MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents"

Concerning Ehud Barak

by Kevin Carey

To read this article in Deutsch, Francaise, Italiano, Portuguese, Espanol, copy and paste the complete URL("http://www.g21.net/do83.htm") and enter it in the box after you click through.

KEVIN CAREY examines the possibilities which have emerged with the election in Israel of Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

The view from Central Park East of the world in general and what we oddly persist in calling "The Middle East" in particular has been at once partial and powerful beyond its modest numbers and even its immense wealth. From the standpoint of a gas-guzzling nation frequently accused of mounting military operations in defence of its oil interests, US support for Israel against its oil-rich neighbours takes a good deal of explaining. Herein lies a causal link which only a man with as powerful an intellect as Henry Kissinger, backed by a President as ruthless as Richard Nixon, threatened to weaken.

This accounts for the uncannily blinkered post mortems on Ehud Barak's landslide election as Prime Minister of Israel. The only interest seems to be in what difference this will make to what is simplistically called "The Peace Process". Only moralists are concerned with peace as an exclusive end in itself, so what does greater Middle East peace mean for the various parties?

Apart from OPEC's recognition of its strong cartel position and its oil price hikes in the 1970s which it merely attributed to Western support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War, politics in the region have had no effect on oil supply or on Arab-Israeli relations. That is not to say these relations are universally good - they are obviously indifferent between Washington and Baghdad - but that wars and treaties would have made very little difference to the fundamentals.

There is a good deal of loose talk about how the Palestinians would benefit from progress in peace negotiations between their leaders and Israel but the Palestinians were treated badly by their Arab cousins before Israel was founded, between then and the Six Days War in 1967, and now those who live in the new fledgling State are being ripped off by their Government as badly as any people one can think of; this does not excuse Israeli contempt but it reminds us not to operate a dual standard.

There is no guarantee whatsoever that in terms other than chauvinistic dignity any but the richest and most powerful Palestinians will benefit from an expansion of its territory and a deepening of its jurisdiction; and because it is for each man to assess the relative merits of chauvinistic dignity and economic well-being without unwelcome moralising, I will confine myself to saying that I expect many to opt for the superior utility of the latter.

As for Israelis themselves, if there is evidence for any conclusion from the recent General Election it is that the peace process was not the major issue. Barak, perhaps with the backing of the Likud Party without Netanyahu (whom even the Olympian George Steiner characterised as a scum-ball) will make just as much peace as he needs to secure his country's more important aim of secure economic growth to take account of rising aspirations and a rising population. Sad to say, from the point of view of escapees from the Shoah (the Greek word Holocaust is surely too elevated a word for what happened) now ensconced on high above Central Park, Israel is as economically ambitious as they are economically secure.

Barak and Likud both recognise that Palestine expanding too rapidly is as dangerous as the recent Netanyahu freeze. It is sometimes argued that Israelis should be more sensitive than they are to the persecution they perpetrate on Palestinians but this is to impose a moral sensibility which they are supposed to have acquired from their victimhood; most Israelis relate to the Shoah as closely as, say, Ghanaians relate to the slave heritage of black Americans.

Moreover, this continuous friction is much more like a civil war of near relations than a conflict between alien forces and it therefore perpetrates that particularly horrible kind of violence we are now witnessing n the Balkans. Again, that is not to excuse either side but we are badly in need of context to dilute the kind of double-standard moralising to which Israel has been subjected through countless, useless or even damaging, UN Resolutions.

Israel being where it is, the status of women being what it is (in spite of Golda Meir) and poverty being as widespread as it is, particularly amongst Palestinians, symbols count for more than reality. Jerusalem is such a symbol. In terms of worship and wealth it hardly matters who administers the city and, as already noted, if wealth is what matters to people they are likely to be better off ruled by Israel than the PLO's grandiose successors.

The other outstanding matter is the place of expanding housing settlements for Israelis, messing up Palestinian territorial cohesion. These were a piece of Netanyahu calculated nastiness and Barak will correctly calculate that they are not worth the trouble and will certainly not be worth the security and related costs. There are modest but measurable benefits to be gained from reducing conscription. On the whole, then, there are plenty of indicators for a gradual, pragmatic improvement in relations between Israel and the Palestinian jurisdiction. yet the more important issue for Israelis in the Election was the economy, stupid! Better off people can only enjoy their wealth and hope for lower taxes if there is peace but, not less important, they can only enjoy their wealth, as opposed to accumulating it, by curbing the orthodox kill-joys; ironically, your best chance of being wealthy and indulging yourself is by voting Labour rather than conservative.

In previous elections there was evidence that it was the poor Sephardic communities which voted for conservative, predominantly hawkish, parties which in time overcame Ashkenazy doves. These same people have now drunk from the charming cup of economic improvement which is apt to engender secularism in all but the most fervent breasts. It is now being universally asserted, without the trouble of presenting any evidence, that it is Russian immigrants switching from Likud that have handed the victory to Barak. It would be psychologically more useful to look at income level and stated voting behaviour than at racial sub-groups.

Perhaps the single most important step which Barak can take in co-operation with Likud is to reform the constitution so that the floor level for seat allocation in the Knesset rises from 1% to 5%, making it much more difficult for ideosyncrats, notably orthodox kill-joys, to be elected. It is the peculiar fairness of the proportionate voting system that has subjected Israel to such a bullying from the margins. What the country needs is stable, even boring, pragmatic government which gives us all time to see that this polity, founded out of guilt in extreme circumstances, is, at bottom, not so different, not so special, neither specially devout in general nor required to meet special moral or warfare standards that none of the rest of us are prepared to accept for ourselves.


Kevin Carey is a writer, broadcaster and social entrepreneur. His interests range from the relationship between information technology and social exclusion and the symphonies of Gustav Mahler. He is the director of a UK charity, HumanITy, which combines rigorous social analysis with experimental field projects on learning IT skills through content creation. Educated at Cambridge and Harvard before a spell at the BBC, followed by 15 years in Third World Development, Carey offers a unique perspective on world affairs. He is a politcal theorist, moral philosopher, classical music critic and published poet.

This is Mr. Carey's seventh piece for the G21. His previous editorial was on a post-mortem on the war in the Balkans. His first was on the sacking of UK soccer coach Glen Hoddle. Kevin Carey can be reached via e-mail at "humanity@atlas.co.uk".

| THE PREVIOUS DAY ONE | THE TANDEM DAY ONE(from Novi Sad) | THE TANDEM DAY ONE(from the United Kingdom) | THE NEXT DAY ONE |