Why Netanyahu kicks the Palestinian can down the road

Dr. Aaron Lerner, IMRA

It’s not the lack of a backbone that drives Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s ongoing policy of perpetually postponing substantive action relating to the Palestinians.

I say “ongoing” because the explanations publicly offered for the postponements come off like part of a Mad Libs game (“Prime Minister Netanyahu told insiders that it is advisable to postpone _____  until after ____ because relations with the U.S. Administration are _____ “).

But there’s a very cold calculation behind  Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s ongoing policy of perpetually postponing substantive action relating to the Palestinians.

It’s the very serious assessment that the Jewish State will be in a better situation in the future.

With every passing year our economy shifts in favor of trade with countries that don’t link business to non-business concerns thus increasing our capacity to deal with economic sanctions that substantive action relating to the Palestinians might yield.

Our informal relations with the Saudis and others are continually improving just as the true interest of the Arabs states in the lot of the Palestinians continues to erode.

We are constantly developing and implementing  military technologies that promise a better outcome in a conflict that takes places after a given suite of technologies is implemented as compared to a clash occurring before the technology is in place.

And finally: the demographic argument.

A central element of the policy debate is the validity of very encouraging demographic projections that promise a solid Jewish majority even under a so-called “one state solution.”

Kicking the Palestinian can down the road allows for ultimately making dramatic decisions based on demographic conditions rather than demographic projections.

So is perpetually postponing substantive action relating to the Palestinians the right policy?

My concern is that it would appear that this approach may not give enough weight to the possibility that conditions change in ways that dramatically limit our options – or worse.

Here’s a simple exercise:

Make a list of the top geopolitical developments in the Middle East in particular and the world in general in the last quarter century.

How many of these developments took the experts by surprise?

Almost all – if not all of them!

It comes down to this:

Would the Jewish State be in a better position to weather dramatic changes after taking substantive action relating to the Palestinians even though such action promises, at least in the short run, a significant negative reaction from the world?

Or, alternatively, would perpetually postponing substantive action relating to the Palestinians find us better equipped  to face such unforeseen developments?

That’s certainly a lot to think about.

But it goes to the very heart of policy making.

And we can ill afford to ignore the need for a serious examination of the underlying logic of the policy of perpetually postponing substantive action relating to the Palestinians.