BICOM

Over the course of the Israeli election campaign, BICOM is interviewing candidates from across the spectrum. On Sunday 15 February 2015, BICOM’s Director of Research Toby Greene spoke with Ashley Perry, a British-born Israeli who is a candidate on the list of Yisrael Beiteinu, the party of Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman. Perry has worked for several years for the foreign minister as a senior advisor. A podcast of this interview is available here.

There are a lot of parties in Israel who define themselves as being on the right, including Yisrael Beiteinu. How do you distinguish your party from others on the right?

We consider ourselves the pragmatic right – we are not a messianic right-wing party. We have pragmatic solutions to all of Israel’s challenges, whether they are social, diplomatic, political, economic, or religion and state. We have very clear, detailed, strategic positions to deal with all of these challenges.

Yisrael Beiteinu won 15 seats in 2009 and it has 13 seats in the current Knesset after running on a joint list with Likud, but it is now polling around six. Where is it going wrong currently and can it be turned around?

You go back to 2009, and we were polling pretty much the same, between seven and eight at this stage, and we ended up getting 15 seats. I read a statistical analysis of how polls differ to the actual election results, and it shows clearly that Yisrael Beiteinu has been consistently the most undervalued party in all polls. Our internal polls certainly show us getting a few more seats than we’re currently polling. A couple of weeks ago we were polling four or five, then six or seven, and now we are seven and eight. If we keep that momentum up until election day then I think we’ll be happy with the results.

But there is a mood, with some senior candidates leaving the party and some younger, lesser known candidates coming in, that maybe there is a loss of momentum in the party. Do you feel that?

No, I think Yisrael Beiteinu, as opposed to some of the other parties, are not so interested in the name. We’re interested in action. We’re interested in what a possible candidate has done in their life that would suggest that they could lend a hand in the political arena. If you look across our list of 34 candidates and look at chiefly the top 20, everyone comes with a background of action, of contribution to the state.

We have for example number 15 [Shadi Halul], a leader in the Christian Arab community, who has been at the forefront of trying to move his community towards greater integration in the state – pushing for more of his community to go into the army or national service, and has really created a revolution in that community.

Towards the end of last year, a historic change in the Interior Ministry was that they added another criterion to the possible nationalities within the state. They created something called Aramean, which is a nod toward the historic nature of the Christian community which predates the Arab invasion/occupation of the region in the seventh century. It shows that the Christian community in Israel is really looking to integrate and Shadi has really been at the forefront of that. Not too many people have heard of him, but he is a person who has come and said “Israel is my home, Israel is our home and we have to be better integrated, regardless of which background we come from.”

It’s interesting you should mention an Arab candidate on your list. Critics of the party would accuse it of playing the race card and of drawing on anti-Arab sentiment in Israel as one of its main campaign slogans. For example, calling for a two-state solution with land swaps which takes areas with large Arab populations inside Israel and transfers them to a future Palestinian state. Many people would say this is an anti-Arab agenda. How would you respond to that?

I would also point out that number six on our list is an Arabic speaking Druze member of Knesset, Hamad Amar, whose been considered one of the best legislators of the last few years.

Yisrael Beiteinu looks at one colour, the blue colour of the ID card, and it expects every single Israeli, regardless of whether they are Arab, or ultra-Orthodox, or left or right, to contribute equally to the state. I’m not talking about rights. Rights are sacrosanct, so just put them aside. Benefits should certainly be commensurate with one’s contributions to the state. Those who contribute the most should benefit the most and those who contribute the least should benefit the least. And it doesn’t matter whether you are Arab, Jew, ultra-Orthodox or liberal.

We try and look every single Israeli in the eye and say, “Let’s judge you on your contributions to the state and not on your background.” Whereas, there are many parties on the left who are prepared to overlook the massive inequality when allowing certain groups not to contribute to the state, yet give them massive benefits to the detriment of the majority. As far as our populated land exchanges, this is a long standing policy of Yisrael Beiteinu.

Let’s turn to the policy itself: it’s unlikely to have a lot of support among Israeli-Arabs or Palestinians or the Arab world generally. Is this really a serious policy proposal?

It’s a long standing proposal of the foreign minister, he has spoken to a lot of his counterparts around the world, and there is great interest.

It really does take a pragmatic approach: first of all, this conflict began as a Jewish-Arab conflict and it should end as a Jewish-Arab conflict. Which means that the endgame – which is peace and prosperity, and a better future for the peoples of the region – should be worked out not just between Israel the Jewish state and our Palestinian neighbours, but all of the Arab nations.

I think it was David Miliband, the former British foreign minister, who called it at one point the 23-state solution. Basically, we would have to look at the end rather than focusing on the means. Everyone is focusing on the two-state solution, the creation of a Palestinian state, rather than the end, which is peace, prosperity and a better future for all the people of the region.

If the way to get there is through a two-state solution, so be it. But we have to concentrate on where we are going to be the day after. Many American political professors and social scientists have shown that the greater the homogeneity within nations, the lesser likelihood there is of conflict.

If we create two states, one a Jewish State of Israel with as many Jews in that (not to say that there won’t be minorities, of course there will) and a Palestinian state with as many Palestinians in that, they could have good economic corporation and close relations. But, when it comes to voting for the parliament, the people of Israel will vote for the Knesset, and the Palestinian people will vote for a Palestinian parliament. No one will be moved from their home, it will basically be a drawing of boundaries. I don’t say redrawing because there has never been a border on our eastern side.

I saw a poll a couple of years ago, I think it was conducted by the Saban Center, which showed that 40 per cent of Israeli-Arabs would actually be in favour of coming under the sovereignty of a Palestinian state. I’m not convinced that there wouldn’t be at some point a majority, if it was shown that these Israeli-Arabs who would become a part of a Palestinian state wouldn’t lose all of their civic rights – because that’s not what we’re calling for. They wouldn’t lose their places of residence. An Arab who lives in Umm al-Fahm and works in Tel Aviv can continue working in Tel Aviv, they can continue receiving many of their civic benefits, continue shopping and holidaying, or whatever they desire. The difference is the passport they will hold and the ballot box where they will decide on their parliament.

Typically, the party’s base has been a combination of voters on the right who appreciate Lieberman’s hawkish rhetoric and Russian speakers who identify with Lieberman, himself from the former Soviet Union, who has always sought to represent Russian Israelis. Is there still a Russian vote in Israel or is that factor diminished as Russians have become more integrated?

Yisrael Beiteinu certainly does not describe itself as a party of Russian speakers or a Russian party – we consider ourselves a mainstream, Israeli, Zionist party. We still do receive quite a lot of support from the Russian speaking community because as you noted, Avigdor Lieberman and a couple of other high profile members of Knesset are Russian speakers.

We have in the last few years moved away from that purely Russian base. We receive support from mainstream Israelis, religious, non-religious, even from the immigrant communities like the English speaking, the French speaking, and the Spanish speaking community.

A lot of pollsters have talked about post-sectoral voting, and I think to some extent that’s true. But a significant segment of our campaign is still within the Russian speaking community and we still receive quite a lot of support there because we are a party of Aliya (Jewish immigration to Israel). We still talk about Aliya, we still hold the banner and the flag of Aliya very high, and we are a community that still keeps very close ties with the Diaspora. On our platform there is a proposal to create an international Jewish and Zionist school system – similar to the American international school system and the British international school system – which would really make ties between the Diaspora and Israel that much closer, and encourage a greater connection to Israel, Zionism and Judaism.

Although Avigdor Lieberman and the party are obviously identified on the right, it has a history of entering both right and centre-left governments. Yisrael Beiteinu served in the Olmert coalition for some of its term between 2006 and 2009, for example. Lieberman has said he won’t enter a “left-wing” government, but what does that mean exactly? Does that mean he will only serve in a coalition led by Benjamin Netanyahu? Or are there circumstances under which he would serve under a coalition also led by Isaac Herzog?

I think the foreign minister has been very clear – there has been a lot of pressure on him to suggest at this stage which prime minister he would nominate in front of the president. There is something unseemly, even undemocratic, about trying to form a government before the electorate have even had their say. But he has been very adamant that he’s not ruling anyone out.

It’s clear that Yisrael Beiteinu sits comfortably on the right in the nationalist camp. But more important than where we sit and who we’ll sit with is the question: what are the principles of the next government? I think that’s where it will be decided if Yisrael Beiteinu will join the government.

We’ve set very clear red lines. One of them is that we have to go for a more regional agreement as part of solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Another is if there is talk of rolling back the reforms we’ve made, on contributing to the state, on integrating the Arab and ultra-Orthodox communities into the army and the work force – these are red lines which will necessitate Yisrael Beiteinu sitting in the opposition.

Do you think that the party leader, Avigdor Lieberman, hopes or expects to maintain his role as foreign minister?

He said recently that he would actually like to take up the defence ministry. He has a good record of being part of the security cabinet for a number of years. He was the chairman of the foreign affairs and defence committee in the Knesset and he was strategic affairs minister, so I think he has a lot of experience and will definitely make a suitable defence minister in the next government.