The visit to Israel of Federica Mogherini, the High Representative of the European Union (EU) for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, is meant to revive the EU’s involvement in the so-called “Middle-East peace process.” “The status quo” is not an option, declared Mrs. Mogherini ahead of her visit. Among EU members, France is actively promoting a new Security Council resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The French initiative would define the former armistice line of 1949-1967 between Israel and Jordan as an international border between Israel and a Palestinian state; it would designate Jerusalem as the capital of both Israel and a Palestinian state; and it would call for “a fair solution” to the issue of Palestinian refugees. Such a resolution, if adopted, would in effect completely endorse the Palestinian position and sideline Israel’s, and it would constitute a grave departure from Security Council Resolution 242.

The former armistice line between Israel and Jordan never was, and was never meant to become, an international border. Resolution 242 does not demand an Israeli withdrawal to that armistice line in exchange for peace – only a withdrawal “from territories” in a way that would provide Israel and its neighbors with “secure and recognized boundaries.” The 1949 armistice line cannot possibly be considered a secure boundary, since it created a 15-kilometer narrow “waist” between Israel and Jordan, surrounding Jerusalem and overlooking Tel Aviv from mountainous heights. As for Jerusalem, it is not mentioned at all in Resolution 242.

Resolution 242 calls for “a just settlement of the refugee problem,” apparently making the proposed French resolution redundant. But the French proposal makes two radical changes regarding the refugee issue. First, it only refers to “Palestinian refugees.” What is meant by “refugees” in Resolution 242, however, is both the 600,000 Palestinian refugees from Israel and the 900,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries. As the US ambassador to the UN in 1967, Judge Arthur Goldberg, explained after the adoption of 242, this resolution “refers both to Arab and Jewish refugees, for about an equal number of each abandoned their homes as a result of the several wars.” Moreover, what 242 means by “refugees” are the actual Arab and Jewish refugees of the Arab-Israeli wars, not their descendants.

The Palestinians, however, claim that the status of refugee applies to all descendants of the 1948 refugees. Even though there is no legal ground and no historic precedent for such a claim, it has become accepted in today’s “newspeak” and, apparently, by French diplomats. Therefore, according to the Palestinians and to the French, a “fair solution” must be found not for the Jewish refugees, not for the actual Palestinian refugees, but for the descendants of the Palestinian refugees (which number about 5 million according to UNRWA).

The French resolution does not expect the Palestinians to abandon this ridiculous claim, which has been the main reason for the failure of the “peace process” for the past two decades. When Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas explained to former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2008 why he did not accept the peace offer of then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, he said that he could not abandon the “right of return” (as reported by Rice in her memoirs “No Higher Honor”). The French resolution makes no demand of the Palestinians, leaving open the “right of return” issue, even though this fantasy was the excuse used by both Yasser Arafat (in 2000) and by Mahmoud Abbas (in 2008) for not signing a peace agreement with Israel.

In a meeting I had this week with a delegation of French parliamentarians, I asked them if they had a solution to the conflict in Cyprus. Their answer was a clear “no.” I also asked them if they weren’t “tired” of the 40-year Turkish occupation of Cyprus (an EU member). Their answer was also “no.” And so when I asked them how they envisioned the future of Cyprus, they explained that the “status quo” was the only option. When I tried to understand why they washed their hands of the Cyprus conflict while being obsessed with the Israeli-Palestinian one, their answer was no less amazing: “Because the conflict in Cyprus doesn’t produce instability.”

Now, the Middle-East is the most unstable region in the world, with people killing each other, with countries imploding, and with Iran and ISIS filling the void. Yet the French can think of nothing more urgent than establishing a failed state in the midst of the only stable and successful country of this war zone.

As long as France and the EU do not drop the so-called “right of return” from their diplomatic initiatives, the Israeli-Palestinian status quo will not only continue, but it will also be the only realistic option – just like in Cyprus.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempt to expediently change a basic law for the mere sake of distributing fictitious government jobs is worthy of a banana republic, just as his effort last year to dissolve the presidency because of his dislike for the front runner was an embarrassment.

In March 2014, the government passed the so-called “governance law” with the declared intention of ending the legendary instability of Israeli politics. The law raised the Knesset eligibility threshold from 2% to 3.25%; it limited the number of government ministers to 18; and it forbade the appointment of ministers without portfolio. At first glance, all three changes are welcome: the Knesset has an unusually high number of small political parties; Israeli governments include unnecessary and almost comical ministries (such as a “Minister for the Negev Desert and for the Galilee” and a “Minister for Senior Citizens”); and ministers without portfolios are a waste of the taxpayer money. Yet the “governance law” made Israel even less governable. This law should be repealed entirely because it is counterproductive, but it should not be partially amended out of political expediency.

As I predicted in a previous article, raising the eligibility threshold has made Israeli politics more unstable still because it reduces the coalition options of prospective prime ministers and because it increases the extortion power of mid-size parties. This was confirmed by the recent elections. Had the threshold been maintained at 2%, Eli Ishay’s Yahad party would have entered the Knesset with three seats, which would have increased Netanyahu’s coalition options and spared him his current razor-thin (and unsustainable) 61-seat majority in the 120-member legislature. Because there are no more “micro-parties” in the Knesset, Netanyahu was left without an alternative after being stabbed in the back by Avigdor Lieberman. And once Netanyahu was hung out to dry, Jewish Home leader Nafatli Bennett was able to extort him.

Higher eligibility thresholds have proven counterproductive is other countries, as well. In Germany, for instance, the eligibility threshold for the Bundestag is 5%. In the 2013 federal elections, the Liberal party did not pass it, leaving Angela Merkel without her natural partner and without a coherent coalition. She had no other choice but to form an unnatural coalition with the Social Democrats.

Reducing the number of ministers has also made matters worse, because in coalition politics the best way to prevent lawmakers from voting against the government is to have them join it. The second Netanyahu government (2009-2013) was stable precisely because it was inflated. Does that mean that inflated governments are a good thing? No, but they are a necessary evil in a dysfunctional political system such as ours. The “governance law” treated the symptom instead of the illness. The illness is called pure proportional representation. Rather than reforming the voting system for the Knesset, the “governance law” took away one of the most efficient ways of circumventing the chronic instability produced by pure proportional representation.

This is not the first time that Israel has conceived an ill-advised reform of its dysfunctional political system. In 1992, the Knesset passed a law that was also meant to provide stability: direct election of the prime minister (like presidential systems), and separate ballots for political parties. With such double voting, people lost the incentive to choose between Labor and Likud because the identity of the future prime minister was no longer determined by the size of his party. As a result, the number of small parties increased, and the directly-elected prime minister had to handle more unruly coalitions than in the past (the law was repealed in 2003).

I am not making the case against reforms, but against bad ones. Israel’s political system is unstable and does need to be fixed, but the right way. Even the chronically unstable Italy finally figured it out.

Italy’s political system was also characterized by a nearly comical political spectacle of musical chairs when its voting system was nearly pure proportional representation between 1946 and 1993. But thanks to the determination of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, the Italian parliament just approved a reform that might finally introduce political stability to Italy. In a nutshell, the new law will give a party that wins 40% of the vote bonus seats in order to form a majority of 340 in the 630-seat lower house (if no party hits the target, a run-off will be held between the two biggest ones).

So Italy offers a glimpse of hope, but then again electoral reform requires an ingredient which Israel currently lacks: leadership.

This week marks the 70th anniversary of the capitulation of Nazi Germany. Such a historical date provides an opportunity to ponder the past and to contemplate the future. “Long live the cause of freedom! God save the King!” proclaimed Winston Churchill, the ultimate hero of the war, on the 7th of May 1945. Back in January 1942, Churchill declared in front of the US Congress: “If we had kept together after the last war, if we had taken common measures for our safety, this renewal of the curse would never have fallen upon us. Do we not owe it to ourselves, to our children, to all of mankind, to make sure that these catastrophes do not engulf us for a third time?”

Seventy years later, can we confidently say that the renewal of the curse will never fall upon us? The victors of 1945 are nearly as divided today as they were after the surrender of their common foe. The leaders of America, Britain and France will pointedly be absent from Russia’s victory celebrations on May 9. Russia and the West are at odds over Ukraine and Iran, and Russia’s celebrations will turn into a show of might and defiance. Britain has become a marginal international player, France is struggling with economic paralysis, and America is wary of military confrontation.

Critics of the emerging agreement over Iran’s nuclear program often compare it to the 1938 Munich accords. The 1925 Locarno Treaties are probably more accurate an analogy. In those treaties, Britain and France agreed to “reintegrate” Germany into the international community in exchange for a German commitment to stop challenging the borders imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. In truth, however, Germany was only asked to recognize its western borders but not its eastern ones. As Polish diplomat Józef Beck declared at the time: “Germany was officially asked to attack the east, in return for peace in the west.”

Germany’s then-foreign minister, Gustav Stresemann, brilliantly fooled the West. On the one hand, he claimed that a weak Germany would expose Western Europe to the dangers of Soviet bolshevism. On the other hand, he initiated a policy of rapprochement with the Soviet Union. Were Britain and France not aware of Stresemann’s deviousness? They were, and yet they decided not to confront Germany. The ultimate reason for this self-imposed restraint was provided by French foreign minister Aristide Briand: “My foreign policy is dictated by our birthrates,” he famously said. In other words, France felt too weak to confront Germany. Yet France had no illusions about the Locarno Treaties; indeed, it started planning the Maginot Line shortly after their signature.

Ultimately, the Second World War erupted because Western democracies did not have the will to confront Germany even as they had the power to do so. The Jewish people became one of the main victims of this unfolding tragedy. Winston Churchill had much sympathy and admiration for the Jews, and the war against Hitler would never have been won without him. But he lost the 1945 election at the height of his glory. The new Labor government of Clement Attlee did all it could to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state, even as the horrors of the Holocaust were being revealed and as Jewish survivors were trying to reach the Promised Land.

Today, Jews are no longer at the mercy of world powers, but Israel’s fate is influenced by international politics, as it always will be. There is still a price to be paid for the cowardice and blindness of others, but sovereignty and power make that price affordable.

As Israel’s political parties were negotiating the guidelines of the next government coalition, the Likud party raised the issue of judicial reform with the intention of changing the way Supreme Court judges are appointed. While this is a domestic issue and a legitimate matter of debate in an open society, the European Union expressed concern (according to Israel’s Channel 2 news) about Likud’s proposal.

The EU’s unsolicited opinion about what is strictly a domestic Israeli matter stems from both arrogance and ignorance. From arrogance, because the way Israel decides to appoint its judges is none of the EU’s business. From ignorance, because in most European countries and other western democracies, the executive and legislative branches have more influence over the appointment of judges than in Israel.

Since Israel lacks a written constitution, the separation of powers between the three branches of government was never clearly delineated. Israel’s Basic Laws outline the powers of the three branches, but since the early 1990s the judicial branch has unilaterally and dramatically expanded its powers by allowing itself to repeal legislation, by turning the legal opinions of the attorney general into instructions which the government must obey, and by granting a de facto veto power to the judiciary over the appointment of Supreme Court judges. As a result, Israel’s judiciary is both overpowered and self-appointed.

In Israel, Supreme Court judges are appointed by a committee composed of three sitting Supreme Court judges, of two representatives of the Israeli Bar Association, of two members of Knesset (one from the opposition and one from the coalition), and of two government ministers (including the Justice Minister). In 2008, the law was amended so as to require the support of all committee members taking part in the vote, minus two. Indeed, a candidate needs the support of seven committee members to be elected. Since the Supreme Court has three representatives on the committee, it has a de facto veto power over the appointment of its new members (especially since the three judges can almost always count on the support of the two representatives from the Bar). On the surface, therefore, the committee is balanced. In effect, Supreme Court judges themselves decide who will join their ranks.

By granting such power to the judiciary over the appointment of Supreme Court judges, Israel is unique among Western democracies. In other Western democracies, the supreme bodies entitled to repeal legislation are appointed by the executive and legislative branches.

In the United States, Supreme Court judges are appointed by the president, and their appointment must be approved by the Senate. In Canada and in Australia, the Prime Minister and the Justice Minister have the final say on the appointment of Supreme Court judges. In Japan, Supreme Court judges are selected by the government and formally appointed by the Emperor (Supreme Court appointments must be approved every ten years by referendum).

The same goes for Europe. In Germany, Federal Constitutional Court judges are appointed by the legislative branch (the Bundestag and the Bundesrat). In France, the Conseil constitutionnel is composed of former Presidents of the Republic and of other members appointed by the executive and legislative branches, i.e. the president of the Republic, the Speaker of the National Assembly and the Speaker of the Senate. In Holland, Supreme Court judges are appointed by the government and by the Parliament. In Austria, members of the Constitutional Court are appointed by the government upon the Parliament’s recommendation. In Spain, most of the twelve members of the Constitutional Court are appointed by the legislative and executive branches: eight by the legislative, two by the executive, and two by a judicial council which is itself selected by the parliament. In Portugal, of the thirteen members of the Constitutional Court, ten are appointed by the parliament and three by a judicial council itself selected by the parliament.

Only in Britain, like in Israel, are justices and representatives from the Bar also involved in the appointment of Supreme Court judges (since the establishment of the court in 2009). But Britain’s Supreme Court does not repeal laws; it can only recommend to parliament the amendment of laws. In Israel, by contrast, the Supreme Court unilaterally granted itself the power to repeal laws.

The reform proposed by Likud (and vetoed by Moshe Kahlon, who himself had co-signed a 2007 Knesset bill which was intended to introduce some change in the appointment of Supreme Court judges) would have made Israel’s procedure more similar to Europe’s. There is, therefore, something intriguing and inexplicable in the fact that the EU expresses “concern” when Israel tries to adopt the European way of appointing Supreme Court judges.

In October 2014 China established, together with other Asian countries, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). The creation of the AIIB was a consequence of China’s exasperation at America’s refusal to reform the Bretton Woods institutions (i.e. the International Monetary Fund, or IMF, and the World Bank) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). For years, China has asked to reform the IMF and the World Bank so as to reflect the global clout of the Chinese economy. But the US Congress is adamant not to yield influence, within institutions dominated by America, to a country it perceives as a threat. As for the ADB, Japan has more voting rights there than China, even though China is Asia’s biggest economy. Since China owns the world’s largest foreign-exchange reserves, it can afford to build alternative institutions and to bypass the United States.

The creation of the AIIB clearly indicates that Asia’s balance of power is swinging to China’s advantage, for this is the first time that America is unable to thwart the creation of a rival Asian financial institution. After the Asian financial crisis of 1997, for example, the United States blocked the creation of a proposed Asian Monetary Fund (AMF). Nearly two decades later, China’s will has prevailed.

Despite its intensive lobbying, America has not been able to convince its allies to stay out of the AIIB. In March 2015, Britain, France, Germany and Italy announced their intention to join the AIIB as founding shareholders. In Asia, major US allies such as South Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, and Thailand have announced that they will join the AIIB despite Washington’s pressures. Even Japan and Australia, which had originally indicated that they would not become AIIB members, are likely to join soon. In the Middle East, Israel just added its name to the list of “rebels” by submitting its application to the AIIB.

Israel’s decision to join the AIIB is but another indication of a growing Israeli readiness to defy US President Barack Obama. The looming agreement between the Obama administration and Iran raises concerns in Israel about America’s reliability. While China will never replace America as Israel’s strategic ally, Israel is definitely taking some eggs out of the American basket.

The Obama administration must understand that it cannot enjoy the best of two worlds. It cannot refuse to grant China more influence within the Bretton Woods institutions and expect China to stay still. It cannot abandon its allies and expect them not to develop alternative ties. As Jewish Agency Chairman (and former prisoner of Zion) Natan Sharansky recently argued in a Washington Post op-ed, America under Obama suffers from “a tragic loss of moral self-confidence.”

When US leaders were dealing with the Soviet Union, Sharansky explains, “They felt they were speaking in the name of their people and the free world as a whole, while the leaders of the Soviet regime could speak for no one but themselves and the declining number of true believers still loyal to their ideology. But in today’s postmodern world, when asserting the superiority of liberal democracy over other regimes seems like the quaint relic of a colonialist past, even the United States appears to have lost the courage of its convictions.”

Because the United States seems to have lost the courage of its convictions, it is losing the confidence of its allies. Instead of trying to lobby Western countries (including Israel) not to join the AIIB, America should convince its allies that it is reliable and determined.

When America displays moral relativism and weakness, there are consequences. China’s success with the AIIB is one of them, and Israel made the right decision by joining this new bank.

Israel’s position in today’s Middle East is somewhat similar to that of France in Europe during the Thirty Years’ War, in that it is surrounded by neighbors who kill each other for religious reasons. As opposed to Cardinal Richelieu, however, Israeli leaders don’t need to betray foreign coreligionists for the sake of “raison d’État” (national interest). In today’s parlance, Realpolitik has replaced raison d’État, but both terms express the same policy of which Richelieu was a master: the interests of the state precede moral considerations. Richelieu was a cynic, no doubt, but at least he knew how to identity and defend his country’s interests. The same cannot be said of France’s current foreign minister, Laurent Fabius.

Fabius recently made a point of expressing support for Saudi strikes in Yemen, and he also indicated that France would support an upcoming United Nations Security Council resolution on Palestinian statehood. Both moves show the trickiness and pitfalls of selecting “good guys” in the Middle East, not least because embarrassing details were recently revealed about the involvement of Saudi Arabia and of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in terrorism.

Iran’s ruthless attempt to take control of Yemen should indeed be resisted, but the Saudis are hardly freedom fighters. They might be the least of two evils, but evils they are. Two days before Fabius’ official visit to Riyadh, lawyers representing Saudi Arabia filed papers in Manhattan’s federal court asking the judge to reject claims by families of victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that the Saudi government “directly and knowingly” helped the hijackers who blew the Twin Towers. According to al-Qaida member Zacarias Moussaoui (who is serving a life prison sentence for conspiring with the 9/11 hijackers), Saudi Arabia did not cut ties with al-Qaida and with its ringleader Osama Bin Laden after 1994. Lawyers for the families of 9/11 victims claim that they have amassed new evidence suggesting that the Saudi government, or senior Saudi officials, individually funded al-Qaida. While this claim still needs to be fully substantiated, describing Saudi Arabia as a pro-Western ally is a fraud.

The same goes for the PLO. At the United Nations Security Council, France is working on a resolution that would impose the establishment of a Palestinian state along the 1949 armistice lines between Israel and Jordan, including in east Jerusalem, as well as a “fair” solution to the refugees issue. France insists that it is promoting a Palestinian state on behalf of the PLO (“the good guys”) and not on behalf of Hamas (“the bad ones”). This, despite the fact that Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas added Hamas to his government last summer; that Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian elections; that Hamas would likely win the first (and last) elections held in a newly established Palestinian state; that Hamas’s regional backer is Iran; and that Iran has declared that it would actively arm a Palestinian state once it is established in the West Bank. So France is both supporting the anti-Iranian coalition in Yemen and the establishment of an Iranian base west of the Jordan River.

Attempts to invent a dichotomy between the PLO and Hamas are absurd not only because both organizations jointly run the PA, but also because the PLO has never ceased its terrorist activities –a fact that was also brought to the attention of a New York court recently. Less than two months ago, a New York jury ruled that the PLO and the PA were the catalysts for terrorist attacks in Israel between 2002 and 2004, and it ordered them to pay $218.5 million to the victims and their families.

Fabius’ two recent Middle East initiatives defy logic, and both rely on assumptions whose flimsiness was revealed (or is being disclosed) in US courts. “Deception is the knowledge of kings,” wrote Richelieu in his Political Testament. In the Middle East, this knowledge is not the privilege of royals.

British historian Edward Hallett Carr is generally known by international relations students as a theoretician who advocated realism in foreign policy. What Carr meant by realism was that there should be no moral dimension to foreign policy, and that statesmen must treat reality as it is and not as they wish it were. Yet the way Carr looked at reality was so delusional that it bordered on insanity: he supported Hitler’s claims and Chamberlain’s appeasement policy in the 1930s; he claimed that Britain could not win the war against Germany; and he praised Soviet communism as a highly successful system which the rest of the world would eventually emulate. While Carr’s writing was mostly nonsensical, he did get one thing right: states are motivated by interests and only evoke morality to justify their foreign policy.

European diplomacy is a case in point. The French and British bombed Gaddafi and spared Assad because Libya is an oil state while Syria is not – and yet Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron claimed that the 2011 NATO operation in Libya was motivated by humanitarian concerns. European leaders and diplomats would have us believe that their foreign policy is based on principles such as human rights and self-determination, yet they dare not criticize occupiers and human rights violators whose business they need. Saudi Arabia can torture bloggers because its oil is indispensable. China can occupy Tibet because it is a world power. Russia can occupy Georgia because no one is going to risk a nuclear war for the independence of this former Soviet republic. Turkey can occupy Cyprus and deny the Kurds their independence because Turkey is a valuable trade partner with temperamental leaders.

European diplomats typically retort that Israel gets different treatment because, as a democracy, it is rightfully judged by higher standards. According to this argument, Turkey is democratic enough to be a NATO member and a potential EU one, but not democratic enough to be asked to end its occupation of Cyprus and to give the Kurds a state.

The gap between theory and practice in European diplomacy was recently confirmed by Sweden’s Middle East policy. In October 2014, Sweden became the first European country to recognize the virtual “State of Palestine.” As a reward, Sweden’s foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom, was invited to the March 2015 meeting of the Arab League. Wallstrom prepared a speech in which she said that human rights should be respected in the Arab world too, and she sent a draft to her hosts for review. The speech was vetoed and canceled by Saudi Arabia. The Arab League explained in a statement that Wallstrom’s speech would have been an offense to Islam.

The fury didn’t end there. Saudi Arabia announced that it would not issue new business visas to Swedes, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) recalled its ambassador to Sweden. Swedish businessmen started getting nervous and asked their government to apologize to the Saudis. Not that the Swedish government needed to be convinced: it is running for the 2017 UN Security Council bid, and the 22 votes of the Arab League at the General Assembly are critical. So Wallstrom decided to apologize for mentioning human rights. On March 20 she said that she had never meant to criticize Islam and that Sweden wants to preserve good relations with Saudi Arabia.

In a way, the Palestinians have been the victims of their success: they have been so good at marketing their jihad as a struggle for human rights that the Europeans ended up believing them. So when Sweden recognized Palestine in the name of human rights, its leaders couldn’t understand why talking about human rights should offend Islam. The explanation, of course, is that you cannot duly play the role of the useful idiot and then be surprised to be treated like one.

If Europe is on Israel’s case, it is not because of human rights or because of democracy. It is because of the geopolitical value of the Arab world and of the electoral weight of European Muslims. Simply put, getting on Israel’s case pays. Precisely because Sweden and its European partners stick to their guns only when doing so does not affect their economic interests, it is hard to take their sermons seriously. The unmistakable conclusion from Europe’s behavior is that once Israel becomes a natural gas exporter, it will be treated differently. Even E.H. Carr could have understood that.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement on election day about Arab voters was inappropriate, as he himself admitted by apologizing. But Barack Obama had no business commenting on what is an internal Israeli matter. You would think that after seven years of counter-productive Middle East policy, Obama would have learned his lesson. Not at all: in his case, nemesis nurtures hubris.

The Obama Administration is incensed at Israel these days. The President himself publicly reprimanded Israel’s Prime Minister for his election day comment, and expressed concern for the future of Israeli democracy. Obama’s Chief-of-Staff, Denis McDonough, declared at the J-Street conference this week that “an occupation that has lasted 50 years must end.” State Department Spokesperson Mary Harf stated that it is for Israel to “demonstrate commitment to a two-state solution” and hinted that the Obama Administration does not trust Netanyahu: “We just don’t know what to believe at this point”, she said.

Barack Obama’s concerns about Israeli democracy hardly sound genuine in light of recent revelations about his undercover attempts to influence the outcome of Israeli elections. Israeli journalist Avi Issacharoff just revealed in The Times of Israel that a senior Israeli official speaking on condition of anonymity disclosed that the Obama Administration was directly involved in an attempt to topple the Israeli Prime Minister. On March 22, Republican strategist John McLaughlin declared on “The Cats Roundtable” radio show that “President Obama and his allies were playing in the election to defeat Prime Minister Netanyahu”, using US taxpayers’ money to fund the V15 campaign against Netanyahu, a campaign guided by former Obama political operative Jeremy Bird.

Obama’s attempt to undermine Netanyahu went beyond V15. On March 6, less than two weeks before Election Day, Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea published a document revealing that Netanyahu had allegedly agreed to a Palestinian state along the pre-1967 lines with land swaps and Israeli recognition of Palestinian claims over East Jerusalem. In other words, that Netanyahu had agreed to concessions he publicly opposes. Who could possibly have leaked such a document if not the Obama Administration? Precisely because Obama was trying to turn right-wing voters away from Netanyahu with this leak, Netanyahu had no choice but to reassure those voters by declaring that a Palestinian state would not be established on his watch. To echo Mary Harf, we just don’t know what to believe at this point: two weeks ago, the Obama Administration wanted us to believe that Netanyahu was a starry-eyed peacenik; now it is warning us that he is a peace renegade.

While the Obama Administration is lashing out at Netanyahu after unsuccessfully trying to prevent his reelection, the Palestinians keep getting a free pass. Obama has never demanded from Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to demonstrate his commitment to the two-state solution, nor has he ever threatened to reevaluate his policy toward the PA, despite Abbas’ alliance with Hamas; despite the absence of elections in the PA since 2006; despite Abbas’ failure to respond to former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s 2008 peace offer; despite Abbas’ rejection of Hillary Clinton’s 2011 peace proposal, and his rejection of John Kerry’s last year; despite Abbas’ outrageous charge of genocide against Israel from the UN General Assembly podium; despite the anti-Semitic incitement in Abbas’ state-controlled media; despite Abbas’ repeated declarations that no Jew shall be tolerated in the Palestinian state; despite Abbas’ insistence that he can waive his own “right of return” to Safed but not that of five million Palestinians to Israel. Indeed, Mary Harf has never expressed difficulty in figuring out “what to believe” between Abbas’ conciliatory statements in English and his bellicose ones in Arabic.

What Netanyahu explained in his NBC interview after being reelected makes perfect sense. “I don’t want a one-state solution. I want a sustainable, peaceful two-state solution. But for that, circumstances have to change,” he said. And current circumstances include Abbas’ alliance with Hamas, Iran’s warning that it will arm the future Palestinian state, and the fact that the Obama Administration lets the Palestinians get away with everything. So when Denis McDonough says that the occupation must end, it is for him to provide a credible alternative. And, absent US pressures on the Palestinians, there is no credible alternative. Dennis Ross argued inThe New York Times on January 4, 2015, that if the Europeans are serious about achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians, they should “stop giving the Palestinians a pass” and “raise the cost of saying no.” Well said, Dennis. But what about the Obama Administration?

When I moved to Israel as a graduate student and enrolled at the Hebrew University, I was struck by the popularity of French post-modern philosophers among Israeli academics. Having grown up in France, I had read the likes of Foucault and Derrida as a teenager and treated them for what they were: smart Alecks who had mastered the French art of playing with words to say nothing, with elegance. But then I realized why some academics are so fond of French deconstructionism: when your ideas keep being contradicted by reality, all you need is to claim that reality is “constructed” and, therefore, irrelevant. Jean Baudrillard pushed this technique to its limits during the 1991 Gulf War. Before the war, he claimed that “The Gulf War will not take place.” As the war broke out, Baudrillard published a second article titled “The Gulf war is not taking place.” And after the end of the war, Baudrillard’s authored a third article called “The Gulf war did not take place.”

Two days before Israel’s March 17 elections, Haaretz political analyst Barak Ravid wrote that “If Kulanu ends up with 12 or 13 seats on Tuesday night, it would mean that Likud would drop to below the 20 seats. Under such circumstances, all that would be left for Netanyahu to do is resign even before the final vote tally is in or wait until senior Likud officials come out against him and remove him as their leader.” And Ravid concluded: “The prime minister’s crash landing with reality appears unavoidable.” To his credit, Ravid didn’t “pull a Baudrillard” by claiming that Netanyahu didn’t actually win. But his colleague Gideon Levy knows just how not to lose an election again: “We need to replace the people,” he wrote in his Haaretz editorial the day after the election.

While most pre-election polls predicted a four-seat lead for Labor over Likud, Likud ended-up with a six-seat lead over Labor. In the outgoing 19th Knesset, Likud had 18 seats, Avigdor Lieberman’s Israel Beitenu 13, Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid 19, and Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home 12. After the break-up of the Likud-Israel Beitenu bloc of 31 seats, and with the rivalry between coalition partners growing, the government had become unmanageable. Yair Lapid’s party was larger than the prime minister’s, and Lapid was able to impose his will on the government – to the point, indeed, that Netanyahu decided to go for broke by calling early elections. Netanyahu’s gamble has produced an outcome of which he himself hadn’t dreamed: Likud ended-up with 30 seats, Lapid will be exiled to the opposition benches, and Bennett and Lieberman (now with 8 and 6 seats, respectively) will crawl to the coalition on Bibi’s terms. It is the political jackpot of the century.

Netanyahu now can easily put together a stable coalition composed of Likud (30), Kulanu (10), Jewish Home (8), Shas (7), United Torah Judaism (6), and Israel Beitenu (6). With 67 seats, Netanyahu has a wide enough coalition. Such a coalition would also be stable as there are no major ideological disagreements among those six parties. Kulanu is indeed more dovish than its future coalition partners, but it ran exclusively on an economic platform and is unlikely to make a fuss about the “absence of a political horizon” regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Shas and United Torah Judaism will demand an amendment to the military draft law passed under the previous government, but the secular-minded Lieberman is hardly in a bargaining position to oppose it. This is Netanyahu’s dream coalition, and it will likely last for four years.

As for the prediction that the Jewish Home party might overtake Likud, it has proven completely fanciful. Some poll predicted 18 seats for the Jewish Home, sending candidates running for the party’s primary elections. In the end, the party imploded like a soufflé. There are two technical reasons for that: a. Many potential Jewish Home voters cast their vote for Likud for fear of seeing Labor enjoy a strong lead and form the next government; b. Jewish Home lost probably three seats to its rival “Yahad” party, which in the end didn’t pass the electoral threshold. But the underlying cause of Jewish Home’s retreat is that Naftali Bennett’s strategy is delusional. Jewish Home is a religious, sectorial party and, therefore, it cannot break the glass ceiling of 10-plus seats. Bennett took a ride on the Jewish Home after leaving Likud, but the core voters (and rabbis) of the Jewish Home will not let him reshape their party in the Likud’s image, even if that means remaining a small party. If Bennett wants to fulfill his political ambitions, he will have to return to the Likud.

Netanyahu has won big time. He must be giggling at Barak Ravid’s crash prediction, paraphrasing and repeating to himself Churchill’s famous line: “Some crash! Some reality!”

Israel’s decision to suspend the transfer of tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority (PA) was met by the latter’s claim that it is about to go bankrupt, as well as by the threat that it would have no choice but to disband itself. US Secretary of State John Kerry has publicly endorsed both the claim and the “threat” of the PA. What I call the “Kerry Rule” (i.e. if he says it, it must be wrong) has been confirmed yet again: the PA is not bankrupt and it will not disband itself.

The PA will not disband itself because its chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, will not kill the cow that he and his cronies have been milking for years. From the moment it was established in 1994, the PA has diverted foreign donations and tax revenues to fill personal bank accounts, to purchase weapons, and to finance incitement and terrorism. The 1994 Paris Agreements put Israel in charge of transferring export tax revenues to the PA, but then-PLO Chief Yasser Arafat asked Israel to transfer the money to a bank account accessible only to him and to his personal advisor Mohammed Rashid. According to Israeli journalists Ehud Ya’ari and Ronen Bergman, some $3 billion were transferred to this account between 1994 and 2000. Arafat used some of this money, among other things, to support his wife’s lavish lifestyle in Paris.

This corruption didn’t abate under Abbas. As former director of the PA’s anti-corruption department Fahmi Shabaneh declared in 2010: “Abbas has surrounded himself with many of the thieves and officials who were involved in theft of public funds and who became icons of financial corruption” (as reported by The Jerusalem Post on 29 January 2010). By dismantling the PA, Abbas and his entourage would have to renounce the millions they siphon every year from foreign aid.

World Bank reports consistently rate the Palestinians as the world’s top per capita recipients of foreign aid. The taxes collected by Israel on behalf of the PA only constitute a fraction of the PA’s budget. By way of comparison, $7.4 billion were pledged to the PA at the December 2007 Paris Conference, while the taxes collected on behalf of the PA by Israel amounted to about $300 million as of July 2007.

A recent paper authored by Prof. Hillel Frisch from Bar-Ilan University’s BESA Center shows that, in 2013 alone, the PA received $2 billion in foreign aid, which means that the average Palestinian received nearly fourteen times more foreign aid per capita than the average Ethiopian ($476 vs. $35). Yet the average Ethiopian is far needier than the average Palestinian: Ethiopia’s GDP per capita is $500, as opposed to $2,800 for the West Bank and Gaza combined. As Frisch notes, these figures are not only discriminatory, they are also inconsistent with the West’s declared policy of struggle against terrorism, since Ethiopia is at the forefront of this struggle, while the Palestinians produce terrorism.

Ethiopia is the largest contributor of forces against the Islamist Harakat al-Shahab in Somalia. The Palestinians, by contrast, intentionally and indiscriminately fire rockets at Israeli civilians and dig tunnels to kidnap and kill Israelis. In April 2011, the Palestinian Authority published a decision officially granting a salary to all Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel for terrorist attacks against Israelis (as reported by Al-Hayat Al-Jadida on April 15, 2011). These salaries are paid by the PA to convicted murderers thanks to foreign aid as well as to the tax revenues collected and transferred by Israel.

The latest row between Israel and the PA over tax revenues provides an opportunity to end a farce that has gone too far for too long. While the tax money collected by Israel on Palestinian exports technically belongs to the PA, Israel cannot reasonably be expected to transfer money that is used to buy weapons and to dig tunnels to kill Israelis, and to pay the salaries of Palestinian terrorists who have murdered Israelis. Foreign donors cannot put pressure on Israel to release those tax revenues without providing guarantees about the use of that money.

When donor countries look the other way or dismiss the evidence of their monies being used for terrorism, incitement, and personal enrichment, they finance the perpetuation of the conflict rather than its resolution. When John Kerry echoes the Palestinians’ manipulative arguments, he not only corroborates the “Kerry Rule.” He also confirms to the Palestinians that they shall never be held responsible for their behavior.