Israel’s Course Turns To Right

A fiercely divided Israel stood nervously at the edge of a new political era Thursday, with the near certainty Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu would become the country’s new prime minister.

With all votes counted except for 150,000 absentee ballots from soldiers, hospital patients and officials abroad, it appeared Netanyahu’s narrow lead over Prime Minister Shimon Peres would hold.

The prospect of an abrupt end to the land-for-peace deals with Arabs championed by Peres and his slain predecessor, Yitzhak Rabin, reflects a deep split over Israel’s future.

“Intellectuals, businessmen and many others just feel so alienated from the new government,” lamented Avner Cohen, who returned home from his post at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to vote for Peres. “There is an enormous sense of mourning, a deep sense that we lost the country.”

Rabin’s widow, Leah, was so shaken by an impending Netanyahu victory that she told Israel television she thinks only about leaving.

“All I can do is look at where I keep my suitcases and feel like packing them and disappearing from here very quickly. It’s that bad.”

But the majority of Israelis felt the Labor government, first under Rabin and then under Peres, was moving too quickly, making too many concessions with insufficient guarantees from the other side. While Netanyahu aides were quick Thursday to say he will not abandon the peace process, his supporters have made equally clear that they want him to place their security first. That concern was highlighted Thursday with news from Lebanon that four Israeli soldiers had been killed in an ambush.

Candidates quiet

Both Netanyahu, the 46-year-old former ambassador to the United Nations, and Peres, 72, maintained their silence Thursday, with aides saying they felt it inappropriate to comment before the results were final.

Although there existed a chance that those ballots, to be counted today, would swing the race back to Peres, Professor Ira Sharkansky of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University summed up the prevailing view by saying: “In this country we have seen miracles. But it would take a miracle of biblical proportions to give the victory to Peres.”

Netanyahu’s lead was expected to hold because soldiers, who make up most of the uncounted vote, tend to lean to the right and also because he held an 11 percent lead among Israel’s Jews - Peres won heavily among Israel’s Arabs - and nearly all the remaining votes were from Jews.

Netanyahu aides insisted that he considers the pursuit of peace paramount and has every intention of fulfilling commitments made to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat regarding the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Small parties gain

It was unclear whether that included a redeployment in Hebron, one of Judaism’s holiest cities and site of enormous Palestinian-Jewish tension. In the past, Netanyahu has said he would not withdraw Israeli soldiers from there just as he would not allow formation of a Palestinian state.

The looming victory of Netanyahu was not the only far-reaching change signaled by the election returns. For the first time, Israelis voted separately for prime minister and for the Knesset, or parliament, leaving them more inclined to express their preference for smaller parties.

As a result, the new 120-member Knesset looks radically different from the existing one with both Labor and Likud having lost nine to 10 seats each, religious parties having gained considerably and the proimmigrant party of Natan Sharansky taking seven seats. A centrist party called the Third Way took four.

Palestinian goal out of reach

This means that Netanyahu is likely to include large religious blocs in his ruling coalition to reach his needed 61-seat majority. Leading candidates are the National Religious Party and Shas, each with 10 seats, and United Torah Judaism with four.

The likely result will be more power for religious parties in determining such things as the nature of public education in Israel and possibly bus service.

Palestinians understood that Netanyahu’s adamant opposition to an independent Palestinian state meant their long-term goal was now, at least temporarily, out of reach and that could lead to increased disaffection.

“The people might rebel against their authority and there could be an increase in violence,” predicted Khalil Shikaki, director of the Center for Palestinian Research and Studies in the West Bank city of Nablus.

Netanyahu has said he will close PLO offices in Jerusalem and push Palestinians to “keep their obligations” under the peace accord. He says the Israeli military will have freedom of action against Palestinian terrorists, even within areas controlled by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

It is hard to imagine Arafat accepting such Israeli military intervention and still maintaining cordial relations with Netanyahu.

Netanyahu nonetheless maintains that he will offer Palestinians full autonomy in everything except security. As to Syria, he says he will not return the strategic Golan Heights, but would lobby to remove Syria from the US list of states sponsoring terrorism if Damascus stops the activities of Hezbollah guerrillas in south Lebanon.

Thursday, four Israeli soldiers were killed in Hezbollah attacks in south Lebanon, the Israeli army reported. The explosions, 15 minutes apart, heightened tension along Israel’s northern frontier as the country waited for the final result of the elections.

Elsewhere, it also seems unlikely that Syrian President Hafez Assad will consider Netanyahu’s offer especially attractive.

Living on borrowed time

After Rabin’s assassination, Peres, never a beloved figure before, inherited his mantle and became the object of affection for those horrified by the murder of Rabin, especially by an Israeli Jew.

But in some sense, Rabin and Peres were ruling on borrowed time. When a string of suicide bombings by Palestinian militants killed 59 people several months ago, the lead enjoyed by Peres disappeared. Many analysts believe that if Rabin had lived, he too would have lost to Netanyahu.

Others say that Peres and his Labor party failed to frame a clear message and drive it home, the way Netanyahu and Likud did.

Graphic: Israeli election results

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: BENJAMIN NETANYAHU Party: Likud Age: 46 Government position: Leader of conservative bloc of the Knesset Ideology: Netanyahu recently has softened his hard-line approach to relations with the Palestinians, saying he will honor the peace accords. He has insisted that Israel maintain secure borders and not cede land to secure peace with the Palestine Liberation Organization.