EDITORIAL: Netanyahu won. At what cost?

March 19-In 2009, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu surprised many people by publicly embracing peace talks with the Palestinians, ending years of opposition to a two-state solution. Last year, those talks came close to an agreement but collapsed at the last minute, reportedly over issues of — what else? — trust.

But in the frantic final hours of a close election, with polls predicting he could lose control of the Israeli government, Netanyahu told conservative supporters — and the world — that he would stand in the way of a nation for the Palestinians.

“I think that anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state today and evacuate lands is giving attack grounds to the radical Islam against the state of Israel,” he said in a video interview shown Monday on NRG, an online news site. “There is a real threat here that a left-wing government will join the international community and follow its orders.” Anyone who ignores that Islamic threat, he said, “is burying his head in the sand.”

Netanyahu was asked point-blank: “If you are prime minister, there will be no Palestinian state?” He answered: “Indeed.”

Netanyahu’s Likud Party prevailed in the election, and by a surprisingly large margin. He has started negotiations on a new coalition of parties that would keep him as prime minister.

But the last days of that campaign have created big questions. Did Netanyahu win an election at a cost to Israeli security? Did he create new impetus for other nations to recognize a Palestinian state without Israeli support?

Palestinian authorities in the West Bank say they may end security cooperation with Israeli forces, which is crucial to anti-terrorism operations there.

The most significant tests of whether Netanyahu’s pledge drives Israel into greater isolation will come at the United Nations and the International Criminal Court.

A Palestinian campaign for a U.N. resolution to declare Palestine an independent state has stalled. But the blunt declaration from Netanyahu could generate more sympathy for the Palestinians and revive the campaign. Another risk to Israel: The Palestinians joined the International Criminal Court on Dec. 31, and within weeks, prosecutors launched a preliminary inquiry that could set the stage for a full-scale investigation into allegations of Israeli war crimes. Again, isolation will not work in Israel’s favor.

World leaders may hope they can chalk up Netanyahu’s final-days rhetoric to pre-election pandering. Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said Wednesday that the EU was “committed to working with the incoming Israeli government on a mutually beneficial relationship, as well as on the relaunch of the peace process.”

Many Israelis (and Palestinians) have a jaundiced view about peace negotiations, which have ebbed and flowed for decades while a permanent solution has eluded leaders. Everyone knows what the broad parameters of a two-state solution would be, but no one will broach the final, difficult compromises to make it happen.

“What’s striking is that the Israeli public seems to have lost interest with the Palestinian question — the general feeling is that it’s like the weather, nothing you can do about it,” Guy Ben-Porat, a political scientist at Ben Gurion University, told The New York Times.

Lost interest? Indeed, many Israelis are more acutely focused on the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. Netanyahu has emphatically warned that a deal resulting from negotiations between Western powers and Iran would not stop Iran and would put Israel at grave risk.

We get it. Israelis trust only Israel to be committed to its national defense, and many who are dissatisfied with Netanyahu’s performance on domestic economic issues nonetheless see him as standing firm against Iran’s mullahs.

That may have been the undoing of the center-left opposition to Netanyahu, which seemed poised for a narrow victory before balloting began. Security concerns came first.

“I believe that peace is possible, but achieving it requires a new approach,” Netanyahu wrote on the Tribune’s Commentary page in 2008 when he was campaigning for prime minister. Netanyahu suggested coupling economic development with political negotiations to “create the context” for a peace deal. That approach lies in rubble.

Israel faces extraordinary security threats, from Tehran to Islamic militants in Gaza to other actors that are affronted by its mere existence. Those threats won’t be diminished if Israel becomes thoroughly isolated from the world by closing off any prospect of agreeing to a Palestinian state. Netanyahu has won the election. Now we will find out at what cost.

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Category: Daily Witness, National