“It’s probably the most interesting presidential election I’ve seen in my lifetime,” I said to an American friend the moment I arrived to Washington. My friend was upset. “For you it’s interesting,” he said. “For us it’s painful.”

“What you’ve just said rings a bell,” I said. “This is exactly, word for word, what I keep saying to foreign journalists who come to Israel to write a story.” Covering politics in Israel is like covering a professional wrestling fight: the rivals exchange numerous hits, shout at each other, humiliate each other, disregard every rule, but in most cases the outcome is known in advance.

Covering politics in Israel is like covering a professional wrestling fight...in most cases the outcome is known in advance.

Americans are supposed to play their political game in a cooler way. At least, this is the impression a foreign correspondent get when he lands here, directly from the boiling quarrels of the Middle East. 

I had the opportunity to cover almost all the U.S. presidential campaigns since Jimmy Carter’s victory over Gerald Ford in 1974. I loved it—I loved the town halls and the rallies in remote places, where people are kind and willing to answer every clueless question from a foreign reporter; I loved the access to the candidates, weeks and months before the secret service builds a wall between them and real life; I loved the hectic atmosphere, described so well in the “Making of the President” books by Theodore H. White; I loved to see how little-known candidates like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama evolve, grow, and flourish; and I enjoyed every chapter: the spins, the buzz, the role played by big money.

The election campaign seems to be different this time: It looks different; it sounds different. The key word is anger—anger dominated the selection process in both parties. Angry voters elected angry candidates. If a candidate was not angry enough—e. g. Jeb Bush—the voters judged him unfit for the job.

The election campaign seems to be different this time: It looks different; it sounds different. The key word is anger.

An accidental tourist like me pauses here for a long list of questions: how do we quantify anger? Is it limited to the ballots or can it evaporate at some point and turn into violent acts, as Donald Trump has insinuated time and again? Is it a reflection of the bitterness of specific, limited constituencies or is it something much more widespread, an outrage of a generation or a class of Americans who feel that they were betrayed by the political and business elite, by the establishment? How to explain the Trump phenomenon, the Sanders phenomenon? 

The obvious answer is the economic collapse of 2008: the people who fell victim to the 2008 crisis, who lost a home or a job or had to give up college for their children are now in revolt. Why now and not earlier? Because four years ago they were struggling to survive; they were busy. Politicizing emotions is a long process; sometimes it takes years.

Tip O'Neill, speaker of the house in the second half of the previous century, taught us that all politics is local. There is a lot of truth in it even today, but is it the whole truth? In the flat world of 2016, local politics are executed in a global way. All politics are local and global at the same time. Political actions spread from country to country like the Zika virus, using social media as carriers.

The young Sanders supporters I met in Brooklyn, during the last Democratic debate, were not much different from the young Israelis I met in Tel Aviv in the summer of 2011, when hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets. Those Israelis complained about similar things: high prices, loss of employment security, difficulty getting a decent job, and the ever-growing gap between expectations and reality. They were promised to live in the land of opportunity; the opportunity was not there—not for them.

Politicizing emotions is a long process; sometimes it takes years.

They complained bitterly about the banks and the major corporations. They became so big that the government has no choice but to subsidize them when they lose money. And the people who run them get huge salaries and bonuses on the expense of the shareholders and the general public. Israel used to be a social democratic society, with a strong middle class and a relatively narrow gap between rich and poor. Now the rich are very rich and get richer, and the less fortunate are left behind.

The protest was fueled by social media: another similarity between Tel Aviv and the young voters in Brooklyn and elsewhere. The brazenness, the bluntness, the rudeness of the social media culture affected the political discourse. It became less cordial and more personal. 

Israelis were not alone. The Arab Spring predated the Israeli Summer. Greece and Spain followed. Occupy Wall Street, a smaller, more radical protest movement, appeared on the streets of major American cities in the fall of 2011. It was inspired by the protests in the Arab countries and in Spain. The demonstrators faded away after a while, but they left their mark: political agendas have changed dramatically, governments fell, conventions were shuttered. It remains to be seen if and how they will contribute to social justice and equality.

In Israel, the demand for social justice captured a prominent place on the national agenda; several activists in the protest movement were elected to the Knesset; the rhetoric has changed, priorities didn't. Not really. Most Israelis were not prepared for a revolution, not even a moderate revolution, Bernie Sanders-style. 

I have no way to know what lies ahead for the American society. What I can see so far is a unique electoral season, characterized by unusual, almost bizarre candidates, their qualification for the job questionable, and a long, destructive battle over votes. For many Americans it is painful. People in other countries can only wonder: is it the best America is able to produce? 

The composition and track record of the current Israeli government leads Palestinians to expect very little from Israel in the way of advancing peace. After five decades of military occupation, and repeated failures of two decades of bilateral negotiations based on the Oslo Accords, there is a clear need for new ideas. But the proposals offered by Amos Yadlin’s post last month, “Two states, four paths for achieving them,” do not accord with basic realities on the Palestinian side, and as such do not offer a viable pathway to a two-state outcome.

Yadlin’s argument is premised on the belief that a negotiated two-state outcome is not possible today because of a Palestinian refusal to engage. He argues: “It appears that in 2016, the Palestinians do not view a two-state solution…as a preferred outcome.” Palestinians, by contrast, see their leaders’ actions, like the November 2012 UN General Assembly resolution that accorded Palestine observer state status, as efforts to save the two-state solution in the face of Israeli actions that undermine it.

The outcome Yadlin offers as one that would meet Israel’s needs would require Palestinians to forfeit basic components of statehood and basic principles of Israeli-Palestinian peace that are enshrined in international law, such as the right for Palestinian refugees to return to their or their families’ places of origin in what is today Israel. 

Similarly, Yadlin calls for Palestinians to accept “limitations on their sovereignty” to meet Israeli security concerns. From a Palestinian perspective, though, that sovereignty has been systematically constrained already by Israeli policies, including annexation of territory and the expanding settlement enterprise. These are but two examples of divergent viewpoints between Israelis and Palestinians that doom each of the “four paths” Mr. Yadlin proposes to reach a two-state solution. 

Each of Yadlin’s proposed paths for Israel—negotiations toward a final status agreement (with the expectation that they would fail due to Palestinian intransigence), pursuing a regional agreement, seeking an interim bilateral agreement, and taking unilateral action—is problematic.

“A negotiation process resulting in a final status agreement” – The Oslo Peace Accords and the 20 years of unconsummated negotiations that followed were an intensive effort to achieve just that. However, they failed in part because they did not address the fundamental asymmetry between the parties to those accords—Palestinians recognized a state, and Israel, in turn, recognized the representative body of a national movement seeking its right to self-determination. 

If Israelis were serious about two states, and heeded lessons from the failed interim agreements of the Oslo process, a good starting point would be for Israel to reciprocate the political recognition of Israel that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) made back in 1993. Israel’s recognition of the state of Palestine is long overdue, especially after more than 130 countries—including the Vatican—have done so. 

This symmetrical recognition would also define the end game upfront as the outcome to which both sides are already formally committed—and then both sides can spend their negotiating energies on realizing two states living in peace.

“A regional agreement” – The notion that a regional track could substitute for the bilateral track suggests a failure to learn from the past. At many points throughout the history of this conflict, Israeli politicians and policymakers have sought to transfer the Palestinian issue onto other regional states—as in the Camp David I agreement with Egypt, or the suggestion that Palestinians should instead create their state in Jordan, a sovereign country. 

It is positive that Mr. Yadlin seems to embrace the Arab Peace Initiative (API) as a means for progress toward two states—but it can only play the role he envisions if it morphs into something it is not. 

The API is not a starting point for negotiations, but rather terms of reference for an agreement that Arab states would recognize as sufficient to gain Israel normalization within the Middle East. As such, Yadlin’s call for an “updated version” in which the “plan should be decoupled from the issue of the [occupied] Golan Heights” and “not be conditional on a solution to the refugee problem according to U.N. Security Council Resolution 194 from 1949,” do not take into account Arab governments’ own interests in these issues. Regional peace for Israel is unattainable without Israel first making peace with Palestinians.

“An interim bilateral agreement” – When Palestinians accepted the interim agreements of the Oslo bilateral process, there were 100,000 illegal settlers on the ground. Two decades of negotiations has left us with over 500,000 settlers and with the Palestinian community in the West Bank and Gaza further fragmented and battered. This is why the Palestinian leadership has been crystal clear in rejecting another interim agreement. 

Without more than verbal commitments to a viable two-state solution, and without a clear pathway to get there, another interim agreement would only allow Israel to create more “facts on the ground” that would preclude such a solution. It is hard to understand how such a proposal would offer Palestinians any hope of progress, given the experience of the past two decades. 

“In the case a negotiated agreement cannot be realized, an independent Israeli determination of its own borders” – It is even harder to understand how a unilateral Israeli determination of its own borders could, as Yadlin argues, “reinforce the agreed two-state solution paradigm,” especially because this would likely require massive Israeli military force (along with continued blind support from the United States) to create more facts on the ground. It’s understandable why Israelis would prefer to negotiate this conflict with themselves rather than engage with their adversaries, but it is the vast disparity in power between Israelis and Palestinians, not the logic of conflict resolution, that gives Israelis the realistic ability to do so. Still, this does not mean that unilateral decisions by Israel will one day find support among Palestinians. 

It’s understandable why Israelis would prefer to negotiate this conflict with themselves rather than engage with their adversaries, but it is the vast disparity in power between Israelis and Palestinians, not the logic of conflict resolution, that gives Israelis the realistic ability to do so.

It is the nature of international conflicts that they can “end” only in one of two ways: either the two parties agree to a solution that meets their mutual interests, or the side with greater power dictates, imposes, and enforces an outcome over the objections of the weaker side. In proposing unilateralism as a “solution,” Yadlin abandons the more sustainable former pathway for the latter, which I see as doomed. 

If Israel’s leadership is serious about reaching a two-state solution, the road is defined and clear. It requires that Israelis grapple with the real interests and demands of Palestinians as of equal substance and value to their own, rather than wishing them away. Equality can be achieved in two, truly independent states; or this conflict will default to a single state—as warned by President Obama and Secretary Kerry—marred by a civil rights struggle that may take another 70 years to bear fruition, but whose result is pre-defined.

While Israeli and Palestinian interests are best served by a negotiated two-state state solution, the peace plan that Sam Bahour proposed in his February post disregards Israel's demographic and security concerns and is tantamount to a Palestinian veto on a negotiated solution. His insistence on the right of return for Palestinian refugees and rejection of security limitations on Palestinian sovereignty in effect asks Israel to become a binational state while creating a militarized Palestinian state alongside it. Bahour rejects the notion of unilateral action, but his case only reinforces my belief that Israel may need to act independently to protect its interests.

The logic behind the Clinton parameters and President Obama’s peace plan was that in return for the creation of a Palestinian state, Palestinian refugees would relinquish their claim to Israel; the hope was that this would allow for the "two states for two peoples" to exist side-by-side. Yet Bahour rejects compromise on the refugee issue as the forfeiture of “basic components of statehood and basic principles of Israeli-Palestinian peace that are enshrined in international law.” Any peace agreement that both establishes a Palestinian state and recognizes the rights of millions of Palestinians to enter Israel would hasten the end of Israel's Jewish identity.

Israel's interest in the creation of a Palestinian state is also built upon the assumption that a sound agreement would improve its security rather than threaten it. To this end, Israel has called for a demilitarized Palestinian state, and this has been echoed by the United States, France, the Czech Republic, the European Union, and Australia’s Labor Party. Even Mahmoud Abbas accepted the premise of demilitarization, saying, “We don’t need planes or missiles. All we need is a strong police force.” Nevertheless, Bahour’s piece declares any limitations on the sovereignty of Palestine unacceptable. For Israel, a peace deal that grants one’s adversaries access to more deadly weaponry would be absurd.

Bahour argues that my strategies for reaching a two-state solution are doomed because they do not meet the "mutual interests" of the parties to the conflict, but his plan does not offer incentives for Israel to make peace.

Bahour argues that my strategies for reaching a two-state solution are doomed because they do not meet the "mutual interests" of the parties to the conflict, but his plan does not offer incentives for Israel to make peace. His proposal not only fails to improve Israel's situation in any tangible sense, but further endangers it. Rejectionist Palestinian positions like Bahour's (and Abbas's recent dismissal of Biden's initiative) would veto the two-state solution as a means to move towards a single binational state. That is precisely why Israel may need to act independently to keep a two-state solution viable.

Event Information

Israeli society is diverse, dynamic, vibrant, and challenged. Israel’s long-held social solidarity faces new pressure from growing internal fissures and from the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians.

In bold and candid remarks earlier this year, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin identified four “tribes” in Israeli society, representing different worldviews, and called for a new effort to find common ground among secular, national-religious and ultra-Orthodox Jewish Israelis, and Arab citizens of Israel. How might Israel’s diverse society coalesce in the coming years? How will the future of Israeli society affect its democracy, its relations with its neighbors and with the United States?

On December 10, the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings hosted President Reuven Rivlin to discuss his vision for the future of Israeli society and the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Bruce Jones, vice president and director of Foreign Policy at Brookings, gave welcoming remarks, and Tamara Cofman Wittes, senior fellow and director of the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, introduced President Rivlin.

Following President Rivlin’s remarks, Natan Sachs, fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, engaged the president in conversation.

Join the conversation on Twitter at #IsraelsFuture.

Video

• The new Israeli society: From melting pot to partnership

Audio

• The new Israeli society: From melting pot to partnership

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20151210_israel_rivlin_transcript

Since May 2010’s Mavi Marmara incident, which resulted in the killing of nine Turkish activists from Israel Defense Forces’ fire, relations between Turkey and Israel have been suspended. Two major regional developments in 2012, the lingering Syrian crisis and Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza, have underscored the lack of a senior-level dialogue between Israel and Turkey. However, in the wake of the latest Gaza crisis, officials on both sides have confirmed press reports detailing recent bilateral contacts between senior Turkish and Israeli officials in Cairo and Geneva, possibly signaling a shift in the relationship.

Since 1948, Israeli-Turkish relations have been through periods of disagreement and tension, as well as periods of cooperation and understanding. Relations developed gradually over the years and eventually reached their peak in the 1990’s when the two countries forged a strategic partnership, supported and strengthened by the United States. During those years, the Turkish general staff and the Israeli defense establishment were the main proponents for an enhanced relationship between the two countries. Military cooperation and coordination with Israel fit the broader world view of the secularist Turkish defense establishment. Turkey’s military structure and posture was NATO and Mediterranean oriented, and within this framework Israel was naturally viewed as an ally. From the Israeli perspective, Israel’s defense establishment recognized Turkey’s geostrategic importance and the potential that existed for defense collaboration.

Positive relations between the two countries continued well into the first decade of the 21st century but began to slow down when Turkey experienced a new social transformation and political Islamists became the dominant political force in Turkey. The clash that ensued between the new Turkish leadership and the military elite eroded the military’s standing, coupled with a major shift in Turkish foreign policy, inevitably led to a souring in the relationship between Turkey and Israel. With the launch of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in December 2008, relations began to seriously weaken, as Turkey expressed clear disapproval of Israel’s actions. Despite its efforts, the United States was not able to repair relations between the two countries. The Mavi Marmara incident in 2010 led to further decline of relations between the two.

Two and a half years have passed since the incident on board the Turkish passenger vessel, and relations between Turkey and Israel remain strained, with the two countries locked into their positions. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdoğan insists that if Israel wishes to normalize relations, it must accept three conditions: issue a formal apology over the incident; compensate the families of the nine Turks (one of them an American citizen) killed on board; and lift the naval blockade of Gaza. Not surprisingly, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is reportedly not willing to meet the three Turkish demands.

In recent months, Israel has made several attempts, both directly and through third parties, to find a formula that will restore the dialogue between Jerusalem and Ankara, but to no avail. Erdoğan publicly rejected these Israeli diplomatic approaches, reiterating the need to address the three conditions before further talks can ensue. As a result, bilateral ties, excluding trade, are practically at a standstill, with low level (second secretary) diplomatic representation in respective embassies in both Ankara and Tel Aviv.

Over the past year and a half, the upheaval in the Arab world has occupied the top of the Turkish foreign policy agenda. Thus, the relationship with Israel has not been a priority for the Turks, pushing Israel to invest greater efforts in developing its ties with Turkey’s rivals and neighbors, including Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, and Romania. Moreover, Turkey, previously an Israeli vacation hotspot, has experienced a substantial decline in the number of Israeli tourists.

The Turkish-Israeli relationship was not a high priority on the U.S. administration’s foreign policy agenda in the months leading up to the U.S. presidential elections. While the United States did previously engage in efforts to bridge the gap between the two countries, recently, other issues, including the 9/11 attack on the U.S.’s mission in Benghazi, Libya, the Syria crisis, and Iran’s nuclear program, have consumed the attention of U.S. policy makers dealing with the Middle East.

Against this backdrop, Erdoğan’s willingness to allow his head of intelligence to meet the head of Mossad in Cairo, and his foreign ministry’s director general to meet with Israeli Senior Envoy Ciechanover in Geneva, may seem surprising, especially considering Erdoğan’s own harsh rhetoric against Israel during the initial phases of Operation Pillar of Defense. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu explained that the meetings were aimed at finding an end to the Gaza crisis and that there would be no discussion of reconciliation so long as Israel did not address Turkey’s three previously stated conditions. Israeli officials confirmed that while the discussion in Cairo focused on Gaza, the meeting in Geneva went beyond the Gaza issue, and Israel’s envoy Ciechanover did in fact suggest possible options to address Turkey’s three stipulations.

What does all this mean?

Turkey’s recent moves can be attributed to a growing realization that it has hurt its interests and hampered its diplomatic efforts by not maintaining dialogue and open channels with Israel. This move has allowed the Muslim Brotherhood-led Egypt to take center stage and orchestrate, together with the United States, the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Turkey, which takes pride in facilitating diplomacy in the Middle East (as demonstrated in the 2008 Turkish-brokered Syrian-Israeli proximity peace talks), was marginalized in the latest round of negotiations on Gaza simply for having damaged its relationship with Israel.

Furthermore, as Turkey’s involvement in the Syrian crisis deepens, and as it prepares to deploy Patriot missiles on the Turkish-Syrian border, Turkey most certainly will aspire to improve intelligence cooperation with Israel. With regards to Syria, there is very little disagreement, if any, between Turkey and Israel, and cooperating on this issue could prove to be very useful and beneficial for both countries.

The possible cooperation on Syria does not mean that Turkey will drop its insistence on Israel meeting the three conditions, but it may indicate a greater inclination to show flexibility with regard to the actual wording and terms of those conditions.

Israel may be willing to be more forthcoming toward Turkey in respect to the three conditions, so long as it receives assurances that Turkey will not just pocket an Israeli apology and compensation and revert to its anti-Israel mode. Israel has its own concerns, and feels more isolated than ever before in a volatile Middle East region. Its need to rely solely on Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s mediating efforts last week certainly left Israeli decision makers uneasy. Israel will likely continue to reach out to Turkey in the coming weeks, but a final decision, which may include compromises, will possibly wait until after the Israeli elections in January 2013.

One must not lose sight of the fact that the Turkey-Israel relationship has deteriorated to a low point not only because of disagreement on political issues but also because of the clash of personalities between leaders on both sides. Officials on both sides will face tough decisions in the coming year, and will likely have to go against their own constituencies and popular public sentiments in order to repair relations.

The distrust between both countries is deep and the level of animosity at the leadership level is high. While it is encouraging that they are finally communicating with one another, undoubtedly progress will require a third party presence and involvement. In this respect, the Obama administration has an important role to play. Unquestionably, a rapprochement between Turkey and Israel will serve U.S. global and regional strategic interests. The strong rapport between U.S. President Barak Obama and Erdoğan and what seems in the aftermath of the Gaza crisis as more frequent consultations between Obama and Netanyahu, can contribute to a U.S.-brokered deal between the two sides. If successful, this deal will address not only the Mavi Marmara incident and Turkish demands, but it will also lay out guidelines and a “code of conduct” for interaction between the two sides in times of war and peace and sponsor a Turkish-Israeli dialogue on regional developments and issues of mutual concern. After a long disconnect between the parties, recent interactions between the two regarding the latest Gaza crisis signal that both sides are predisposed to take another look at seriously engaging with each other again, and the United States can help make this a reality.

Perhaps this could be one of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s last missions before leaving office.