<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[Occupied Palestine | فلسطين]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[occupiedpalestine]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/author/hajarhajar/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[Jonathan Cook: Zionist left writes its own&nbsp;obituary]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<p class="headline_meta"><abbr class="published" title="2011-01-18">via Israeli Occupation Archive | </abbr></p>
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<p>by  Jonathan Cook, <strong><a href="http://www.jkcook.net" rel="nofollow">http://www.jkcook.net</a></strong> – 18 Jan 2011</p>
<p><strong>Barak and Netanyahu kill off Israel’s Labor party</strong></p>
<div id="attachment_7713" class="wp-caption alignleft" style="width:138px;"><img loading="lazy" class="size-thumbnail wp-image-7713" title="Jonathan Cook" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.israeli-occupation.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/cook-jonathan-138x150.jpg" alt="Jonathan Cook" width="138" height="150" /></p>
<p class="wp-caption-text">Jonathan Cook</p>
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<p>Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister, appears to have driven the  final nail in the coffin of the Zionist left with his decision to split  from the Labor party and create a new “centrist, Zionist” faction in the  Israeli parliament. So far four MPs, out of a total of 12, have  announced they are following him.</p>
<p>Moments after Barak’s press conference on Monday, the Israeli media  suggested that the true architect of the Labor party’s split was the  prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who, according to one of his aides,  had planned it like “an elite general staff [military] operation”.</p>
<p>Netanyahu has pressing reasons for wanting Barak to stay in the most  rightwing government in Israel’s history. He has provided useful  diplomatic cover as Netanyahu has stymied progress in a US-sponsored  peace process.</p>
<p>Barak had been happy to oblige as the government’s fig-leaf, so long  as he was allowed to hold on to his post overseeing the occupation of  the Palestinians. But as Labor became little more than a one-man show,  it was racked with revolts, its MPs and handful of cabinet ministers  regularly threatening to pull out of the coalition.</p>
<p>Netanyahu, however, has a larger purpose in seeking to draft the  Labor party’s obituary — one related to the cementing of a domestic  consensus behind the right’s vision of a Greater Israel. The prime  minister is hoping to unpick the last strands of the Israel created by  the founders of Labor Zionism.</p>
<p>Labor’s impact on Zionism was truly formative. During the 1948 war,  the party’s leaders established Israel as a socialist state — even if it  was of a strange variety that worried almost exclusively about the  welfare of its Jewish majority and carefully engineered systematic  discrimination against the fifth of the citizenry who were Palestinian.</p>
<p>For the next three decades Labor ran Israel virtually as a one-party  state, centrally directing the economy and its major industries through  the party’s affiliated trade union federation known as the Histadrut.</p>
<p>Labor’s political power rested on its economic power. Most of  Israel’s middle and working classes relied for their employment on state  corporations, the security industries, the civil service and government  firms — and that ensured votes for Labor.</p>
<p>But as Israel’s economy began to wane, so did Labor’s electoral  fortunes. The rightwing Likud party — home to Netanyahu — won power for  the first time in 1977, championing both the settlements and economic  privatisation. These moves further weakened Labor.</p>
<p>The party recovered only in the early 1990s, under former general  Yitzhak Rabin, who reinvented it as a “peace party”. Rabin adopted the  Oslo accords that, it was widely assumed, would eventually lead to  Palestinian statehood.</p>
<p>The Oslo process had its own economic, as well as political, logic.  The Labor party, which had lost its chief rationale following economic  privatisation, now promised that regional peace would open up lucrative  new global markets, especially in China and India. The ultra-nationalism  of Likud was presented as a barrier to trade and growth.</p>
<p>But peace failed to materialise, and the settlements’ continuing  expansion steadily eroded the Palestinians’ belief in Israel’s good  faith. Labor’s last shot at peace-making was the Camp David summit of  2000. When Barak, as prime minister, failed to reach a final-status  agreement with the Palestinians, claiming there was “no partner”, he  killed off Israel’s fickle peace camp and made his party politically  irrelevant again.</p>
<p>In the following years, Barak continued to undermine Labor. In  joining Netanyahu’s government, he visibly abandoned Labor’s two  official missions: to protect the poor and defend the peace process.</p>
<p>With Netanyahu’s help, he now appears to have finished off Labor for  good. His centrist party known as Atzmaut or Independence — working  inside the government — will replicate the platform of Israel’s large  opposition party, Kadima.</p>
<p>Atzmaut’s ideology, Barak has already made clear, will depart from  Labor’s. At his press conference he denounced his former colleagues as  representing “the left and post-Zionism”.</p>
<p>Avishai Braverman, a dovish and disgruntled Labor minister until  Barak’s split, responded bitterly that the new party would be “Likud A  at best and Lieberman B at worst” — a reference to Avigdor Lieberman,  the ultra-nationalist foreign minister.</p>
<p>Labor’s breakup highlights both the continuing shift rightwards in  Israel and Barak’s obssessive placing of his personal ambitions above  all else. The defence ministry has become his personal fiefdom.</p>
<p>What will now become of the Zionist left in Israel? The few remaining  Labor MPs will probably either knock on Kadima’s door, a natural home  for a growing number of them, or unite with the tiny other left party,  Meretz. Together, the surviving left will struggle to match the paltry  number of Arab MPs. At the next election, the Zionist left may all but  disappear from the parliamentary stage.</p>
<p>Its demise, however, should not be lamented. It has been in terminal decline for decades.</p>
<p>What its disappearance may do is free up the political landscape for a  real left to emerge in Israel, one less tied to the onerous legacy of  Labor Zionism and prepared to collaborate creatively with the  Palestinian national movements. That is an outcome not considered in  Netanyahu’s scheming.</p>
<p>Labor’s failure offers a potent lesson for this new left. The old  party’s success was dependent on offering the Israeli public not just a  political vision but an economic one too. Israelis will not welcome the  compromises needed for peace unless they believe there are material  incentives to make such sacrifices worthwhile.</p>
<p>The new left already understands the power of the stick of  international sanctions looming over Israel. But it must also offer a  carrot to the Israeli public: a vision in which an Israel at peace with  its neighbours will bring about a better quality of life.</p>
<p>That will be the first, formidable task facing the post-Barak left.</p>
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<p><strong>Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are <em>“Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East”</em> (Pluto Press) and <em>“Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair”</em> (Zed Books). His website is <a href="http://www.jkcook.net/" target="_blank">www.jkcook.net</a>.</strong></p>
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<p><strong>More <span style="color:#c60202;"><em>IOA</em></span> articles by <a href="http://www.israeli-occupation.org/tag/jonathan-cook/">Jonathan Cook</a></strong></div>
<p><a href="http://www.israeli-occupation.org/2011-01-18/jonathan-cook-zionist-left-writes-its-own-obituary/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IsraeliOccupationArchive+%28Israeli+Occupation+Archive%29">Jonathan Cook: Zionist left writes its own obituary — Israeli Occupation Archive</a>.</p>
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