URGINEA MARITIMA

 

Sea Squills, (Urginea maritima) harbingers of the changing season, are in full bloom right now.

According to local folk tradition, when the Sea Squills grow to a height of more than 150 cm we can bank on a rainy winter.

 

Foresight, an innate ability to predict events, is a rare gift in this part of the world.

Rules of thumb, synoptic weather maps and even ancient omens are of no help predicting the outcome of the forthcoming Knesset elections scheduled to take place on the 1^st of November.

I try to avoid writing about Israeli politics. Mainly because I find it hard to proffer a neutral, unbiased opinion.

Of course, I could quote our news media political analysts, but then their forecasts are mostly speculative. I might as well resort to reading tarot cards or examining goat entrails.

On the other hand, The Israel Democracy Institute’s Centre for Public Opinion and Policy Research provides a non-partisan analysis without predicting the outcome of the November elections.

One of the Institute’s research scholars Dr. Or Anabi. claims that Jewish Israeli voters are moving to the right. Well, any taxi driver, barber or fruit and vegetable vendor would probably tell you that free of charge.

Dr. Anabi posits,” There’s a strong correlation between voters who describe themselves as left-wing oriented and their votes for parties categorised on the left. The same applies to Israelis who place themselves in the ideological centre. By contrast, following the voting patterns of Israelis who claim they support right-wing parties is more complicated. Many of them support parties outside the traditionally-defined right-wing bloc.”

Time-out to explain that Netanyahu and his devotees call all parties not aligned with his right-wing bloc, “Lefties”. A definition that is clearly intended to be derogatory. It’s all part of the Likud party’s smear campaign.

Back to Or Anabi’s survey-

“Meretz voters—almost all define themselves as left-wing, but among people who vote for Labour, many define themselves as centrists. In Yesh Atid (Yair Lapid), most will say they’re in the centre, but some define themselves as left or right, in both directions.

The division into three political camps is based on the positions of Jewish Israeli voters only. Arab Israeli voters are not categorised according to right, centre, and left affiliation. They are a separate group, with their own aspirations and internal tensions. For example, Ra’am is a conservative party and many of its positions are like those of the Jewish religious parties. On the other hand, its voters believe in liberalism and want to integrate into Israeli society.” ….

“In the first round of elections in 2019, with the founding of the Blue White party, identification with the centre reached an all-time high of 33%. But from then on, the centre has been drifting to the right and the rhetoric is now focused on who is the ‘authentic right.’ The rise of the centre did not produce a significant decline in the right, but benefited chiefly from the decline of the left.

If we look at the broader picture painted by the polls, we see that the division into political camps is not only a reflection of people’s positions on various topical issues, but is also related to deep traits of identity and belonging. People who define themselves as leftists are overwhelmingly secular (83%) and Ashkenazi (61%), with a relatively large segment earning an above-average income (40%). They tend to vote mainly for Meretz, Labour, and Yesh Atid.

On the other side, those who define themselves as right-wing come from diverse groups with regard to religious observance: about a quarter are secular, a quarter are ‘traditionists,’ a third are traditional and religious, and 15% are ultra-Orthodox. The proportion of Mizrahim (45%) in this camp exceeds that of Ashkenazim (32%). Many (39%) have a below-average income. About a third of them voted for the Likud in the last election, with the rest split among the other parties on the right. The centre falls between these two camps with regard to its voters’ demographics, but resembles the left more than it does the right.”

 So far there is no indication that the next round of elections for our legislative assembly will be decisive. In November Israelis will be going to the polls for the fifth time in three years.

Knowing that the political situation in Lebanon is far worse than our political stalemate doesn’t console Israeli voters

Lebanon has the most religiously diverse society in the Middle East, comprising 18 recognised religious sects. The primary religions are Islam (Sunni, Shia, and a small number of Alawites and Ismailis) and Christianity (the Maronite Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, various protestant denominations, the Armenian Apostolic Church). The Druze community amounts to about 5% of the country’s population. The country also has a large refugee population (1.5 million out of approximately 6 million in 2017). The refugees, mostly Syrian or Palestinian, are predominantly Sunni but also include Christians and Shia.

Lebanon differs from other Middle East countries where Muslims are the overwhelming majority, in that it has  a diverse mix of Muslims and Christians that make up a large proportion of the country's population. Christians were once a majority in Lebanon and are still a majority in the diaspora of the nearly 14 million Lebanese people living outside of Lebanon. The president of the country is traditionally a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim, and the speaker of parliament a Shia Muslim.

If you haven’t read last week’s post “Pumping Gas” I suggest you read it first, otherwise the following extract from an article written by Simon Henderson (The Washington Institute for Near East Policy) might be incomprehensible. Here’s the link: http://benisisraelinewsletter.blogspot.com/

 

“Israel’s Karish Gas Field: Diplomatic Opportunity or Casus Belli?   

The timing of the Karish project seems to be a key matter for the U.S. and Israeli leaders. This is partly due to the uncertainty of what will emerge from Israel’s November 1 parliamentary election; any progress on offshore issues before then could be seen as an achievement for caretaker prime minister Yair Lapid. Another mystery is whether Iran will give its Hezbollah proxy the go-ahead to permit a Lebanese deal at a time of broad regional uncertainty. For now, the various hopeful signals surrounding a potential breakthrough suggest that Washington is quietly urging restraint on Karish in order to give the rest of the diplomatic process time to play out over the next month or so.

The Biden administration has defined resolving the maritime boundary dispute as a ‘key priority’ that will promote regional stability. Yet while an agreement on this frontier may remove one source of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, it is unlikely to alleviate their spiking tensions along the Blue Line, the land boundary that runs from the coast to the Syrian border. Moreover, any service contracts and revenue stemming from an EEZ agreement could result in funds leaking to Hezbollah—in fact, such diversions seem inevitable unless international authorities insist on sufficient oversight and a Lebanese sovereign wealth fund, which might encourage the transparent collection and disbursement of related revenue.

The Biden administration is also apparently keen on brokering a maritime deal soon because it may influence the outcome of Israel’s election. Prime Minister Lapid is currently running neck and neck with former leader Binyamin Netanyahu, and the White House would prefer a Lapid victory in order to further its goals of improving relations with the Palestinians and maintaining the status quo in the West Bank. Whatever the final terms of a maritime agreement with Lebanon, reaching a deal would burnish Lapid’s foreign policy credentials and potentially help him at the polls.

In addition to maritime talks, the United States has spent more than a year in drawn-out negotiations to broker a Jordanian-inspired deal for supplying Lebanon with more energy. Under its terms, electricity generated in Jordan from Israeli gas—along with certain amounts of Israeli gas itself—would be transported over Syrian territory to Lebanon.

Much of the plan’s controversy stems from the fact that Syria’s Assad regime would reportedly receive 8 percent of any electricity and gas transiting its territory as a form of in-kind payment—this despite its continued status as a target of sanctions via the U.S. Caesar Act, the European Union, and the Arab League. Northern Lebanon has just one electricity generation station that is both adjacent to the Arab Gas Pipeline and capable of using gas as a feedstock, so Syria is the only party in a position to generate the amount of electricity Beirut currently needs. The Assad regime is also eager for this arrangement because its own generation stations often sit idle due to lack of feedstock.

Israeli sources describe the plan as an energy extension of their country’s “good neighbours” policy toward the Syrian people during the civil war next door. In other words, Jerusalem has sought to show that it wishes Syrian citizens well even though their country remains dominated by Iranian and other proxy forces.”

Now that’s mind-boggling!

I’ll conclude by wishing you and your family- Shana Tova.

 

Beni,                                       22^nd of September,   2022.