Israel Must Move Toward The Center
The man most responsible for Prime Minister Shimon Peres’ defeat really wasn’t Benjamin Netanyahu but Yasser Arafat.
The Israeli election was a vote of no confidence in Palestine Liberation Organization leader Arafat as a credible peace partner. Even more than the Arab suicide bombings, what appalled Israelis was Arafat’s response to them: praising the bombers as holy martyrs and arresting terrorists just after an attack but then quietly releasing them when the foreign TV crews were gone.
True, in recent weeks, Arafat finally did begin restraining the terrorists, but many Israelis were convinced he only was trying to ensure that no bombings threatened Peres’ presumed victory and the further territorial concessions it would bring - and that after the elections, the attacks would resume. For Arafat, fighting terrorism isn’t a commitment but a tactic.
Most Israelis still are prepared to sacrifice strategically vital and historically evocative territories for peace; however, they aren’t prepared to exchange territories for terrorism. The deal Peres offered wasn’t land for peace but, at best, land for the chance of peace - a chance that, in recent months, seemed increasingly remote.
Although both candidates for prime minister promised peace with security, Peres was, in fact, offering peace without security while winner Netanyahu was offering security without peace. The electoral choice was between a visionary, who often seems detached from the Middle East’s brutal reality, and a dreamless pragmatist who accepts that reality as immutable.
Perhaps the Likud right-wing coalition’s most effective campaign strategy simply was to quote Peres in his own words: that “a hundred years of terror are over,” that the personal security of Israelis “has never been better,” that Israel’s “next goal is to join the Arab League.” Peres even predicted an end to war globally, telling one campaign audience, “I prophesy to you that there won’t be wars over territory but competition over new technologies.” But surrounded by neighbors such as Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, Israelis prefer their leaders to be tough politicians, not millenarian prophets.
And yet, Israelis also are wary of right-wing adventurism. The closeness of the vote is a warning from the electorate to proceed rightward - but with caution. The Likud leader has received a mandate to link further Israeli concessions to the Palestinian Authority’s performance in combating terror and even a mandate to initiate attacks against fundamentalist institutions in Arafat-held Gaza in response to any new terrorist attacks. But that’s not the same as a nod to stop negotiations or to renew massive building in West Bank settlements.
Netanyahu will have to contend with powerful right-wing forces within his camp. But there also are strong forces pulling toward the center - that is, toward a West Bank compromise that would cede most of the territory to the Palestinians while concentrating Jewish settlements in regional blocs and preserving Jerusalem under Israeli rule. Two new centrist parties - the Third Way, formed by hawkish disaffected Laborites, and Yisrael Ba-Aliya (“Israel on the way up”), led by former Soviet human-rights prisoner Natan Sharansky - both support that option.
Netanyahu’s instincts, reinforced by his years spent in the United States as a student and later as a diplomat, are more centrist than right wing.
He believes a formal, comprehensive peace between Israel and its neighbors is unrealistic in an inherently unstable and anti-democratic Middle East. Instead, a Netanyahu administration will try to reach de facto arrangements with Arab countries, aiming to reduce tensions rather than create a Peres-style “new Middle East.” Netanyahu also will try to exploit his good personal relations with the Jordanian monarchy to revive the so-called “Jordanian option,” binding the Palestinian entity to that Hashemite kingdom and thereby aborting an independent PLO state.
Netanyahu’s chances of achieving these goals admittedly are slim. His first real crisis will be the future of the West Bank city of Hebron, holy to both Muslims and Jews and home to the most extreme fundamentalists of both faiths.
Peres promised Arafat that the Israeli army would withdraw from most of the city after the elections. Netanyahu, who rightly fears Northern Ireland-style violence if the army is redeployed, already has indicated he will delay withdrawal indefinitely. Should that happen, Arafat justifiably will accuse him of violating the Oslo accords and Netanyahu will face intense international pressure to comply.
Making peace among Jews will be no less daunting. Netanyahu’s immediate challenge is to deflect the despair of the left, which sees in his victory a threat to the country’s very survival - just as the right had viewed the Labor Party’s government.
To create a semblance of national cohesion, he must reclaim not just the political but also the cultural center, reassuring secularists that his coalition with the ultra-Orthodox parties won’t disrupt the delicate balance between Israel’s Jewish and democratic identities. Failure to do so would cause half the nation to view his narrow victory as illegitimate.
xxxx