Israel’s environment minister, Avi Gabbay, has quit the government in protest at prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s appointment of far-right politician Avigdor Lieberman to the post of defence minister. The appointment also upset some liberal supporters of Israel abroad, but comes as no surprise to those in the region. Mr Lieberman’s passionate dislike of Palestinians, rejection of the two-state solution and racist rhetoric has been a fixture of Israeli politics for some time.
If anything, Mr Lieberman’s appointment demonstrates what the new centre of Israeli politics thinks. Far from him being an outcast or radical, his positions on key issues in the Israel-Palestinian conflict are commonplace in Israel. As a West Bank settler himself, the new defence minister is a clear representation of his country’s utter disregard for the two-state solution and the peace process as it has been known for the past two decades.
However, his appointment to one of Israel’s most senior political positions might not be a completely bad thing, at least as far as international diplomacy is concerned. For far too long, Israel has negotiated with the Palestinians (and the United States) in bad faith. Tel Aviv has marketed itself as having liberal values while at the same time Israel entrenches a violent military occupation of Palestinian land. Politicians such as Lieberman have removed the mask of this liberal farce. His warm embrace of Israel’s colonisation project and make-no-apologies approach towards its aggressive treatment of Palestinians is reflective of this trend of honesty in Israeli leadership.
The international community and particularly countries in this region must put any illusions about Israel’s good intentions aside. The world must listen to the country’s elected leaders and redefine how to approach peace talks accordingly. The Palestinian leadership recently rejected proposed peace talks in Paris for this very reason. There is little to negotiate with the current government, the Palestinians said. This is true and difficult to bear but pretending that there are a majority of Israelis willing and able to make peace at this moment is out of sync with the facts on the ground.