End of the line for Bibi and Israel’s right wing
It’s decision time in Israel. The diplomatic hourglass is running perilously low on Bibi Netanyahu, and the Israeli body politic is truly divided right now — between those who see the cliff from which Israel will plummet this year if it doesn’t change course, and those who will live in an imaginary world where there are no consequences to limitless isolation. 
A number of simultaneous and generally unrelated events are working in ways that will serve to undermine Israel’s remaining global support. First, the Arab Spring has regenerated hope and interest in fostering good relations with the Arab world. This isn’t ipso facto bad for Israel, but it reminds world powers that Israel isn’t the only country in the Middle East that matters. The end result of the Spring may also be that Israel loses its claim as the only homegrown democracy in the Middle East. Either way, Israel stands to lose claims of indispensability to the U.S. and Europe.
Second is the progression of Salam Fayyad’s two-year state-building initiative. It chugs on with positive results — and it has just earned the endorsement of the International Monetary Fund. Fayyad’s work has not produced miracles, but he has shattered the idea of total Palestinian incompetence; at the least he has introduced a basis for governance in a future Palestine. By September, when Fayyad’s initiative ends, a lot of European leaders will probably say the West Bank looks “good enough” to serve as a state. The U.S. will be put in the supremely awkward position of either breaking a line of commitments not to grant Palestinian statehood unilaterally, or vetoing a UN resolution supported by everyone else that would do just that.
The most tragic element in the mix is how badly Israel has hurt itself the last few years. I still believe some of the most damaging actions Israel took in the eyes of the world — Operation Cast Lead, the Mavi Maramara incident — are defensible. And I still firmly believe, and probably always will, that so much tension could have been avoided if Barack Obama had been a little less reckless in the first few months of his administration.
Nonetheless, Prime Minister Netanyahu took a bad hand and played it poorly. He has imposed a minimal code of conduct on his unruly government, with sometimes-devastating results. He has not strongly enough distanced himself from a disturbing rise in irrational tendencies in his government and the Israeli right in general. Some of his party’s major figures now say their solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a bi-national state. This is not a serious offer on their part and an admission that they are out of ideas.
There is one last chance for Bibi to save face and correct course. Earlier this week, a collection of business and security elites unveiled the Israeli Peace Initiative, a proposal integrated with the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002. The two-page proposal, detailed here, maintains the basic ingredients of the other plausible bases for final status agreements in the past. If Netanyahu wants to save Israel from a torrent of bad news, this is what he must latch onto. I have always resented “this is the last opportunity” analyses, but this really is Netanyahu and Israel’s last chance.
