A return to the routine
Four uninspired speeches opened the Knesset's winter session on Monday. The two main speeches, delivered as usual by the prime minister and the leader of the opposition, were also routine affairs. The main revelation by both speakers was that, on diplomatic and socioeconomic subjects, the differences between the positions of the Knesset's two largest parties are slim.
Benjamin Netanyahu listed all of the government's achievements, squeezing all of the juice from the fruit. Tzipi Livni recounted all of the administration's errors, collecting compound interest on each one. Livni and Netanyahu hail from the same school of thought; had Livni been in the government, she would have supported the Trajtenberg report and emphasized liberal values no less than the prime minister has.
Livni has attempted to fundamentally differentiate herself from the government. She favors renewed negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas, and warns the government about Israel's diplomatic isolation, which was reinforced Monday by the decision to accept the Palestinians as members of UNESCO (a wrongheaded, unjust decision).
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The decision put a damper on the expectation that Israeli-Palestinian dialogue would be renewed, but one must hope that Jerusalem will not respond by boycotting the world's most import cultural organization. Not only would this increase Israel's isolation, other U.N. bodies, seeking to deepen the separation between Israel and the rest of the world, will hasten to accept the Palestinians into their ranks as well. And what will become of us?
As someone who believes Israel must appear to the world as a party interested in negotiations, more than she is perceived as such in foreign capitals; and as someone who knows that if those negotiations are not renewed, many of Israel's friends will see her as responsible for the fracture; and as someone who knows that Mahmoud Abbas is preferable to any other Palestinian leader, despite his chronic rejection of peace I noticed that Livni does not know either how to renew the dialogue with someone who is not interested in coming to the table.
Abbas threw sand in the eyes of journalist Enrique Zimmerman, who interviewed him on Saturday night on Channel 2, and neglected to ask him the most important question: Did Ehud Olmert present him with a map? Did he ask him to sign it? Did he tell him that no Israeli government would offer him more territory? Did Abbas promise to return from Ramallah with an answer, which never came? Abbas was evasive, but Channel 2 didn't notice.
But Livni knows. She knew back in the days when she refused to offer (unlike Olmert) that the descendants of the 1948 refugees be brought back inside the Green Line. But even this offer by Olmert, which erased an Israeli red line, was not enough for Mahmoud Abbas. Thus, the opposition is permitted to demand of the government that it act to renew negotiations, and it should know that the dialogue is the object. With Abbas, there is no other object.
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