Nearly 80 percent of Palestinians desire an independent state alongside Israel. Shocking, I know. But then comes this statistical hip-check: Three-fourths of Israelis feel exactly the same way. This according to a poll just released by OneVoice, an organization dedicated to "amplifying the voices of Israeli and Palestinian moderates." It further reports that the top issue of concern for those Israelis polled was "security," which is truly significant, as it indicates that most Israelis now implicitly attach their safety to a two-state solution. If accurate -- an early April poll by the Israel Policy Forum places the pro-two-state'ers at a more modest 56 percent -- this is a seismic shift in public opinion. Only two months ago, in the wake of the widely popular Gaza operation, a slight majority of Israeli adults were wary of an autonomous Palestinian neighbor.
Israelis can be a volatile electorate. Yet rarely do massive swings in public opinion produce transformational elections of the kind we just experienced here in the U.S. The ascension of a Netanyahu-led conservative coalition in Israel, in spite of public weariness for the occupation, reaffirms this notion. Parliamentary politics and coalition building may be the primary culprits, granting disproportionate power to minority, often right-wing parties, who then assume the role of kingmaker mercenaries. They support (crown) whoever gives them the goods (policy promises or government positions). But this is nothing new. What, perhaps, we failed to realize, was the extent to which these lesser parties' power would be amplified under the "threat" of a renewed and reconfigured peace process. The Israeli public wants it. The new U.S. administration desperately wants it. And yet we are left with the reactionary odd-couple of Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman stewarding Israel's diplomatic efforts.
More pertinent than the electoral politics, however, is the question of whether this governing coalition has the strength to last, particularly in light of its objections to the now favored two-state solution. As TAP's Israeli correspondent Gershom Gorenberg recently pointed out, Netanyahu's amateurish display of parliamentary bargaining left him with a number of incompetent ministers and an extremely vulnerable Knesset majority. Combine that with this recent polling information, Foreign Minister Lieberman's proclivity for pissing off, well, just about everyone, and Obama's subtle indications that he will up the pressure on the Israeli government, and you have a recipe for a coalition nose-dive. Or perhaps a "damn the torpedoes!" approach in the mold of a Dick Cheney.
The X-factor in the coalition's survival may be Obama -- particularly his popularity among secular Israelis. Certainly, during the campaign he was painted as pro-Palestinian -- I even found myself on the receiving end of many an anti-Obama diatribe while in Jerusalem last summer. However, one of the implicit goals of Obama's diplomatic strategy around the world is to induce cooperation by circumventing government officials and speaking directly to people, who presumably hold some degree of power to influence their leaders. If Obama can establish a base level of trust among the majority of Israelis now willing to accept two states, and in the process reveal the Netanyahu government as the true obstructionist roadblock, we may start to see the coalition crumble under the weight of its own poor configuration.
--Josh Linden
