The recent flare-up of violence throughout Israel, Gaza and the West Bank coincides with yet another tense period in Israeli politics. After acting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to form a new government, the torch was passed to centrist Yair Lapid, who has successfully managed to cobble together a loose anti-Netanyahu coalition made up of parties spanning a wide political spectrum. The fact that Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud Party, which has dominated Israeli politics for the last decade, will be left out of a new governing coalition has been met positively by liberal observers both in Israel and around the world, and Lapid’s well-documented support for a two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has raised optimism as well.
However, even despite Lapid’s impressive political manoeuvring and coalition-building skills, the Israeli Left and Centre are weak and do not have a clear pathway to ideological supremacy in the Knesset. Lapid’s Yesh Atid Party enjoyed an impressive showing in Israel’s March 2021 elections, but the party did not gain anywhere near enough seats in the Knesset to uninhibitedly wield influence in any new government. Forming a coalition with Israel’s more left-wing parties helps; however, despite relatively strong showings from the Meretz Party and rising star Merav Michaeli’s Labor Party, as well as a surprisingly good result for Benny Gantz’s Kahol Lavan Party, the Israeli Left and Centre possess significantly less political heft in comparison to the pre-Netanyahu era. In total, parties that could be considered traditionally ‘left’ or ‘centrist’ (Yesh Atid, Kahol Lavan, Labor and Meretz) won a total of 38 seats in the Knesset in the most recent election cycle, about a third of the Knesset’s seats, meaning that while Lapid and his conceptions of Israel’s future may have performed reasonably well, a true mandate to rule remains elusive.
Indeed, despite Netanyahu’s failure to form a government, the Israeli Right remains quite strong. While Netanyahu recorded a drop in support, the ground that Likud lost was not filled by liberal or centrist politicians but was simply transferred to other politicians espousing almost identical policies as Netanyahu without the baggage of Netanyahu’s many recent trials and tribulations. Figures such as Gideon Sa’ar, a former Likudnik and once rumoured potential heir to the Likud mantle of leadership, and Naftali Bennett, the leader of the conservative Yamina Party, won a large number of seats running on right-wing ideologies but with anti-Netanyahu politics. Lapid’s new government must include such figures as Sa’ar and Bennett, ensuring that the Israeli Right will hold considerable sway in the new coalition government. In fact, as part of the deal to cajole Bennett and Yamina into joining his government, Lapid offered Bennett the first two-year rotation at the position of prime minister, a proposition that Bennett accepted, while Ayelet Shaked, another influential Yamina MK and Israel’s avatar of right-wing attacks on the court system, accepted a rotation agreement with Labor’s Merav Michaeli regarding service on the Judicial Selection Committee. Thus, while Lapid will serve as prime minister for the latter half of the coalition’s four-year term, the government will have a distinctly rightward bent for much of its tenure.
If Likud manages to rid itself of the controversies foisted upon it by Netanyahu and find a new, less polarising head, the next government in Israel could lean even further right, as right-wing voters who were disaffected by Netanyahu could easily return to Likud. Politicians such as Sa’ar and Bennett, who grudgingly expressed interest in working with Lapid for the purposes of toppling Netanyahu, could quite possibly go back to their more natural allies on the Israeli Right as well, sending the Left and Centre back to the minority. But does this trend mean that all hope for a two-state solution is lost? We argue that it does not, as historically, conservative Israeli governments have signed numerous lasting peace deals, and a number of prominent right-wing Israeli political figures have shown willingness to engage in talks on a two-state solution as well. A new post-Lapid conservative leader may yet continue this history.
Right-Wing Governments: Not the End of Hopes for Peace
Indeed, the assumption that Israeli right-wing governments cannot pursue peace ignores the history of Israel’s relationship with its Arab neighbours. In 1979, it was the government of Menachem Begin, the first right-wing government in Israel’s history, that signed a peace treaty with Egypt, the first treaty with one of its immediate neighbours and the only one of its kind until the peace treaty with Jordan signed nearly fifteen years later. More recently, Benjamin Netanyahu signed normalisation agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.
In the 1970s, Begin’s peace deal reflected the ability of the Right to increase the legitimacy of peace in Israel. According to later recollections by Ehud Barak, before the agreement was announced, Israeli opinion polling showed that the Israeli public was staunchly opposed to any agreement that ceded the Sinai desert to Egypt in return for peace. After the agreement was announced, however, opinion turned heavily in its favor, despite its terms reflecting the exact trade which the public had opposed only a few months before. The fact that a right-wing government headed by Menachem Begin would agree to this deal increased its legitimacy in the eyes of the Israeli public.
Though these agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbours can reasonably be separated from the Israeli-Palestinian question, history shows that right-of-centre governments in recent decades have also been open to the possibility of a two-state solution. Likud leader Ariel Sharon, whose campaign for prime minister helped ignite the Second Intifada in 2001, was initially a hard-right opponent of peace with the Palestinians. In 2005, however, he changed course, backing a unilateral approach that saw his government forcibly remove settlers from the Gaza Strip in order to grant it autonomy. Though the disengagement with Gaza has not turned out as originally hoped, these actions, especially the removal of settlers, went further than any other Israeli government in history, whether on the left or the right.
Sharon’s successor as prime minister, Ehud Olmert, went further than Sharon in actually negotiating with Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Olmert represented a continuation of Sharon’s political movement: in November 2005, Sharon had led moderate members of Likud (including Olmert) into a new party called Kadima, which was made up of those Likudniks who supported the Sharon peace plan and a group of moderate Labor MKs. In 2006, Sharon suffered a stroke, and Olmert succeeded him as prime minister, later winning 29 seats in the 2006 elections and forming a government. Olmert’s negotiations with Abbas produced a proposal offered to Abbas in 2008, which was nearly agreed upon before Olmert resigned under pressure from a corruption investigation. Kadima, which at this point had fully transitioned into a left-wing party, lost the next round of elections to a resurgent Likud led by Netanyahu.
In fact, Netanyahu’s third government, in power from 2013 to 2015, provides some blueprint for a government partially made up of right-wing parties to open negotiations with Palestinians. That coalition, though led by Likud, was a grand coalition notable for including both Lapid’s Yesh Atid and the pro-peace Hatnuah party, led by former Kadima leader Tzipi Livni. Starting in 2013, and spurred on by American Secretary of State John Kerry, multiple rounds of negotiations were held, though they eventually collapsed in 2014 due to unbridgeable demands between the two sides. The extended negotiations proved, however, that a government including right-wing parties could at least make an attempt at a peace deal.
Two-State or One-State: Conflict and Ethnic Riots May Undermine One-State Movement
The continued failure to successfully negotiate a two-state solution has caused some in Israeli politics, most notably outgoing president Reuven Rivlin, to support a so-called ‘one-state solution’ in which all people living in both Israel and the West Bank would become full citizens of the State of Israel. Though this idea enjoys support from some commentators because it would remove the necessity of a border between the two states, this idea remains controversial because it threatens Israel’s dual self-conceptions as both a Jewish and democratic state.
The recent ethnic violence in Israeli cities, however, shows how rising tensions are undermining even these prospects of a one-state solution. In May, as Lapid attempted to form a coalition and violence began to escalate between Israel and Gaza, riots broke out in many ethnically mixed cities in Israel. Arab and Jewish mobs destroyed businesses and property belonging to the opposite side, shocking many long-time members of communities that had lived side by side for generations. Some politicians, including Lapid, were horrified, branding the outbreak of violence ‘an existential threat’ to the future of Israel. These increasing ethnic tensions have raised questions as to the ability of a one-state solution to succeed. Additionally, polls show that only a small minority of Israelis and Palestinians support a single state, clearly showing that there is a long way to go before a one-state solution could be workable.
Public support for a two-state solution, on the other hand, could quite possibly be bolstered by the latest spate of violence. The RAND Corporation released a report in February 2021 that stated generally that ‘Israelis across the political spectrum prefer the status quo to the two-state solution.’ But after the recent violence that rocked Israel, the ‘status quo’ may not look so great anymore, as many Israelis were forced to get up close and personal with violence that has often in recent history been mostly confined to Gaza and the West Bank. These incidents will not be forgotten anytime soon.
Additionally, the recent flare-up has provoked international outrage and protests, including in the United States, one of Israel’s main partners. This is another factor that may help tip the scales toward a two-state solution: while the Netanyahu administration politicised the Israel-US relationship, remained defiant towards the international community and actively alienated itself from American Jews (a large majority of whom, according to a 2019 poll, favour the establishment of a ‘demilitarised’ Palestinian state on the West Bank), a new Israeli administration may be more willing to listen to outside voices as it works to establish itself. On the American side, President Joe Biden supported Israel throughout the conflict; however, he was subjected to criticism from his own party and demanded de-escalation from Netanyahu. The combination of a new coalition organised by Lapid, who has openly called for a two-state solution, and Biden, who faces pressure from his own party, could get the ball rolling, and even if the Israeli Left is too weak to make concrete steps in that direction, the conversation could shift significantly for future Israeli administrations, even if they are likely to be more right-wing.
Conclusion: What are the Prospects for Peace Going Forward?
In general, we believe that despite Yair Lapid’s recent success in building a coalition, the Israeli Right clearly dominates the political scene and will likely continue to do so for some time. However, this fact does not necessarily mean that a two-state solution is entirely out of reach, as right-wing Israeli governments have made crucial agreements with Israel’s Arab neighbours before and have shown willingness at times to take steps toward a two-state solution themselves. Furthermore, the recent outbreak of violence in the area could shift the dialogue in Israel closer to a two-state solution. We cannot be certain as to the exact nature of peace in Israel, but we certainly do not believe that the two-state solution is dead, even if the makeup of the Knesset moves to the right. As characterized by the name of Lapid’s party, ‘yesh atid’—there is a future. Let us hope that it will be a more peaceful one.
Daniel Shapiro is a 2020 graduate of Harvard University and is currently a Fulbright Student Research Fellow in Yerevan, Armenia, researching the impacts of international diaspora communities on foreign policy.
Alexander Koenig graduated from Harvard University in 2021 with a concentration in History and a focus on political history.