If the Knesset elects Reuven “Ruby” Rivlin as Israel’s president on June 10, he will be the right man at the right time. There is no one more fitting than Rivlin to represent the Greater Land of Israel, the land of the settlers and of self-isolation. There is no time more fitting than this period of diplomatic drought and flood of settlements to bestow Israel's most stately and esteemed role on the person who proclaimed the following on the occasion of the 2012 Independence Day ceremony: “Even in our 64th year of independence, we remember that we were a generation of settlers — and continue to be a generation of settlers.”
Former Knesset Speaker Rivlin is the true face of Israel 2014. He is devoid of pretense, unlike Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who in his landmark Bar-Ilan speech spoke of a two-state solution but has since spared no obstacle to prevent its implementation. Rivlin speaks out against the two-state solution and also votes against any move that even hints at it. Netanyahu was finance minister in the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that voted in favor of Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Since that time, he does not miss an opportunity to present disengagement as a mistake.
As speaker of the 16th Knesset, in 2004 Rivlin lit a torch at the traditional Independence Day ceremony “in honor of the pioneers who [march] before the camp, those who settle the land of our fathers and redeem its earth, from Hanita to Kfar Darom, and from Negba to Kiryat Arba, which is Hebron … and in honor of the State of Israel.” Kfar Darom was a Jewish settlement conquered by the Egyptian army in 1948, rebuilt in 1988 in the heart of a Palestinian population center in the Gaza Strip and evacuated in the 2005 Israeli withdrawal.
Little wonder, then, that Netanyahu tried to extend President Shimon Peres’ term to prevent Rivlin’s election. Rivlin will not travel on Netanyahu’s behalf to the White House to convince the American president that the prime minister is truly willing to withdraw from most of the occupied territories. Rivlin would not have been invited to the Vatican to embrace Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the presence of the pope. World leaders will not come to Jerusalem to celebrate Rivlin’s birthday as they did for Peres as he smiles at the photographers while at Netanyahu’s side, signaling business as usual to the rest of the world.
AL-MONITOR All-Access gives you unlimited access to all our journalism, the full Daily Briefing, exclusive interviews, premium newsletters, and live events — for less than $2/week.
