Water Treaties and Ice Cream Skirmishes

Israel’s Foreign Policy’s New Stance

BY SHAMMAI SISKIND

Of the numerous oddities contained in Israel’s current fledgling government, one point that stands out is the rotation agreement penned between the coalition’s two leaders.

As per the protocols agreed upon by the multi-faction parliament, Yamina’s Naftali Bennett and the center-left Yesh Atid’s Yair Lapid will switch off between the prime ministership and heading the country’s Foreign Ministry.

This came as a bit of surprise to some, considering the marginality of the Foreign Minister position in Israeli politics today.

Many would have expected a rotation deal to oscillate between the PM’s Office and the Defense Ministry. Due to the primacy of military matters in Israeli society, the defense minister has always been an extremely prestigious role. Indeed, for much of Israel’s early history, it was a tacitly accepted fact that the Prime Ministry and the Defense Ministry would be held by the same person – as David Ben Gurion did for some twelve years.

And yet, for this coalition, the two alternate leaders decided to leave former Chief of Staff Benny Gantz of the Blue and White party to run Defense, while Yair Lapid would take charge of foreign affairs. After the coalition’s first two years, Bennett and Lapid will switch roles.

The reason for this decision is not merely a competence issue. True, defense matters are not really part of Lapid’s forte but Bennett is more than capable of running Defense, having occupied the role himself less than two years ago. No, the rotation deal was not crafted out of practical considerations only. The primary reason lies with the major policy aims – and policy changes – the new government seeks to bring to Israel. These changes are already well underway. Israeli society, the defense minister has always been an extremely presti-

was not crafted out of practical considerations only. The primary reason

BIBI DIPLOMACY

Truth be told, the less-than-esteemed status of the Foreign Ministry is a relatively new phenomenon in Israel.

Over the decades, the position was held by legends the likes of Abba Eban and Golda Meir, as well as more contemporary heavy-hitters such as Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon. For much of the country’s history, the Foreign Ministry was really Israel’s face toward the rest of the globe and played a central role in the country’s delicate and vital international relations.

This largely changed, however, during the twelve-year reign during the twelve-year reign of Benjamin Netanyahu, himself a former Foreign Minister. Netanyahu made the decision to bring international relations under his personal domain. He made confidant and fellow Likud member Israel Katz the head of the Foreign Ministry, and took an extremely hands-on approach to foreign affairs. Scenes of Netanyahu flying around the developing world, meeting with European allies, speaking before American policymakers, and convincing crowds of dignitaries of the follies of Islamist appeasement and the Iran nuclear deal are all still fresh in the world’s collective memory. By any objective standard, the long-serving premier did an excellent job as foreign diplomat, a fact that (at least in most cases) even his staunchest critics will admit to. Of BALTIMOREJEWISHHOME.COM

course, Netanyahu’s greatest feat on the international scene came last summer in the form of the much lauded Abraham Accords, a groundbreaking series of treaties that will continue to be a gamechanger for the region.

But Netanyahu’s de facto usurpation of Israeli diplomacy came with a price.

Under Netanyahu’s control, nearly all of Israel’s foreign affairs assets became part of the prime minister’s personal and narrow policy agendas. To get a perspective on just how tight Netanyahu’s control over foreign policy was, consider this incident: following the announcement of Abraham Accords last August, the serving Foreign Minister at the time, Gabi Ashkenazi, related how he was informed by the PM’s office about the deal hours before it was made known to the public.

Think about that. The man who was officially in charge of Israel’s foreign affairs didn’t even know negotiations were taking place for what was arguably Israel’s most significant international treaty ever.

This is not to say Netanyahu’s approach was necessarily flawed. Governments always need to prioritize where and how to invest their political capital and energy. It was Netanyahu’s decision to focus all of it on issues he identified as crucial – fighting the Iran nuclear deal and reaching out to Gulf states, certainly being the top two. But there were other issues, important issues, that inevitably fell by the wayside, as Netanyahu, in his signature style, would not let anyone push forward additional policy agendas, seeing any such activity as a mere a distraction at best.

Now, with new policymakers at the helm, dealing with both lingering and new foreign relations issues will be a defining theme of the coalition.

AMBITION OR NAIVETE?

FM Yair Lapid has made clear that, for him, number one on his list of objectives is reaching out to Israel’s allies that were “sidelined” during the Netanyahu years. On this point, both Bennett and Lapid have been on the same page – at least partially.

Much of this “reaching out” Lapid has planned consists of relatively benign policies – important policies, and consequential ones no doubt, but in the end not particularly controversial. For instance, both Lapid and Bennett have taken serious steps to reconnect with Israel’s immediate neighbors to the east and south. During the first week of July, Israeli media reported that Prime Minister Bennett had met in secret with King Abdullah of Jordan. Only days after the meeting’s conclusion did the PM’s office confirm the meeting took place. The subject of the two leaders’ face-to-face was allegedly a massive water deal in which Israel agreed to an annual transfer of 50 million cubic meters of water to the Hashemite Kingdom.

This deal came as a bit of a surprise. Such meetings between former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and King Abdullah were almost unheard of and had not happened for a number of years due to rising tensions between the two countries, mainly due to disagreement on Palestinian issues.

“The Kingdom of Jordan is a neighbor and partner of the State of Israel. The Foreign Ministry will continue to hold an ongoing dialogue in

The face of the U.S. Democratic Party’s has become loudly anti-Israel

While official confirmation of meetings in Egypt has yet to come, reconciliation with countries like Jordan and Egypt all share the same central elements. They contain populations that are mostly hostile to Israel, with the powers that be only keeping up working relations with Israel because of the strategic and economic value such a relationship has. Any action taken by Israel to ensure those ties are maintained is something pretty much all Israelis get behind.

If Lapid seeks to “make nice” with today’s Democratic Party, he’ll likely be met with some serious demands that even his left of center

worldview may not be able to tolerate.

order to preserve and strengthen that relationship,” Lapid said, according to a statement put out by his office. “We will expand economic cooperation for the benefit of both countries.”

At the same time secret meetings were taking place with the Jordanians, Israeli officials were also apparently hard at work reaching out to their southern neighbor in Egypt.

“We must work to strengthen ties with all countries [in the region], this includes Egypt,” Lapid had said in a statement in early June.

Yet other planned rapprochement projects Lapid has in mind may not be so easy for his right-leaning colleagues to swallow. In regards to Diaspora Jewry, for example, Lapid has been adamant that work must begin to restore relationships with all streams of Judaism, referring multiple times to the Reform and Conservative movements specifically, calling them “family.” This is viewed by many on the right, including some of Lapid’s own coalition partners, as a slippery slope, statement in early June. or even intentional pretext, for changor even intentional pretext, for changing the status quo on sensitive reing the status quo on sensitive religious issues in Israel itself. Many of the current government members have voiced their opinions supporting religious reform, whether it be relaxing protocols for holy sites, diversifying conversion options, or allowing secular marriage – an issue that has become one of the many crusades of Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

The coalition has already succeeded in pushing forward significant amendments to religious law. On July 20, Religious Services Minister Matan Kahana announced a far-reaching set of reforms to the kashrut market which would establish the Chief Rabbinate as a regulator over independent kashrut organizations as opposed to the body controlling the process as a whole. The Rabbinate, along with many religious parties, have been up in arms over the propositions, asserting the reforms are a coordinated attack on the Jewish character of the state.

With all the explicit attempts at undermining the Orthodox monopoly, it may be less palatable for the coalition’s right-wing to go along with Lapid’s plan of reaching out to alternative religious sects.

Perhaps even more controversial is the Foreign Minister’s plan on how to “improve” relations with the U.S. Back in mid-June at the hand-over ceremony at the Foreign Ministry, Lapid promised during his inauguration speech to repair Israel’s relationships with the U.S. Democratic Party. The new minister blamed the outgoing government for damaging Israel’s ties with the party in Washington that curwith the party in Washington that currently controls the White House and rently controls the White House and

both chambers of Congress. Lapid pointed to Netanyahu’s years of neglect on this point.

“The management of the relationship with the Democratic Party in the United States was careless and dangerous,” Lapid said. “The outgoing government took a terrible gamble, reckless and dangerous, to focus exclusively on the Republican Party and abandon Israel’s bipartisan standing.”

From a purely theoretical stance, Lapid is right. It is no secret how Netanyahu did everything short of waging all-out war against the Democrats during the Obama years. His unique relationship to Trump and his party during his presidential term hardly needs any elaboration. Making diplomatic ties with any country about a relationship with a certain political faction is shortsighted at best, a diplomatic suicide at worst.

While this is all true, the Democratic Party Lapid wants to “reach out” to is not the same one the former journalist was reporting on years ago when he hosted Israeli news shows. As a matter of objective fact, the Democratic Party today is home to some of the most vicious anti-Israel voices in all of American history. While many more senior members of the party may find these voices a liability and are fighting to keep the traditional pro-Israel image of the party, there is not much they can do about the broader trends within their support base – or at least what has become politically correct and acceptable within that base.

If Lapid seeks to “make nice” with today’s Democratic Party, he’ll likely be met with some serious demands that even his left of center worldview may not be able to tolerate. For example, it has now become mainstream discourse among Democratic Party members to link territorial concessions by Israel to any assistance it may seek from the United States. Despite his ardent support of amputating parts of the Jewish homeland to create a Palestinian state, Lapid has been forced to recognize that advancing anything on the Palestinian front is simply not possible, at least at the moment. Referring to the spike of violence during the May war with Hamas, Lapid told media, “In the end, the Palestinians themselves have to want to move forward in order for someone else to come in and help them, and that’s not the case right now,” Lapid said during a June meeting with his Emirati counterpart. Faced with the reality of no-partner on the Palestinian front, seeking to repair ties with the Democrats may quickly put Lapid into an impossible situation. In fact, current events have forced Lapid to go

If Lapid seeks to “make nice” with on the offensive toward many of the today’s Democratic Party, he’ll likely very people he seeks to appease.

Foreign Minister Lapid visited the UAE in June

A FROZEN FRENZY

It’s a bit strange when a frozen dessert becomes a major focal point of a regional conflict.

Following the announcement by Ben & Jerry’s that it would not allow its ice cream to be sold in Judea and Samaria, media platforms around the world became flooded with outrage. Some of it was justified; some of it a bit overblown. Perhaps the best part of the recent row over Vermont’s Finest is the deluge of hilariously creative memes that have inundated the internet. (“Throw-the-Jews-in-to-the-Sea Salted Caramel” is a personal favorite.)

Despite its slightly awkward nature, the Ben & Jerry’s episode may very well prove a test case for how Israel’s diplomacy plays out in the current international climate.

Beyond the backlash the company received over its decision, there are actually laws against Ben & Jerry’s ban. To date, there are 35 five states that have enacted so-called anti-BDS legislation. These laws prohibit government entities from contracting with

The Ben & Jerry’s episode may very well prove a test case for how Israel’s diplomacy plays out in the current international climate.

on the offensive toward many of the very people he seeks to appease. companies that commercially boycott Israel. Ben & Jerry’s decision has essentially made it susceptible to all these state laws. And Israeli officials have been quick to move on this.

Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the United States and the United Nations, sent letters to the governors of those 35 anti-BDS states, requesting that they formally sanction the ice cream company.

“I ask that you consider speaking out against the company’s decision, and taking any other relevant steps, including in relation to your state laws and the commercial dealings between Ben and Jerry’s and your state,” read the letter from Erdan.

According to Israeli media, According to Israeli media, the message was drafted and coordinated with Foreign Minister Lapid. If these states – which include large economically prosperous ones like New York, Florida, Georgia, and Texas – decide to act on these laws in full, it could have far-reaching repercussions for both Ben & Jerry’s and its parent company Unilever. One does not have to theorize about what those consequences could be.

In 2018, Airbnb made a similar announcement saying it would no longer be offering listings in Israeli settlements. This led to a slew of lawsuits by plaintiffs in the United States who alleged discriminatory practices. According to many reports at the time, Airbnb’s decision to eventually walk back its settlement boycott followed notices from states such as Illinois, Florida and New Jersey that they planned to pull their pension funds invested in the company as a result of the announcement. As one Israeli investigative reporter recently pointed out, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, Arizona, Illinois and Mississippi all have pension funds currently invested in Unilever, the British company that owns Ben & Jerry’s. As of this writing, officials from at least five U.S. states – Florida, Texas, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois – are actively reviewing the possibility of sanctioning Unilever.

For the time being, Lapid and his Ministry are the ones leading the charge for punitive action against Ben & Jerry’s.

“Ben & Jerry’s decision is a disgraceful capitulation to antisemitism, to BDS, to all that is evil in the anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish discourse,” said an official statement by the Foreign Minister. “We won’t be silent.”

This should be a welcomed development, for both Israelis and Israel supporters abroad, who see Lapid as merely a left-wing pushover. While it is true that Lapid’s “ideal” may be much more conciliatory, he is, for now, standing strong where he needs to. With a bit of luck, Israel just may get a foreign policy with the best of both worlds: a welcoming diplomatic apparatus that’s able to stand and fight when need be.