Are you seeing double? You should be, as Time Magazine decided to ask the same question this year that they asked 16 years ago: can Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu make peace in the Middle East?
In my opinion, the answer is still no.
Netanyahu, the current Prime Minister of Israel, still faces the conundrum of a situation in which the status quo is actually best left alone, despite its own flaws. Any move away from the status quo, for Israel, would have two options: a one-state or a two-state solution.A one-state solution would entail removing settlements from the West Bank. A two-state solution entails annexing the West Bank, thus transforming the balance between Jews and Palestinians living under Israeli sovereignty.
An unspoken third solution, however, may be Israel's best bet: maintaining the status quo.While some say the current situation is unable to be sustained, from an Israeli perspective, it only has advantages.Noam Sheizaf of the blog +972, a publication devoted to commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, cites economic theory in order to explain Israel's policy choice.Sheizaf claims that, under the laws of rational choice theory, we all attempt to pay minimum costs to get maximum payoff. In the words of Sheizaf himself:
The advantages of the status quo are numerous. First off, Israel currently enjoys relative peace, stability, and prosperity. Israel would be irrational if it chose to abandon this security for any other option. This putatively "unsustainable option" has sustained itself thus far, and will continue to do so. Furthermore, when polled, nearly all Israelis say they prefer the status quo to a two-state solution (if forced to choose between a one-state and two-state deviation from the status quo, they then prefer a two-state solution).Let’s look at the options an Israeli policy-maker has before him: a two-state solution is likely to bring a near civil-war moment within the Jewish public, as well as considerable security risks. ...At the same time, annexing the West Bank will cause a severe international backlash, as well as major legal problems – and that’s only in the short run. It is even more risky, politically, than the two-state solution. The third option is maintaining the status quo, while trying to minimize its costs and maximize its benefits. From a rational-choice perspective, this is the optimal option.
Perhaps Israel never actually faced having to choose between a one-state or two-state solution, as the status quo has always remained an option. And if Scheizaf is correct in his assumption that Israelis will abide by the laws of rational choice theory, Netanyahu will never make the choice to stray from the status quo. Thus, to answer Time's eternal question, no, Netanyahu will not be able to make peace. But he may be able to keep it.
2 comments:
The issue of Isreal has been a hot topic for many decades, yet the situation and proposals to fix the problem have not contributed much to advancement of curing the tension in the Middle East. I don't believe that the current leadership in Isreal is the central force behind mobilizing for change; many other international powers are involved in the welfare of the area and the stabilization of the area involves much more than Isreal's actions: it involves the cooperation of the rest of the world. With the current progress, it almost seems like the international community wishes to do nothing to change the current state of affairs and to maintain the status quo, even though politicians in America make the issue and stability of Isreal such a hot topic in debates. I think that any prososal would offend someone, and the current state of affairs is not much better than having a one-state or two-state solution. If something were to be done, more cooperation from the international community as a whole would be needed from supportors of both sides to even be able to discuss a better proposal.
Yeah, I think Israel is kind of in a rut. I mean, the basic problem isn't really about who should own the land or that stuff, it's that they're a Jewish country in a region dominated by the non-Jewish, with many anti-judaism militants. I don't think the status quo is ultimately the best way to arrange things, but I think that changing anything regarding it would only bring more complaints and fighting. Hopefully, giving the people in the middle east sometime to get used to how things are and adjust to it will help the fighting die down, even if not everyone is completely happy.
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