THE ONLY EXISTENTIAL THREAT IS INTERNAL:

From the 1920s onward, the Zionist movement was split into two groups that put forward rival ideas of the Jewish state, one liberal, the other right wing. David Ben-Gurion, Israel's founding father and its longest serving prime minister, was the leader of Labor Zionism, the liberal vision; Zeev Jabotinsky was the founder of Revisionist Zionism and the spiritual father of the Israeli right. Mr. Ben-Gurion embodied the liberal Zionist dream of a free, independent and egalitarian Jewish state. Mr. Jabotinsky was an ardent Jewish nationalist who laid claim to Jewish sovereignty over the whole of the territory between both banks of the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Although he led the opposition to mainstream Zionism, Mr. Jabotinsky was, in fact, the main architect of the strategy that guided the entire movement in the confrontation with the Palestinians -- the strategy of the "iron wall." This strategy consisted of two stages: First, build an iron wall of Jewish military power to compel the Arabs to recognize that the Jewish state was there to stay. Then negotiate with the Arabs about their rights and status in Palestine. The essence of the strategy was negotiations from strength. The risk inherent in it was that military superiority would lead to diplomatic intransigence.

Benjamin Netanyahu, who won a fifth electoral victory last week in an election that was essentially a referendum on his leadership, is in many ways the heir to Mr. Jabotinsky's legacy. His father, Benzion Netanyahu, was Mr. Jabotinsky's secretary and the editor of the Revisionists' daily newspaper, HaYarden; his party, Likud, is the successor to the post-independence Revisionist party, Herut. 

[P]rime Minister Netanyahu is more conservative and more extreme than the founder of the movement. Mr. Jabotinsky's attitude toward the national aspirations of the Palestinians was, in his own words, one of "polite indifference." Mr. Netanyahu's attitude is one of active and unrelenting hostility. Mr. Jabotinsky would have been a tough negotiator; Mr. Netanyahu is a non-negotiator.

Mr. Netanyahu is the proponent of the doctrine of permanent conflict. He rules out the possibility of a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians because he is not prepared to concede their most basic demand: an independent Palestinian state over the West Bank and Gaza with a capital city in East Jerusalem. 

Tweet   @brothersjudd