Everyone is going all the way — off a dictatorial cliff

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL — It is hard to spend a week in Israel and not come away feeling that Israelis have the wind at their backs.

They’ve built an awesome high-tech industry, and everyone’s kid seems to work for a startup. Even Israeli Arabs have caught the bug — the number studying for degrees at Israeli universities rose 60 percent in the past seven years, to 47,000. Regionally, the Arabs and Palestinians have never been weaker, and under President Donald Trump, Israel has never had a more unquestioningly friendly United States.

Alas, though, all of this wind has whetted the appetite of Israel’s settlers and ruling Likud Party to go to extremes. Reuters reported on Dec. 31 that the “Likud Party unanimously urged legislators in a nonbinding resolution ... to effectively annex Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, land that Palestinians want for a future state.”

Sure, the world would scream “apartheid,” but Israeli rightists shrug that the world will get used to it.

And then it popped into my head: I’ve seen this before. It was May 17, 1983 — the day Israel, a year after invading Lebanon, signed a peace accord with Beirut. “Signed” isn’t exactly right. Israel (backed by the U.S.) imposed virtually all its security demands on a weak Lebanese government, including a framework for normalizing trade and diplomacy.

My Washington Post Beirut colleague Jonathan Randal wrote a book about that moment, “Going All The Way: Christian Warlords, Israeli Adventurers and the War in Lebanon.”

I always loved that title — going all the way. It’s a recurring theme out here, and it almost always ends with a “Thelma and Louise” moment — partners driving over a cliff — and so it did with Israel in

1983.

Lebanese militias, led by Hezbollah, quickly emerged to resist the May 17 treaty. On March 5, 1984, only 10 months after it was signed, I wrote from Beirut: “Lebanon today formally canceled its troop withdrawal accord with Israel,” marking

“the end of the so-called ‘Israeli era’ in Lebanese politics and to shift Lebanon solidly back into the Syrian-Arab fold.”

Why do I tell this story? Because everywhere I look today I see people going all the way.

I see Republicans trashing two of our most sacred institutions — the FBI and the Justice Department — because these agencies won’t bend to Trump’s will. I see Iran controlling four Arab capitals: Damascus, Sanaa, Baghdad and Beirut. I see Hamas still more interested in building tunnels in Gaza to kill Israelis than schools to strengthen Palestinian society.

I see Turkey’s president silencing every critical journalist in his country. I see the Egyptian and Russian presidents eliminating all serious rivals in their upcoming elections. I see Bibi Netanyahu trying to derail a corruption investigation by weakening Israel’s justice system, free media and civil society — just like Trump and for the same purposes: to weaken constraints on his arbitrary use of political power.

Worst of all, I see an America — the world’s strongest guardian of truth, science and democratic norms — now led by a serial liar and norms destroyer, giving license to everyone else to ask, why can’t I?

Can anything stop this epidemic of going all the way? Yes: Mother Nature, human nature and markets. They’ll all push back when no one else will.