On the apparent impossibility of governing Israel:

The Breaking of Prime Ministers

Yacov Ben Efrat

On December 21, the Knesset decided to hold early elections, bringing down the ramshackle government that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had slapped together in 1996. The wonder is that it stood as long as it did, given its strange mix of pro-Oslo moderates and anti-Oslo right-wingers. The PM had spent most of his time and energy propping up his house of cards from one side or another. Unhampered by principle, he was able to succeed as long as he could fend off decision. At the Wye Plantation in Maryland, however, Bibi ran out of rope. If he did not sign (ceding additional pieces of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority), he would jeopardize not only American support for Israel, but more to the point: he would lose his own moderates, both those in his government and those in the wider electorate, at whom he had aimed his election slogan, "Peace with Security". On the other hand, if he did go ahead at Wye, he would lose his most solid base of support: the extreme right – he would have to depend, in fact, on the backing of his arch rival, Labor! Netanyahu won big concessions at Wye. He imposed humiliating security conditions on the Palestinian Authority (PA), tying each Israeli pullback to their fulfillment. He ensured close supervision by the CIA. He got Yasser Arafat's agreement to re-abolish the Palestinian National Charter. He limited his commitment to free Palestinians held in his jails, not even distinguishing between political prisoners and petty thieves. None of this helped Netanyahu, however, against the settlers. Their representatives voted against him in the Knesset. The Labor Party gave him, initially, a safety net for approval of the Wye agreement. (If Labor hadn't done so, it would have appeared opportunist, sacrificing its principles in exchange for a power grab.) On seeing the right wing desert him, however, Netanyahu began to waffle. He postponed the second stage in the implementation of Wye, thus giving Labor an excuse to withdraw the net.

The Palestinian track
Ironically, even while losing ground in the Knesset, Netanyahu was making significant inroads with the Palestinians. The Wye Memorandum had put an end to their long-standing rejection of him; now that he had moved toward the center, they thought, he was likely to be around a long time. Ariel Sharon, his new foreign minister, was laying the bricks for the final-status agreement with the same vigor that he had once demonstrated in laying the bricks for the settlements. The principles of this final agreement could be detected in a speech which Yasser Arafat made before the Swedish parliament on December 5. Arafat's words were reassuringly peaceful. He did not demand an Israeli pullback to the borders of 1967. He refrained from mentioning the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland. He talked about a unified Jerusalem, in which all would be free to worship, but he did not say anything about the issue of sovereignty there. He emphasized how well he understood Israel's security needs, and he guaranteed that the Palestinians would not join alliances against it.

The time seems ripe, then, for final agreement. The PA is flexible on all fronts. As for Israel, at least two thirds of its citizens, from the Likud as well as Labor, support the Oslo process. Why then can't the two major Israeli parties join hands down the road to peace?

A Chronic Crisis of Governance.
It is not the political program that divides the two major parties. It is the long-standing struggle for power. This struggle began in 1977, when the Likud first managed to break Labor's hold on government. Since then the situation has been one of chronic crisis. After enmeshing the country in the Lebanon War and racking up three-digit inflation, Menachem Begin suffered a nervous breakdown and resigned, a broken man, in 1983. The next year the two big parties combined in a national unity government (rotating between Yitzhak Shamir and Shimon Peres). The elections of 1988 (in the midst of the intifada) produced merely another national-unity government. Labor left it, however, in 1990, when Shamir proved too rigid. Two years later, with hard-liner Yitzhak Rabin at its head, it returned to power, but just barely. Labor depended on the votes of the five Arab MP's, who gave it a Knesset majority while politely acceding to the taboo against Arabs in the cabinet. On the basis of so slim a majority, Rabin boldly went forward with Oslo, which not only broke, it seemed, the age-old deadlock with the Palestinians, but also cast a pale shadow of irrelevance over the entire Likud ideology. The achievement cost him his life.

In 1996, Benjamin Netanyahu readjusted the Likud ideology. No more was heard of "greater Israel". The byword, instead – the thing that was supposed to distinguish his party from Labor – was security. Netanyahu introduced a propaganda machine rich in scare tactics, portraying his rival, Shimon Peres, as a reckless visionary, soft on terrorism, who would divide Jerusalem. By such forays he succeeded in persuading the extreme Right that despite his campaign slogan, his heart was with them. On this basis he won, but the basis proved a liability. He had talked out of both sides of his mouth, with the result that, once he had power, he could stay there only by not doing anything with it. In fact, there is no difference of principle between Netanyahu's Likud and the Labor Party. Both tout "peace with security", each is willing to give up about half the West Bank but no more, and neither is willing to compromise on issues like Jerusalem, the refugees, or water. Neither is willing, that is, to make the sort of peace that the Palestinian people will be ready, in the long run, to live with. Why then don't Labor and Likud join hands and walk toward Oslo? In the absence of ideological goals, the only remaining political question is the debasing one: Who gets to be in power?

Before Wye, in fact, Netanyahu and Labor Party leader Ehud Barak were very close to national unity. They had held ten secret meetings and had reached written agreement on all points, including: a) a return to the negotiations with Damascus and a readiness to withdraw from most of the Golan Heights; b) only in second place, a continuation of the final-status negotiations with the Palestinians; and c) the distribution of all cabinet portfolios. But Netanyahu went to Wye, leaving Barak out of the limelight, and the latter, in turn, began to flirt with the hawkish National Religious Party (Mafdal). The PM returned and, smarting from right-wing attacks, at once launched a vehement attack on Barak. Concerned first and foremost for his position, Bibi was not willing to let go of the Right. Barak had been certain that the Wye negotiations would fail. He couldn't believe that Arafat would yield so much, leaving his Labor Party out in the cold. Having promised a parliamentary safety net, he was faced with two unappealing alternatives:

1. To provide that net on matters pertaining to Oslo. In this case, Netanyahu would reach the scheduled elections of the year 2000 with a strategic agreement to his credit, perhaps even the final agreement. Or:
2. To join a national-unity government, thus legitimizing Netanyahu, who would stand in the limelight at the final signing ceremony. On either of these alternatives, Bibi would have demonstrated the truth of what he had claimed all along: Treat the Arabs firmly and you'll get what you want. Barak needed an excuse, therefore, to withdraw the net, and Netanyahu was not long in giving it to him. Bibi was reluctant, as said, to lose the support of the Right, the bedrock of his political existence. Soon after the Knesset vote on the Wye Memorandum, he began to delay, waffle and veer. Yet the right wing did not return, and Barak snapped the net out.
Ehud Barak, however, has problems of his own. Despite the disdain Netanyahu arouses among Israelis, Barak barely beats him in the polls. In rank opportunism, he outbibis Bibi. His only ambition in life seems to be the Prime Ministry. Here is one of many stories: when Barak was released from the army, Yehuda Hare'l, leader of a small new party called "The Third Way", invited him to join. "Barak told me," he said, "he is entering politics for one reason only: to reach the top of the pyramid. The sole way to do this was to join one of the two big parties." (Daniel Ben Simon in Ha'aretz , December 25).

The New Center.
Netanyahu's zigzags, the renewed freeze on the Oslo track, Labor's lack of appeal, and the yearning for an end to internal strife have led many to focus their hopes on a new "party of the Center". The leading figure is Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, the former Chief of Staff and Oslo negotiator, who retired from a 36-year military career on December 24. (Two other figures are also possible: Dan Meridor and Roni Millo.) As of this writing, Shahak's political program remains a secret (a soldier is not permitted to make political statements). Obscurity matters little, however, in an age of fallen ideologies. As long as Shahak isn't Netanyahu and doesn't hail from Labor, he'll do. (A handsome, reassuring face can help as well.) His role, and the role of his "Center Party", will be to break the seemingly endless deadlock between Labor and the Likud, so that the Israeli government will no longer need to rely on Arabs or right-wing dinosaurs. Such a central force, biting chunks of support from the two major parties as well as the floating votes, can throw its weight one way or the other, giving Labor or Likud a secure coalition.

Yet what if the center grows out of control? Suppose the yearning for such a force proves so great that both Netanyahu and Barak are endangered? Will the two parties then return to the old solution of national unity? Or will Bibi pull yet another rabbit out of his seemingly inexhaustible hat? Much can happen between now and the spring. Three days of Israeli politics are as full and fluid as three hundred elsewhere.

On a long-range view, there can be no stability as long as all major political forces in Israel support an Oslo-style solution. Until Israel is willing to make peace – not an Oslo peace, but a peace of equals – its real problem will be not with who leads it, but rather with the Palestinians and the Arab peoples. Israelis may again find their lost unity, but that won't make them a jot more appealing to hungry neighbors.