RUBE GOLDBERG COULD HAVE DONE BETTER:

The dysfunctional Jewish state: The best 60th birthday present Israel could give itself is a new political system (The Economist, 4/03/08)

Israel, which turns 60 this May, is a pure representative democracy. Virtually every social group has its own political party, if not several. This means that none of the country's many ethnic and religious subsets is disenfranchised. But as a result all governments are unstable multi-party coalitions subject to perverse incentives that have more to do with politicians' careers than with the wishes of the electorate at large.

The peace process Israel launched last autumn with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, exemplifies this. Its goal is to make the moderate Mr Abbas more attractive to Palestinians than the Hamas party, which rejects full peace with Israel and which took control of the Gaza Strip last summer. The method is for Israel to negotiate a deal for a future Palestinian state with Mr Abbas, while improving life for Palestinians in the West Bank, where he remains in charge. But the plan is failing because Israel cannot make concessions that would give Mr Abbas the necessary boost. This is not just because Israelis distrust the Palestinians in general and Mr Abbas's capabilities in particular. For all their distrust, most Israelis still think a Palestinian state is their own best chance for a peaceful life.

No, the main obstacles are political. One party in Ehud Olmert's coalition, Shas, has sworn to scupper the peace talks as soon as they get anywhere meaningful. Another, Labour, is led by Ehud Barak, who as the defence minister oversees many aspects of Palestinian life in the West Bank. It falls to him to do things that might make Mr Abbas more popular, such as reducing the number of checkpoints that throttle the West Bank. But he has prime ministerial ambitions and is trying to brand himself as more hawkish than Mr Olmert in anticipation of an election that could happen at any time. This week he seemed to soften a little, but only under American pressure.

Meanwhile, Israel's settlers in the West Bank have woven such tight alliances with various parties that they have made themselves effectively untouchable, even though they are only a tiny proportion of Israeli society. As a result, the government is incapable even of enforcing Israel's own laws in the West Bank. It has not made good on a promise to remove even a few of the hundred-odd settlement “outposts” built without permission. Nor has it done anything about revelations that much of the building in even the officially approved settlements has been on illegally expropriated private Palestinian land, not state land as originally claimed.

Perhaps if their own system weren't so misshapen they'd realize the PLO has no future and skip to a final deal with Hamas.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 3, 2008 7:44 PM