Israel’s plans for Palestine have been blown to bits

The Israel-Hizbullah war in Lebanon in July 2006, unplanned by its two protagonists and unpredicted by The World in 2006, looks like becoming the seminal event of Israel’s 2007. Its very unexpectedness and the welter of military and administrative ineptitude it exposed are now being dissected by a commission of inquiry. The prime minister, the defence minister and the army chief of staff will spend the turn of the year in anxious anticipation of the commission’s interim report, which could blow them away. Even if it doesn’t, the investigation will stretch into 2007, leaving them with little energy to govern.

Lad for peace?Reuters

Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, and Amir Peretz, his coalition partner and political rival as minister of defence, can take some comfort from the knowledge that the commission will also be looking at the acts and omissions of their predecessors since 2000, when Israel unilaterally relinquished its hold on southern Lebanon and Hizbullah immediately took over the border area and crammed it with rocket launchers. But even if Israel’s beleaguered leaders can hang on to power, the Lebanon war has deprived them of their policy.

The war’s timing was particularly tragic—just when Israel had finally resolved to put an end to its untenable empire. Ariel Sharon had weaned the country off the deadly settlement ethos which he himself previously personified. His unilateral disengagement from Gaza in August 2005 was, in effect, endorsed in the election of March 2006. The party he created, Kadima, gained power, though Mr Sharon, felled by a stroke before the vote, would probably have done better than his lacklustre deputy, Mr Olmert, who could muster only a slim plurality of 29 seats in the 120-seat Knesset.

Nevertheless, the die seemed cast: Israel would now withdraw its army and its settlers from more than 90% of the Palestinian West Bank. Ideally, there would be agreement with the Palestinians. But with the fundamentalist Hamas having won power in the Palestinian territories, this seemed unlikely. In which case Mr Olmert proposed to act alone. The Labour Party, under Mr Peretz, joined the Olmert government specifically to implement that policy.

But the war put paid to that. The 4,000-odd rockets fired from Lebanon during the 34 days of fighting, and a constant patter of smaller missiles from Gaza, have persuaded the Israeli public that withdrawal from the West Bank without an effective and peaceable government in place there would be madness. Israel, then, goes into 2007 wanting to rid itself of its occupation at last—but not knowing how.

Kadima could begin to crumble, some of its members heading back to their mother party, the Likud, while others look for new alliances. In Labour the knives are out for Mr Peretz.

Mr Olmert faces additional forensic embarrassment. He is under investigation for selling and buying various homes at suspiciously large profits. This follows the trial late in 2006 of a senior Kadima minister for kissing a woman soldier too enthusiastically; the prosecution of another top Olmert ally for handing out (or, in some cases, creating) jobs for the boys too brazenly; and the embroilment of the president of the state (a mainly ceremonial figure) in a string of sexual-harassment allegations. Pundits point to a widespread and dangerous disaffection with politicians and with politics. An early election is likely. But who will run, and against whom?

With weakened leaders casting about for new parties and platforms, calls for reform of the electoral system flood the media, amid counter-warnings against the chimerical longing for the strong leader. The last time Israel tampered with its constitution, in the 1990s, it got Binyamin Netanyahu as its first directly elected prime minister. He was ousted after three years by Ehud Barak, who lasted less than two (before being swept aside by Mr Sharon). Both seemed terminally discredited and the system was quickly unreformed. But they are back with a vengeance: Mr Netanyahu as leader of the much reduced Likud, Mr Barak as Labour’s kibitzer-in-chief.

Any hopeful rays on Israel’s horizon also originate in the Lebanon war and its aftermath. The war may turn out to have produced an auspicious contribution to peacemaking by what is too often derided as the international community. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) that is policing south Lebanon, beefed up by units from many European and Muslim countries, will be watched and tested during 2007. If it proves capable of curbing Hizbullah and warding off the Israeli army, it will be held up by thinking people on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a workable precedent for international involvement there too.

On the strategic plane, the Lebanon war demonstrated just how strong the fear of Iran is among the Sunni Muslim governments of the region, stronger even than their distaste for Israel. The Saudis, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Gulf sheikhs and others saw Hizbullah as a forward deployment of Iranian power and—unlike most of their people—were glad to see it bloodied. These governments, which sit on a lot of the region’s oil, will keep up their pressure on America to prevent Iran going nuclear. Israel finds itself in incongruous alignment with them. That incongruity would be much mitigated if the conflict with the Palestinians were settled.

But can the United States be counted on? That is Israel’s overriding concern going into 2007. Its analysts see two timetables ominously converging: Iran’s relentless pursuit of nuclear capacity, and President Bush’s waning power. Israelis, of whatever political stripe, dearly want diplomacy to work on Iran. They believe that American determination is what underpins the prospect of diplomacy succeeding. And they fear that if that determination is perceived to waver they will be left alone, facing a threat they dare not live with.