<?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[ei: Israel&#8217;s Labor party not to be&nbsp;mourned]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<p><span class="text14">Jonathan Cook, <em>The Electronic Intifada,</em> 19 January 2011</p>
<p><span class="content"> </span></span></p>
<table border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="0" width="483" align="center">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="https://i1.wp.com/electronicintifada.net/artman2/uploads/3/110119-ehud-barak-2.jpg" border="1" alt="" width="483" height="322" /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="text11">Ehud Barak (Moti Milrod/<a href="http://www.maanimages.com/">MaanImages</a>)</span></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><span class="text14"><span class="content"><br />
Ehud Barak, Israel&#8217;s defense 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 &#8220;centrist, Zionist&#8221; faction in the  Israeli parliament. So far four Members of Parliament, out of a total of  12, have announced they are following him.</p>
<p>Moments after Barak&#8217;s press conference on Monday, the Israeli media  suggested that the true architect of the Labor party&#8217;s split was the  prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who, according to one of his aides,  had planned it like &#8220;an elite general staff [military] operation.&#8221;</p>
<p>Netanyahu has pressing reasons for wanting Barak to stay in the most  right-wing government in Israel&#8217;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&#8217;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&#8217;s obituary &#8212; one related to the cementing of a domestic consensus  behind the right&#8217;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&#8217;s impact on Zionism was truly formative. During the 1948 war, the  party&#8217;s leaders established Israel as a socialist state &#8212; 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&#8217;s affiliated trade union federation known as the Histadrut.</p>
<p>Labor&#8217;s political power rested on its economic power. Most of Israel&#8217;s  middle and working classes relied for their employment on state  corporations, the security industries, the civil service and government  firms &#8212; and that ensured votes for Labor.</p>
<p>But as Israel&#8217;s economy began to wane, so did Labor&#8217;s electoral  fortunes. The right-wing Likud party &#8212; home to Netanyahu &#8212; won power  for the first time in 1977, championing both the settlements and  economic privatization. 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 &#8220;peace party.&#8221; 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  privatization, 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 materialize, and the settlements&#8217; continuing  expansion steadily eroded the Palestinians&#8217; belief in Israel&#8217;s good  faith. Labor&#8217;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 &#8220;no partner,&#8221; he  killed off Israel&#8217;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&#8217;s government, he visibly abandoned Labor&#8217;s two official  missions: to protect the poor and defend the peace process.</p>
<p>With Netanyahu&#8217;s help, he now appears to have finished off Labor for  good. His centrist party known as Atzmaut or Independence &#8212; working  inside the government &#8212; will replicate the platform of Israel&#8217;s large  opposition party, Kadima.</p>
<p>Atzmaut&#8217;s ideology, Barak has already made clear, will depart from  Labor&#8217;s. At his press conference he denounced his former colleagues as  representing &#8220;the left and post-Zionism.&#8221;</p>
<p>Avishai Braverman, a dovish and disgruntled Labor minister until Barak&#8217;s  split, responded bitterly that the new party would be &#8220;Likud A at best  and Lieberman B at worst&#8221; &#8212; a reference to Avigdor Lieberman, the  ultra-nationalist foreign minister.</p>
<p>Labor&#8217;s breakup highlights both the continuing shift rightwards in  Israel and Barak&#8217;s obsessive placing of his personal ambitions above all  else. The defense 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&#8217;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&#8217;s scheming.</p>
<p>Labor&#8217;s failure offers a potent lesson for this new left. The old  party&#8217;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 neighbors  will bring about a better quality of life.</p>
<p>That will be the first, formidable task facing the post-Barak left.</p>
<p><em>Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are </em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745327540/theelectronic-20">Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East</a><em> (Pluto Press) and </em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1848130317/theelectronic-20">Disappearing Palestine: Israel&#8217;s Experiments in Human Despair</a><em> (Zed Books). His website is <a href="http://www.jkcook.net/">www.jkcook.net</a>.</em></span></p>
<p><strong>Latest articles on EI:</strong></span></p>
<table border="0" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="2" width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td class="text10"><a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/palestine-news.shtml"><strong>Palestine</strong></a> :  <a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/humanrightswire.shtml"><strong>Human Rights</strong></a>:   			<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11738.shtml">No place to sleep for Lydd family</a> (19 January 2011)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="text10"><a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/palestine-news.shtml"><strong>Palestine</strong></a> :  <a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/opeds.shtml"><strong>Opinion/Editorial</strong></a>:   			<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11737.shtml">Israel&#8217;s Labor party not to be mourned</a> (19 January 2011)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="text10"><a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/palestine-news.shtml"><strong>Palestine</strong></a> :  <a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/humanrightswire.shtml"><strong>Human Rights</strong></a>:   			<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11736.shtml">Bedouin village razed once again as historic Jerusalem hotel demolished</a> (18 January 2011)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="text10"><a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/palestine-news.shtml"><strong>Palestine</strong></a> :  <a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/opeds.shtml"><strong>Opinion/Editorial</strong></a>:   			<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11735.shtml">Finland shopping for &#8220;battle-tested&#8221; Israeli weaponry </a> (18 January 2011)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="text10"><a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/palestine-news.shtml"><strong>Palestine</strong></a> :  <a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/activismwire.shtml"><strong>Activism News</strong></a>:   			<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11734.shtml">Authors of Gaza youth manifesto speak to EI</a> (18 January 2011)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="text10"><a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/palestine-news.shtml"><strong>Palestine</strong></a> :  <a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/opeds.shtml"><strong>Opinion/Editorial</strong></a>:   			<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11733.shtml">ICCO reaffirms support for EI after meeting Dutch minister</a> (14 January 2011)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="text10"><a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/palestine-news.shtml"><strong>Palestine</strong></a> :  <a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/artmusicculture.shtml"><strong>Art, Music &amp; Culture</strong></a>:   			<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11732.shtml">Book review: Arafat&#8217;s ghost and the Palestinian national movement</a> (13 January 2011)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="text10"><a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/palestine-news.shtml"><strong>Palestine</strong></a> :  <a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/opeds.shtml"><strong>Opinion/Editorial</strong></a>:   			<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11731.shtml">Canada&#8217;s double standards</a> (13 January 2011)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="text10"><a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/palestine-news.shtml"><strong>Palestine</strong></a> :  <a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/humanrightswire.shtml"><strong>Human Rights</strong></a>:   			<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11730.shtml">Gaza&#8217;s children cope through art</a> (12 January 2011)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="text10"><a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/palestine-news.shtml"><strong>Palestine</strong></a> :  <a style="text-decoration:none;" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/activismwire.shtml"><strong>Activism News</strong></a>:   			<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11725.shtml">Palestinian Return Centre vows to carry on despite Israeli attack</a> (12 January 2011)</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11737.shtml?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+electronicIntifadaPalestine+%28Electronic+Intifada+%3A+Palestine+News%29">ei: Israel&#8217;s Labor party not to be mourned</a>.</p>
]]></html><thumbnail_url><![CDATA[https://i1.wp.com/electronicintifada.net/artman2/uploads/3/110119-ehud-barak-2.jpg?fit=440%2C330]]></thumbnail_url><thumbnail_width><![CDATA[]]></thumbnail_width><thumbnail_height><![CDATA[]]></thumbnail_height></oembed>