by Allister Sparks, BusinessDayLive

AS ISRAEL prepares for a general election next week amid widespread Middle East turbulence and uncertainty, one of the country’s most influential politicians has accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of endangering the security of the Jewish state by seeking a Greater Israel through his policy of expanding Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory.

Netanyahu claims, in the face of international criticism, that these settlements are to reinforce Israeli security in a hostile environment.

But Tzipi Livni, a former foreign minister, insists they are killing prospects of achieving a two-state solution with the Palestinians and will lead to a single state in which Arabs will be the majority population.

Israelis will then find themselves a minority group in a country dominated by Palestinians.

Thus, says Livni, the country will cease to be a Jewish state — in much the same sense, presumably, as SA ceased to be a “white” country with the ending of apartheid.

It became Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu’s “rainbow nation”.

This column, along with other commentators around the world, has made the same point about the settlements many times before, but this is the first time I am aware of it becoming a central issue in an Israeli election.

Livni has made it her election platform. The importance of this is that it brings the settlement issue to centre stage and confronts the international community with what Israel’s policy intentions are. Does the Netanyahu administration, allied with right-wing extremists, want a settlement with the Palestinians, or is its intention to expand Israel to include the whole of the Holy Land?

Livni believes such a strategy would lead to Jews being swamped by the Palestinians living there, but there are Israeli extremists who believe the Palestinians don’t belong in the Holy Land anyway and should be accommodated in Jordan. Is Netanyahu among them? Is ethnic cleansing in prospect?

Livni is no great liberal, but she is a heavyweight in Israeli politics and is highly regarded in many western countries, particularly the US, where she developed a close bond with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Her accusations will be taken seriously.

Livni became leader of the Kadima party after former prime minister Ehud Olmert stepped down, and led it to become the majority party by a narrow margin in the 2009 general elections — but then failed to form a large enough coalition to govern, leaving Netanyahu to do so by aligning his Likud party with the extreme right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party of Soviet-born Avigdor Lieberman. Now, even though Lieberman has stepped aside in the face of corruption allegations, Netanyahu has linked Likud with the Beiteinu party, most of whose supporters are Soviet immigrants with hard right-wing attitudes.

In the wake of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s recent success in winning observer status at the United Nations, a step towards recognition of Palestinian statehood, Netanyahu has intensified his settlement programme as a form of punishment, with big new settlements being established in the West Bank and, only last week, plans to build 1,500 new Jewish homes across the Green Line in East Jerusalem.

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