Category: Israel

Economics Update

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Since we’ve already covered the Geithner political suicide pact economic plan, let’s lead off with housing.

Happy, happy, joy, joy, home sales rose 5.1% in February relative to January, seasonally adjusted, though people not so closely attached to the realty industry have noted that it’s
really a pretty modest rise, or note that home sales have fallen year over year, and that about 45% of these sales are distressed in some manner.

I would say that year over year is the only metric to apply, because the so called “seasonal adjustment” if it ever were valid, has become meaningless in the current collapsing market.

Internationally, we have another member of the 0% benchmark club, as the Bank of Israel has cut its benchmark rate to 0.50%.

In currency and commodities, the dollar is down, because people are less concerned about safe havens, so there is less dollar flight to safety, and copper and oil rose.

It appears that these markets like Geithner’s plans, because, they are over paid and over bonused trader types, I guess.

Likud and Israel Beiteinu Sign Coalition Deal

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This is the first deal signed, and it takes Netanyahu to 42 of the 61 seats needed to govern.

About the only bright side on this is the possibility, however slight, that Israel Beiteinu rather militant secularism will to some degree inform the political discourse regarding the Heredim* Schnorers.†

But that still does not excuse IB’s rather militant racism.

*Ultra-orthodox.

†A beggar who would chide a donor for not giving enough.

On Receiving the Largess of the House of Saud

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I have followed the entire “rent-a-crowd” hysteria regarding Charles Freeman’s appointment as chair of the National Intelligence Council, but I really haven’t had anything to add, but in commenting on this Ken Silverstein of Harper’s Magazine asks the following:

So why is the Middle East Policy Council any more intellectually corrupt than AEI or WINEP? And why is employment at the former a bar to government employment, but a job at the last two is not?

The answer here is not is not that the MEPC is in any way more corrupt, either legally or intellectually than the AEI or WINEP.

Rather, it is that Saudi money is perceived as dirty, while the money going to the AEI and WINEP is largely domestic wingnut, which is perceived as “cleaner”.

As corrupt as domestic wingnuts are, and they are very corrupt, their history of selling opinions to big bucks backers has long been document, but the House of Saud is a poster child for bad governance, bad policy, and bad governmental structures, being one of the few remaining absolute monarchies in the world, and even by that standard it is remarkably venal and corrupt.

I think that the hit on Freeman was wrong and stupid, but the idea that Saudi money should be viewed as both corrupt and corrupting is very close to the truth of the matter.

If an organization wants to be taken seriously, it should steer clear of Saudi money.

If There Is An Organization More Capable of Sabotaging Itself Than Fatah…

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It appears that there was a deal to open the borders to Gaza. It seems to have involved a prisoner release by Israel and the PA in exchange for the release of Gilad Shalit, but PA walked away from the deal, “because the Fatah officials believed it would weaken them.”

These guys really don’t have a clue. If Hamas releases Shalit, is ready to release Shalit, even with a significant release by the Israelis is going to be a net minus for Hamas, because it removes a bargaining chip from their hand, and because it means that they have negotiated a deal.

But the leadership of the PA is so damn timid, they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Israel Balking at JSF Cost

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The flyaway cost has gone from $50-60 million to something closer to $100 million, and the IAF is beginning to wonder if it is worth it, particularly since the electronic warfare and avionics systems are going to be locked up tightly, preventing the Israelis from customizing the aircraft to their needs.

Note that this is flyaway costs, which is the lowest measure of cost, so these budget numbers, which are still in flux, are only going to get worse.

I would also note that down the road, countries that want to upgrade their JSFs are going to get done like a 3 dollar whore by Lockheed Martin.

Update: We have these comments from a Israeli Air Force (IAF) chief procurement officer Brigadier-General Ze’ev Sni giving a $200 million price tag.

Crap

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Avigdor Lieberman, the head the #3 Yisrael Beiteinu Party just threw his support to Benyaman Netanyahu.

The question here is whether Yisrael Beiteinu demand the bigoted part of his party’s platform, or the secular part of his party’s platform to be Likud’s coalition partner.

The nature of Israeli politics is that he can only look for accommodations on one of these issues, particularly since his presence in the coalition would appear rule out a 4 way coalition between the 4 largest parties, Likud, Kadima, Yisrael Beiteinu, and Labor.

Israel Demanding Shalit Return in Exchange for Truce

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It’s not going to happen, because if Hamas cuts a deal to release Shalit, even if it gets a truce and (somewhat more) open borders, it cuts its own throat.

Because Hamas’ credibility comes in large part from its absolutist positions,* a negotiation which results in Shalit’s release would be seen by many of their supporters as a capitulation and a defeat, and this would compromise their political viability, both in Gaza and in the West Bank.

The short form is that if Hamas did this, they would be signing their own death warrant.

*I was going to use the “takes no prisoners” metaphor, but given the situation here, it just doesn’t work.

Tactical Analysis of the Gaza Strip Combat

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First a disclaimer, this is not an essay on the rightness or the wrongness of the Gaza operation. It is an analysis of the tactics used with an eye toward tactical lessons learned from the Lebanon war, and toward lessons that should be learned by the US military.

Think of it as the War Nerd, without the good writing.

Aviation Week & Space Technology has an analysis of the combat in the Gaza Strip (paid subscription required), and it’s basic conclusion is rather unsurprising, though it’s rather controversial in some military circles, that air force operations must be completely subordinate to the ground forces authority.

Considering the debacle in Lebanon in 2006, where the Chief of Staff was the first, and likely the last, Air Force general, and worked on the USAF model, basically the assumption that precision guided munitions delivered from altitudes in excess of 8000 feet could win the war, this is not an unanticipated change in tactics.

One need only look at Afghanistan to see that the Taliban’s best recruiting tool is the USAF.

Some of the things that they did that worked on a tactical level:

  • Using retired/reserve air force officers physically in the ground units as liaison officers.
  • Each brigade had a specific helicopter squadron specifically assigned to them, and under their command.
  • One pilot from the helicopter squadron was physically assigned to the brigade’s communication cell, and he conducted all communications with the helicopter squadron.
  • A tightly integrated network to allow handoff from target identification to strike in less than 1 minute.
  • The brigade teams had significant autonomy from the high command in Tel Aviv.
  • Each brigade had its own dedicated artillery support.
  • Extensive operations at night, to take advantage of the Israeli superiority in night vision systems.

This does not make Gaza operations a victory, but these are lessons that the US military, and particularly the bomb happy boys in blue in the USAF, desperately need to learn for Afghanistan.

Another Prediction Goes South: Israeli Elections

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The projected results have Kadima out-polling Likud by one vote, 28 to 27, with Yisrael Beitenu next at 15 seats, and Labor in 4th place at 13 seats, Shas (ultra-orthodox Sephardic party) at 11, with the remaining 26 seats divided amongst 7 other parties who got between 3 and 5 votes.

While I am pleasantly shocked (and once again wrong in my prediction) that Livni out-polled Netanyahu, it’s still even odds that Bibi will be the next PM, as the bloc generally considered right wing numbers 62-63.

In any case, we are now well into coalition politics, which is less clear than an airline’s frequent flier program, as the graphics below hint:

Israel and the Overton Window

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First, a definition: The Overton window is a theory first voiced in this form by Joe Overton, which states that ideas, can be classifies as being either inside of or outside of the bounds of conversation in a group. It further notes that this window is not fixed, but rather it moves, and through the application of resources over a long term, can be made to move significantly.

Ideas can generally be classified as unthinkable, radical, acceptable, sensible, or popular, with the latter generally moving toward policy.

Israeli elections are today, and it is likely that the racist Yisrael Beitenu party will be the 3rd largest party in the Knesset, displacing Labor to 4th place.*

What I think people don’t realize is how much of a shift this is in Israel’s Overton window.

If one were to suggest at a party an expulsion of Israel’s Arab population in 1966, or an expulsion of the Palestinians in the territories in 1968 at a party, the response would have been stunned silence, with people looking at the speaker like they had just admitted to eating children, and that person would be ostracized at the party, and not invited back.

In fact, it could be argued that this was the societal norm well into the 1st Intifada, and possibly up to some time after the Oslo accords were implemented, and the PLO returned to Israel.

Now, we have a party which endorses ethnic cleansing without the movement of people, by redrawing the Israeli border to excise most of its Israeli Arab citizenry, on a path to have the third highest number of seats in Parliament.

This idea has already moved from unthinkable to acceptable for discussion for much of the Israeli population, and the desired political outcome for over 10% of the population, and likely exceeds the vote totals of YB will get, because of the dynamics of the Israeli proportional representation system and the fact that their party leader, Avigdor Lieberman† is stridently secular.

Needless to say, this marks a significant change in Israeli society, and to my mind, this is a profoundly negative change, and I do not see its trajectory changing in the foreseeable future.

*Much of their anemic performance in recent elections has to do with the fact that “big L” Labor has largely abandoned the concerns of “small L” labor in favor of a new Thatcherite economic consensus, but that is another post.
†It seems to be a constant that politicians named Lieberman are complete asswhipes.

Reports that Gaza Death Toll May Be Lower Than Reported

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While my original source, Ynetnews, should be viewed with a jaundiced eye, their report that death figures were inflated is from the respected Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera, which as best as I can tell is a well respected center to center-left paper based in Milan.

They quote a doctor as saying that deaths are likely in the 500-600 range (Google translation, original Italian version) , along with indications that a much higher number of the casualties were combatants than has been previously reported.

This is not uncommon following such a conflict, when people presumed dead start heading home.

Additionally, the dynamics in terms of public relations battle would tend create a situation where the Palestinians would be inclined to over report deaths in the first few days.

There is a historical precedent, the battle of Jenin, where the initial reports of casualties were as high as 500 , and eventually were determined to be 52 to 56.

I do not expect to see a 9.6:1 differential between initial and final numbers here, though.

On The List of Middle East Commentators Who I Thought I Would Never Link to ….

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Muammar Qaddafi, yes, the Libyan colonel, writing in the IHT.

He suggest a unitary state encompassing Israel and the territories, which he dubs “Isratine”.

I disagree with him, I think that this became impossible some time in the 1990s, and that today it is as nonsensical as suggesting a reconstruction of the USSR or Yugoslavia, actually more so than suggesting the reassembly of the USSR, as that separation was mostly non-violent.

There has been too much blood spilled in the last 1½ for it to work, and the trend world wide is toward the division of countries over roughly the same period.

That being said essay is well written and reasonable, so he, and/or whoever wrote/translated it with him, did a good job.

He is remarkably genteel and diplomatic.

There is an interesting nugget here, and it says something about the Arab view of the Palestinians, he is talking about the complete return of Palestinians to the region:

Further, a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would do little to resolve the problem of refugees. Any situation that keeps the majority of Palestinians in refugee camps and does not offer a solution within the historical borders of Israel/Palestine is not a solution at all.

This reflects, in an off hand manner the fact that the Arab nations with significant Palestinian populations expect most of them to simply leave if the opportunity arises.

It’s been 60 years, and the idea that most of these people will want to leave what has been their home for all , or the overwhelming portion, of their life is unrealistic.

Even if Qaddafi’s vision were realized, you would not see quite the mass migration expected, unless we saw the institution of something rather more extreme than the “genteel ethnic cleansing” that happens to non-Francophones in Quebec and Russian speakers in the Baltic Republics.

The truth is that, with the exception of Jordan, these sorts of policies are largely in place with things like prohibitions on owning land (Lebanon) and a denial of citizenship to Palestinians by virtue of being born in country (Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and IIRC Syria, at least).

One interesting thing here is how, unrelated to his commentary, is the provision of aid and support has distorted the conflict, much as it has in Eastern Congo, where they have provided a base of operation for the remnants of the genocidal militias from Rwanda. (It’s a pet peeve of mine)

Without the UNRWA providing free ghettos, many of the Palestinians would be full citizens of these countries, because it would simply have untenable to maintain refugee camps as such for so long, and they would be leading better lives today.

Oh Crap: Israeli Polling Numbers

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Well, with the election in about 19 days now, the effect of the Gaza war is being felt, and the numbers are not good.

They are generally as I expected, with Kadima falling further behind Likud, down 4 seats, and with Labor picking up some ground because Barak’s position as defense minister, and I see that Yisrael Beiteinu is up to 16 seats.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? That group of bigots might be the 3rd largest party in the 130 seat Knesset?

I think that Natanyahu would be a disaster, but this is just gone into the Twilight Zone.

About the only bright side are reports of a possible prisoner swap for Gilad Shalid, which might move the election out of the, “Just fracking crazy,” category, and possibly even lead to a unity government.

Israel’s Supreme Court Revokes Party Ban

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No surprise. It’s happened before, and now Supreme Court has again revoked a ban of Arab parties by a Knesset committee.

Everyone who voted to the ban the party knew that this would happen, but they also saw political benefit in doing so, because some of the more prominent Israeli Arab politicians are viewed as assholes.

My previous post on this was called, “Stupid and Damaging Electioneering,” and I stand by that.

This is kind of the polar opposite of Dukkakis and the pledge of allegiance in the 1988 campaign. He vetoed the bill, even though he knew it would be unpopular, because he knew that it was unconstitutional.

Israeli politics sucks.

So Predictable

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It’s been about a day, and Hamas launches mortar shells at Israel, and they miss, with the shells landing somewhere in Gaza.

Not surprisingly, it appears that the war has boosted Likud in the polls, with, “right-wing and religious parties are projected to control a 10-seat majority over a coalition of center, left, and Arab parties in the 120-seat parliament,” which means no unity government.

The other big political winner in the war is Labor, which went from 4th or 5th place to a solid 3 in polls

The election is still 3 weeks away, but Benyamin “Dick Cheney without the Charm” Netanyahu looks to be lock as next PM.