‘The coming five critical years’

The shock results of this past week’s British general election and of the March parliamentary elections in Israel demonstrated that opinion polls cannot be trusted.

In both cases, pollsters predicted a close race: in Britain between the incumbent Conservatives and opposition Labour and in Israel between the right-wing Likud and the Labour-dominated National Union.

In Britain, the Conservatives won a narrow majority and will be able to rule without partners while in Israel, the right-wing Likud won a plurality of seats but party leader Benjamin Netanyahu spent seven weeks struggling to form a government and managed to achieve this feat only a few hours before deadline.

Over the next five years, both countries face existential choices. Britain must deal with dual challenges from the Scottish Nationalists, who took 56 of the 59 seats in Scotland, and a referendum on independence and from the European Union (EU), which is unlikely to respond positively to Prime Minister David Cameron’s demands for major changes in his country’s relationship with the bloc.

Cameron pledged to devolve taxation and social welfare to the Scottish parliament, grant wider powers to the local parliaments in Wales and Northern Ireland, and rewrite Britain’s membership contract with the EU.

However, his own right-wing backbenchers can be expected to do their utmost to counter devolution and to campaign for Britain’s exit from the EU.

While he has promised to act as prime minister of all Britons and follow policies good for the country as a whole, he may have to make compromises on taxes and social policies to win over Labour and other parties on devolution and keeping Britain in the EU.

Cameron may have wanted another five years in the job, but his position is precarious and the survival of “Great Britain” as a middle-ranking world power will depend on successfully managing these two particular issues.

Netanyahu’s Likud won only 30 seats, a quarter of the number in Israel’s parliament, forcing him to form an unstable right-wing government that has a majority of only one, leaving him exposed to the threat of defections, blackmail and a no-confidence vote that would lead to fresh elections.

This means Netanyahu has no chance of resolving Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians — who are set to outnumber Israeli Jews in 2016 — and is facing the loss of Israeli’s privileged international standing due to its colonisation of Palestinian territory and mistreatment of Palestinians.

The Likud’s main rival, the Zionist Union, won 24 seats. The third largest, with 13 seats, was a grouping formed by Palestinian citizens of Israel that Jewish Israelis rightly regard as anti-Zionist.

Netanyahu ruled out its presence in his new coalition.

A devotee of the “Greater Israel” project, Netanyahu had only six of the remaining parties to choose from, because his former foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, ruled that his Israel Beiteinu Party would not join the government.

After weeks of negotiations, Netanyahu secured the backing of four other parties — two ultra-Orthodox, one with a social agenda and the other ultra-Zionist — but had to pay a high price in portfolios and pledges on policies.

His partners differ considerably on policies, so Netanyahu may find he has formed a “do little” government.

Beginning his fourth term as prime minister, Netanyahu — like Cameron, who is on his second — has to contend with two major issues: Israel’s future as a “Jewish state” and Israel’s accelerating loss of supporters on the international scene.

Israel’s colonisation of the territories it seized in 1967 has ruled out the “two state solution”, the emergence of a Palestinian state in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, accepted by the Palestinians and approved by the international community as the solution of the Palestinian/Arab-Israeli conflict.

Furthermore, Israel’s imposition of apartheid in these territories has finished off the “one state solution”, a democratic Israeli-Palestinian state where all citizens are equal politically and before the law.

Apartheid, or total Jewish separation from Palestinians, is the only option Israel has left.

At entrances to a road to West Bank Palestinian towns and villages, the Israeli government posted red signs saying: “This road leads to a Palestinian village [or town]. Entrance for Israeli citizens is dangerous” and illegal for anyone but Israeli occupation officials on duty and soldiers conducting raids.

Under such a regime, Palestinians have no rights and are under pressure to abandon their homeland: the ultimate aim of the Zionist movement adopted in the 1880s.

So far, the Palestinians remain steadfast in their determination to stay, largely because they have no alternative.

The apartheid system imposed by South African whites on the majority black population was untenable because it was immoral and ran counter to the spirit of the times.

Apartheid imposed by Israelis on Palestinians is more strict and crueller than the South African version, and has lost Israel a good many friends in Europe, once a main base of support, as well as some in the US, Israel’s sole staunch friend and ally.

Even there, backing for Netanyahu’s Israel is eroding.

Israeli peace activist Jeff Halper, who has just completed a three-month tour of speaking engagements, said he had been invited to address a group in a small midwestern town where there is a Palestinian support group.

While Congress, presidential hopefuls and campaign donors remain loyal to Israel no matter what it does, the US public, including the largely liberal Jewish community, is neither committed nor indifferent to Israel’s policies.

Trapped by their ideologies and policies, Cameron and Netanyahu will find it difficult, if not impossible, to rule without risking their countries’ very survival during the coming five critical years.