What would happen if the left got its wish for Israel?
Imagine an alternative universe in which an enlightened Israeli government did almost everything progressive America demanded of it.
An immediate cessation of hostilities in Gaza. A halt to settlement construction in the West Bank. Renunciation of Israel’s sovereign claims in East Jerusalem. Fast-track negotiations for Palestinian statehood.
Oslo would be placing phone calls to Jerusalem and Ramallah in October, to bestow the Nobel Peace Prize on the Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Arab states such as Saudi Arabia would establish formal diplomatic relations with Israel.
But there would be flies in this ointment.
Damascus would refuse to recognize Israel until it agreed to return the Golan Heights, which even the most left-wing Israeli government would refuse to do.
Lebanon, dominated as it is by Hezbollah (an Iranian proxy), would also refuse to recognize Israel.
As for Gaza, the end of the so-called blockade would turn the steady trickle of military equipment into the strip, most of it from Iran, into a cascade. Hamas would replenish its arsenal with more powerful guided munitions, able to reach any target in Israel.
This would require Israel to change its military doctrine toward Hamas. Out would be the approach of periodically degrading the group’s military capabilities through targeted strikes. In would be a strategy calling for a fullscale land invasion and reoccupation of the strip in order to defend the Israeli heartland.
Hamas would be strengthened politically. Its policy of resistance against Israel would look to many Palestinians as if it forced a change in Israeli policy.
The international community would try to help Fatah with lavish economic aid and technical assistance. But Fatah has a long record of corruption and mismanagement, two factors that helped Hamas win parliamentary elections in 2006. Since then, Mahmoud Abbas’ approach to his political opponents has been to suspend elections.
But at 85, Abbas won’t be able to stave off elections forever. Eventually, Hamas will come to power. Before then, however, Israel would freeze all settlement construction with a view toward forcing settlers to leave their homes or be stranded inside a future Palestinian state.
The result would be massive radicalization among Israelis against their own government. Any decision to repartition Jerusalem in ways that risked or hampered access to the Western Wall and other sacred Jewish sites like the Mount of Olives would likely spark civil war.
But perhaps the progressive Israeli government might yet succeed if a U.N.sanctioned, U.S.-led force agreed to deploy peacekeeping forces to guarantee Jewish rights. America’s appetite for such deployments hasn’t exactly been growing in recent years.
In the meantime, a Hamas administration in the West Bank wouldn’t take long to duplicate the formula that paid such dividends for it in Gaza: the complete militarization of the territory, putting every Israeli at immediate risk of rocket attack.
In this it would be greatly assisted by Iran, especially if rising oil prices and the potential lifting of economic sanctions as part of a new nuclear deal replenish Tehran’s coffers and its appetite for regional adventures. Jordan, too, would be at risk if a radical Palestinian state turns its sights on a fractious Hashemite regime.
And what about peace? A Hamas government would likely renege on any agreement with a Jewish state that does not honor the “right of return” of the descendants of Palestinian refugees. Anti-Zionist groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace would make the Palestinian case in the United States while the Tucker Carlson wing of the Republican Party would call for sharp restrictions on immigration.
As for Israelis, they would emerge from the morass because they have no other choice. When they did, they could be sure the progressive wing of the Democratic Party would be quick to denounce them for having the temerity to survive.