The election spin: Why are the left trying to hide the debate over a Palestinian state?

The election campaign is marked by an attempt to distract, as if there is no struggle here between right and left. Opposition spokespeople claim that even before October 7, a Palestinian state was off the table. All the more so now – nobody is talking about it anymore, apparently, except for Golan and the marginal Democrats.

But this is deception. The aspiration to promote a kind of "Oslo process" with the help of Saudi Arabia is what drove the Biden administration during the war, and the opposition parties that sided with its positions. "Hopes" for an Arab state in the middle of the country is the background that explains the opposition's criticism of the government today.

In the entrenched reality of discourse, the words "left" and "right" have become today headings for two fundamental views in our struggle with the Arabs over the land. Indeed, this was not always their definition. It distorts their historical social and cultural meaning; but the definition took over the discourse in the three decades between 1967 and 1994.

If so, the words "left" and "right" today denote mainly the attitude toward the Oslo Accords: whoever hopes for the renewal of the vision for two states in the land is left, and whoever thinks this is a nightmare vision is right – and this is the opinion of a large majority of the Jewish public.

When this is the dominant political consciousness, the opposition has a vital interest in blurring its leftism. It blurs it with two spins: one attributes "right-wingness" to parts of the opposition, in the hope of attracting votes from opponents of an Arab state in the heart of the country; the second denies the relevance of the very debate over such a state.

In the first spin, "being right-wing" has become almost a tribal affiliation, and then certain "tribal chiefs," like Bennett and Lieberman, seek support from their supposedly fellow tribesmen.

Bennett apparently failed at this – but Lieberman is succeeding. In the past, he recommended handing over vast territories in the center of the country and in the north to an Arab state, mainly around Highway 6 and Highway 65. He gave an Islamist movement from the Muslim Brotherhood stream control over state budgets for the treatment of Arab citizens.

He joined a coalition that was dependent, in its moves against Hamas, on Islamists close to Hamas. All this does not stop him from appearing as "right-wing," and for this – he hides behind Netanyahu's back. He is the one who negotiated with Mansour Abbas, so say Lieberman's supporters; and he is the one who gave the Bar-Ilan speech in favor of partition into two states – that is, Netanyahu is the one who gives them a right-wing "kosher stamp."

Beyond the ridiculousness of the matter – there is a spin here: not Netanyahu, but the attitude toward the Oslo vision is what defines the right-left division among us. Almost two decades after the Bar-Ilan speech, one can judge its purpose clearly.

Through conditions like the demand to recognize the state of the Jewish people and its control over all border crossings, for example, Netanyahu managed to block Obama's attempt to force Israel to establish an Arab state in the center of the country. And Netanyahu did indeed try to break the "class boycott" that Lapid imposed on the Likud under his leadership through a failed and harmful maneuver regarding Abbas. This does not mean he would have handed over the Negev to Islamist management.

But the more harmful spin lies in the claim that the Oslo vision is irrelevant. It was very relevant in the war. Also because of it, the General Staff stuck to raids, and recoiled from a conquest that would thwart the vision of partitioning the land. Therefore, the opposition parties wanted to end the war, even at the price of defeat. Therefore, most of them wanted to return the Palestinian Authority to Gaza.

This is the famous "political habit." Therefore, the opposition aspired to prevent a "regional war." Most of the opposition parties preferred that a political opening be created for the establishment of an Arab state in the center of the country, in exchange for normalization with Saudi Arabia. A "regional war" does not fit with this.

The opposition is trying to hide the fact that the main points of its positions in the war stemmed from the aspiration to renew the path to an Arab state in the center of the country. One must not get dizzy from this spin. The danger of an Arab state in Samaria, opposite our population centers, has not passed.

Prof. Avi Bareli is a historian at Ben-Gurion University.