42
Developing an Israeli Grand Strategy toward
a Peaceful Two-State Solution
the idea that democratization was the direction in which the
United States wanted to take the Middle East, and that only
by means of democratization of the region could there begin
a rapprochement process and the building of partnerships
based on common interests between democratic nations.
However, many experts also argued that it was not the United
States that would be able to set processes of democratization
in motion. They pointed to the local civil society (grassroots)
and civil society organizations as the drivers of the democratic
processes. These experts emphasized the potential that
lay in the growing strength of civil society organizations
and movements that base their operations on ordinary
citizens. They further underscored the importance of research
institutes or think tanks, whose contribution to shaping and
developing the discourse has become crucial in the last two
decades everywhere, especially in the Middle East.
8
Given
the Americans’ painful experience in Iraq as described
above, this approach, which views the local civil society and
research institutes to be a central axis driving the democratic
process in the Middle East, should definitely be considered.
Late 2010 – Did the Arab world change
direction?
Late 2010 saw the eruption of revolution the first in the Arab
world, in Tunisia. When the demonstrations broke out, Prof.
Elie Podeh immediately grasped the intensity and significance
of the events in Tunisia and how they would impact future
developments in the region. “Do not underestimate Tunisia”
was the title of an article he published in 2011, in which he
noted, “The fact that Tunisia is located on the periphery
of the Arab world does not diminish the importance of the
events. In the past, this country marked the start of a historic
process. It was its legendary president, Habib Bourguiba,
who in 1965 proposed a revolutionary idea: to recognize
Israel within its 1947 partition borders. Although Bourguiba
was lambasted and scorned in the Arab world, today it is
clear that his proposal heralded the dawn of Arab recognition
of Israel. That is why there is no room for an approach that
dismisses or disparages events in Tunisia; these events are
yet another sign that the Arab world is not disconnected
from the global arena.”
9
Tunisia, perceived as a relatively marginal state among
the countries of the Arab world, surprised everyone when
it became the source of inspiration for the second major
revolution in the Arab world. Egypt, the largest and most
important country in the Middle East, joined the revolution,
thus bolstering the Tunisian one, giving it a general Arab
stamp of approval. The revolutionary discourse had now
become the focus of the Arab world and among Arabs in
general, including Israel’s Arab-Palestinian citizens. The
8 Summary of my meeting with James McCann, from the journal I
wrote from January to June 2010 prior to meetings with experts in
the United States, which included a description and summary of
the meeting subjects.
9 Elie Podeh, Don’t dismiss Tunisia, Haaretz, January, 26, 2011
revolutionary spirit spread like wildfire throughout the Middle
East, and quickly moved to Libya, Yemen and Syria. In
other countries, such as Morocco and Jordan, the regimes
engaged in hasty reforms for fear of that revolutionary spirit
might take hold in their countries too. In wake of rallies and
demonstrations, and after seeing the situation in other Arab
countries, King Abdullah II initiated measures aimed at
absorbing certain aspects of the criticism against his regime
and introduced reforms into the Jordanian constitution from
1952 and the Jordanian election law.
10
A wide range of demonstrations and demands for change
began to crop up all over the new Middle Eastern arena,
including in Israel. The principal demands put forth by
protesters in Tunisia and then in Egypt and other countries
were equality and social justice. They demanded an end
to corruption and the government’s decadent bureaucracy,
and to increase transparency. Seemingly, there does not
appear to be any comparison between the uprisings of the
masses in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Algeria, Jordan,
Morocco, Iraq, Kuwait and Sudan against the non-democratic
regimes in their countries and the social protests in Israel
in 2011. Indeed, the escalation of these protests in some
Arab countries led to civil war and the disintegration of the
country, and in others, to the establishment of alternative
dictatorial regimes, and in yet others to a forceful crushing
of protests by the existing regime. In fact, since the Arab
spring, Tunisia is the only country in which we can see an
ongoing process of democratization.
However, the impressive surge of protests in the Arab world
and the slogans calling for social justice undoubtedly had
a direct impact on developments in Israel too. A study
conducted by the Knesset’s research unit on the social
protest and its connection to the Arab Spring noted, “The
study starts with the Arab Spring, its sources, the tools it
used and its outcomes. It draws a connection between the
Arab Spring protests and Israel’s “cottage cheese” and tent
protest in 2011, and tries to place the events in Israel within
a broader, regional context geographically and globally in
terms of the media.” Later, the study relates to the use of
slogans inspired by the Arab spring, especially the demand
for social justice. “The tent protest quickly spilled over to a
protest given the generalized slogan: “The people demand
social justice.”
11
Although the demand for social justice rather than the
establishment of a Western-style democracy stood at the
focus of the protesters in Arab countries, and although,
as noted, the consequences of the Arab spring in most of
these countries have been a disappointment – and in some
(such as Syria, Libya and Yemen) even disastrous, in the
backgroundwere the protestors’ demands for democratization
10 Oded Eran, “Jordan: Demonstrations and Reforms on the Back
Burner,” in One Year of the Arab Spring: Global and Regional
Implications, Yoel Guzansky and Mark A. Heller (eds.), INSS, Tel
Aviv University, 2012, p. 51.
11 Pavel Tal, The Social Protest and the Social Media: From the Online
to the Real World and Back, Jerusalem: The Knesset, 2012.
