Impressions of a Visit to Washington D.C.
Published in Maariv
(Israel) on 16 May 2012
by Ben Tien (link to original)
(Israel) on 16 May 2012
by Ben Tien (link to original)
Translated from
by Amir Dekel.
Edited by Peter McGuire.
My visit to Washington D.C. where I used to live until several years ago, ended this week. Washington is a special city, full of bars, restaurants and other hangouts. Its uniqueness is that visitors to bars and restaurants soon begin a conversation about global politics, crucial economic developments or some political conflict.
During my visit I met my local friends who still work in the city. Some of them serve in interesting positions in the American government, others in the World Bank and there are some on the boundary between the private and public sectors.
I was hoping to discuss with these friends of mine all those subjects that seldom rise up in salon talks in Israel: What's going on these days in Afghanistan and Pakistan; will President Obama's attitude toward Asian states yield wanted results; what will happen after the upcoming G-8 summit and of course, who the vice-president of the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, will be.
All of my friends, however, wanted to discuss only one subject with me. They wanted to understand what exactly had happened in Israel the week before, and how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had managed to ensure another year and a half in power.
Israeli politics fascinate the people of Washington. For the time being – and this pleases me – Israel doesn't present a significant game piece in the forthcoming U.S. elections. The world, however, understands that the coalition in Israel is important because of its ability to change world orders in two main areas: An attack in Iran, of which everyone is afraid, and igniting a true peace process, which everybody awaits. Therefore, most of my conversations dealt with the consequences of Kadima joining the coalition, which I can sum up with two words: Political opportunism.
It's amazing that in such a cynical city as Washington the opportunism of Israeli politics sounds so remarkable. After all, Obama, who declared his support for same-sex marriage, did so mostly because he needed the monetary support of major liberal donors.
In Isreal, Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Shaul Mofaz read the polls, understood which political picture might come about on Sept. 5 and succeeded catching Yair Lapid and Shelly Yachimovich with their pants down.
My friends demonstrated impressive familiarity with Israeli politics and were hopeful that the current coalition with Shaul Mofaz would balance the Minister of Foreign Affairs Liberman and the rest of the government members. I couldn't help but smash their hopes and explain that even with Kadima inside we shouldn't expect wonderful things on the Palestinian issue and that there will not be any change in regards to Iran.
‘You have elections here in November,’ I reminded them, ‘we shall speak afterwards.’ I added that even with Kadima in the coalition, Netanyahu is still captive of the members of his party, and as an evidence I told them about his latest embarrassment in the Likud conference one day before Kadima joined the coalition.
My friends looked at me with sad, desperate and even a little bit pitting eyes. Afterwards we discussed the reasons why there is no serious Israeli leader that could collect wide support around himself, support enough to threaten the rule of the Likud. We also discussed the question: does the status-quo show an unwillingness in Israel to solve the conflict once and for all?
Only after a long while was I able to convince them that we should discuss less despairing subjects. For example, the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.