. The result is similar to the U.S.-Soviet detente of the 1970s.
On the surface, a certain friendliness and desire for cooperation. Yet beneath the smiles is wariness, suspicion and a clash of fundamental interests.
“No one in Israel is confused about who the Russians are and who they are aligned with,” said an Israeli military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The Russians are not our allies, to put it mildly. We have one ally, and that is the United States. The Russians are here for totally different objectives. They are supporting a regime [Syria] that has an outspoken goal of annihilating Israel if it only could. They are also part of a coalition that supports Iran.”
Just how easily Israeli military operations can trigger an incident became evident during a September 2018 strike on ammunition depots in western Syria.
Anti-aircraft missiles launched by Syrian gunners accidentally shot down a Russian Il-20 surveillance aircraft, killing fifteen people.
Israel denies Russian accusations that it deliberately used the Russian plane as cover, or failed to give Moscow sufficient warning of the raid. Yet Russia still blamed Israel for the mishap and retaliated by supplying advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Syria.
Nonetheless, Israel sees value in Russia as a potential restraint on Iran, and a possible lever to get Iranian forces out of Syria.
After a February meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Vladimir Putin to mend fences after the surveillance aircraft incident, Israeli officials claimed Putin had agreed that foreign forces should withdraw from Syria.
For Moscow, friendly relations with Israel offer more influence in the Middle East even as America may be scaling down its presence in the region.
Still, the Kremlin has denounced Israeli strikes in Syria as “illegitimate.” Syria has been a Russian ally for more than fifty years, and it was Russian air strikes—along with Iranian and Hezbollah troops—that aided the Syrian government to retake most of the country. At least 63,000 Russian troops have served in Syria since 2015.
Though Putin has promised since 2016 that Russian forces would withdraw, Russia currently retains more than 5,000 troops and private military contractors in Syria, backed by several dozen aircraft and helicopters.
And Russia is in Syria to stay. The Syrian port of Tartus is Russia’s only naval base in the Mediterranean: in 2016, Moscow and Damascus signed a forty-nine-year agreement that allows nuclear-powered Russian warships to operate from there.
In addition, Russian aircraft and surface-to-air missiles, including the long-range S-400 air defense system, operate from at least two air bases in western Syria.
Israel can live with the Russians next door—but not the Iranians. Israeli officials warn of Tehran’s plan to station 100,000 Iranian and allied troops in Syria.
Hezbollah, with its estimated arsenal of 130,000-plus rockets, already menaces Israel’s Lebanon frontier. Syria joining Lebanon as a second Iranian rocket base is the stuff of Israeli nightmares.
“We continue to implement our plans,” the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) official replied when asked if Russia would deter Israeli raids into Syria. “Our activities suggest that, despite everything, we enjoy significant freedom of action.”
But more telling was his one-word response when asked how willing is Israel to fight for that freedom of action.
“Willing.”
Which leaves the question: Can Israel target Iran in Syria without triggering a clash with Russia?
There are deconfliction mechanisms in place, including a hotline between the Israeli and Russian militaries. “We are very strict about informing the Russians about our activities and that their operational picture is up to date,” said the IDF official. Yet those procedures were not sufficient to avoid a downing of a Russian plane.
Perhaps that ill-fated Il-20 was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Still, it is not hard to imagine a group of equally fatal scenarios. Russian advisers or technicians caught in an Israeli raid on an Iranian or Syrian installation.
An errant Israeli smart bomb that hits a Russian base, or a Russian pilot or anti-aircraft battery spooked by a nearby Israeli raid into opening fire. Or, perhaps Russia will just feel obligated to support the prestige of its Syrian ally and its shaky government.
Just how incendiary Syrian skies are for everyone became evident in December 2017, when U.S. F-22 fighters fired flares to warn off two Russian Su-25 attack jets that breached a no-go zone in eastern Syria.
To be clear, the IDF is neither boastful nor belligerent about its capabilities versus Russia, a former superpower with the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet. The IDF official likened Israel to “The Mouse that Roared,” the classic novel of a tiny nation that challenges the United States.
What makes a potential Israel-Russia battle so dangerous is that it is not hypothetical. After the 1967 Six-Day War, Soviet fighters were sent to Egypt.
This led to a notorious July 1970 incident when in a well-planned aerial ambush over the Suez Canal, Israeli fighters shot down five Soviet-piloted MiG-21 jets in three minutes.
On the other hand, Russia doesn’t need to fight Israel to hurt Israel. Indeed, the IDF official seemed less concerned about a physical clash between Israeli and Russian forces, and more concerned that Russia could choose to supply advanced weapons—such as anti-aircraft missiles—to Israeli enemies such as Syria and Iran.
In the early 1970s, the Soviet Union supplied numerous air defense missiles and guns to Egypt and Syria, which inflicted heavy losses on Israeli planes in the 1973 October War. If it wants to, Russia can make Israeli air operations very expensive.
As always with the Arab-Israeli (or Iranian-Israeli) conflict, the real danger isn’t the regional conflict, but how it might escalate. In the 1973 war, the Soviets threatened to send troops to Egypt unless Israel agreed to a cease-fire. The United States responded by going on nuclear alert.
Were the Israelis and Russians to come to blows, or if Moscow were to seriously threaten military force against Israel, could the United States risk a grave loss of prestige by not intervening to back its longtime ally?
Could Russia—whose Syrian intervention is a proud symbol of its reborn military muscle and great power status—not retaliate for another downed Russian plane or a dead Russian soldier?
Which leads to the ultimate question: could tensions between Israel and Russia lead to a clash between American and Russian troops?
In the end, somebody will have to back down. But Iran isn’t about to give up its outpost on Israel’s border, and Russia probably can’t force them to. Then there is Israel, which is grimly determined to stop Iran.
As the IDF official said, “We have proven over more than 70 years as a sovereign state that you don’t push us around.”
That, my friends, is why this recent election matters. Callers?