Netanyahu's Hard Right Turn Away From His Generals

TEL AVIV, Israel -- When Danielle Mini read the news on May 18 from Germany and saw what was happening back home in Israel, she thought to herself, "This is not a democracy."

On that day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had essentially fired Israel's respected defense minister, Moshe Ya'alon, after he had backed the military in a spate of disagreements with Netanyahu's right-wing government. Netanyahu replaced the decorated general and political moderate with the ultranationalist politician Avigdor Lieberman, an outspoken critic of peace efforts with the Palestinians who has little military experience.

In a country where every man and woman is required to serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Lieberman's appointment to the top defense post was met with perplexity. Lieberman's appointment jolted Mini, who four months earlier moved to Berlin, a place where thousands of liberal-minded Israelis have made their home in recent years. She moved, she says, because she could no longer live in a climate of fear and hopelessness.

"Bibi is responsible for this fear," says Mini, referring to Netanyahu by his Hebrew nickname.

Netanyahu's move also was seen as confirmation of his campaign promise to never allow a Palestinian state to form under his watch. Lieberman is well-known for controversial statements about Palestinians and Arabs. Last year he suggested that disloyal Arab citizens of Israel should have their heads chopped off. He is also a member of the settlement movement that the international community -- and Israel's own security establishment -- considers an obstacle to peace.

More than anything, though, the political fallout laid bare the gaping rift that has for years been growing between Netanyahu and the security establishment. It also signaled a weakening of the military's historically monumental role in Israeli politics.

"The status of the military elite in Israeli politics is in decline, and this is a clear sign of it," says Gideon Rahat, a professor of political science at Hebrew University.

In most Western democracies, a prime minister distancing himself from military leaders might be viewed as a liberal development. In Israel, the opposite is true.

Under Netanyahu, Israel's national security community has become one of the country's most vocal advocates for moderation and reconciliation with the Palestinians. Meanwhile, politicians have grown more extreme. The current government is considered the most right-wing in Israeli history.

Rahat pointed to a member of Netanyahu's governing coalition who recently accused Israeli intelligence officials of being "leftists."

"The military elite are supporters of the two-state solution, but the current government prefers a different stance," says Rahat. Military officials, he adds, "are more pragmatic than politicians, who have visions that aren't as realistic as those who work in the military or intelligence."

Ya'alon's ousting followed a series of events that showcased the divisions between the Israeli government and military. Amid an eight-month wave of Palestinian terror attacks, the military's previously unquestioned code of conduct suddenly became a central topic of public debate.

In March, the IDF opened an investigation into an Israeli soldier who shot a Palestinian attacker to death after he had already been subdued by another soldier. Following public demonstrations in defense of the 19-year-old soldier, who has since been charged with manslaughter, then-Defense Minister Ya'alon said, "Those who back the soldier don't back our laws and values."

At first Netanyahu condemned the soldier's actions, but under pressure from his right-wing base, he backtracked. "Our soldiers are not murderers, they take action against murderers," he told a news conference in April. He also called the soldier's father, vowing fairness for his son. New Defense Minister Lieberman had played an active role in protests against the military's charges against the soldier, even going to court to show his support.

"In the past the norms of the IDF were very much in consensus and not part of political debate," says Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute and a former member of Israeli parliament.

"Now we're in this wave of violence where people feel that the right moral outcome for those trying to kill is that they shouldn't survive," says Plesner. "Soldiers and Israeli citizens are very much affected by sentiments of fear, and by a political leadership which rather than uniting and trying to tame those emotions, finds itself heeding them."

In fact, a survey conducted at the height of this debate found that 66 percent of Israeli Jews believe "it is a commandment to kill a terrorist who comes at you with a knife."

Discord traces to 1990s

While recent events have accelerated the growing rift between Netanyahu and the security establishment, these fundamental differences date back to the 1990s, when Netanyahu was the fiercest political opponent of the Oslo Accords, the same peace treaty that won his assassinated predecessor, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the Nobel Peace Prize. The Oslo Accords, like many peace efforts since, garnered widespread support from Israel's security establishment, which is today Israel's most powerful supporter of the two-state solution.

Days after Netanyahu ousted Ya'alon, a group of more than 200 former heads of Israel's military and security agencies issued a report criticizing the government's handling of national security, insisting that the only way to maintain a Jewish and democratic state is to reach a political solution with the Palestinians. The report by Commanders for Israel's Security calls for, among other things, an end to settlement expansion, and increased economic benefits for Palestinians.

"Terror cannot be stamped out by force alone," the report argues. "Terrorism draws on a variety of social, nationalist and religious sources, and is amplified by a sense of despair."

Ami Ayalon, who directed the Shin Bet -- Israel's internal security service -- during Netanyahu's first term, is among the authors of the report. Ayalon said that he often clashed with his former boss over their fundamental disagreement: the idea that settlements are crucial to Israel's security.

This month, after a series of terror attacks in the West Bank, Netanyahu responded by announcing plans to strengthen settlements. He approved the construction of 800 new housing units in several contested areas, including Kiryat Arba, the settlement where a 13-year-old Israeli girl was stabbed to death by a Palestinian teenager. Last week, the government advanced a $13 million plan to strengthen Kiryan Arba and other settlements.

"The concept that we are building settlements in order to secure ourselves is not accepted by any generals today," says Ayalon, who co-founded Blue White Future, an Israeli non-governmental organization that develops alternative approaches to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Since his departure from the current Israeli government, Ya'alon has declared his intention to challenge Netanyahu in the next election. Yet it's unclear how successful Ya'alon can be in this political climate. Some analysts say that Netanyahu's own rift with the security establishment is reflective of a widening divide between the Israeli public and its historically revered military leadership.

"Netanyahu is the problem, but he is in a way a symptom of the wide changes that have occurred in Israeli demography and Israeli society," says Ayalon.

When he announced his political plans at a conference in Israel on June 16, Ya'alon told the audience, "Israel's leadership needs to stop scaring its citizens, and start dealing with the real problems facing the country."

Yardena Schwartz is a journalist based in Tel Aviv, Israel.