From Challenge # 64 
November-December 2000

EDITORIAL

The Price of Greed

The Palestinians and the peoples of the Arab world have risen up against Israel, exposing the vulnerability of this Goliath. Commentators compare the upheaval to the days in 1948 when the very existence of the state was in question. The country's international isolation reminds them of another time: that following the war of 1967. The State of Israel is beleaguered and despondent. Once again it has discovered that despite its tremendous military force, its power of deterrence has limits.
Seventeen months ago, Israelis chose Ehud Barak as Prime Minister by an unprecedented majority. He got help from all over. First, from the Americans. Fed up with Benjamin Netanyahu, they worked to replace him. The PA (Palestinian Authority), for its part, urged the Arabs in Israel to vote for Barak - and 95% of them did. Once in power, however, the new PM went on a bridge-burning spree. Since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Labor Party leaders had become entrenched in the notion that they could only make peace on the basis of a broad consensus, including the Right. This concept led Barak up to the abyss over which he now stands. He refused a deal with Syria, because he had to demonstrate that Israel had the upper hand. He let the Palestinians twist in the wind, conditioning the third redeployment on a "framework agreement" prior to a final agreement. He turned a cold shoulder to the Arabs in Israel, who had brought him to power. When the latter took to the streets in the first week of October, his police shot and killed thirteen. This slaughter has shown the Arab citizens the true face of their supposed ally, the Labor Party. There will be no more automatic support at the ballot box. As for Barak, he cannot win re-election without the Arab vote, and at this point he will have to drink the Sea of Gaza to get it. 

And what about the Right, which Barak so avidly courted? In July 2000, as he was packing his bags for Camp David and the final agreement, the whole right wing of his coalition crumbled away. The Mafdal, Yisrael Ba'aliyah and Shas all abandoned him, proving what everyone already knew: Labor can't keep the Right with it all the way to an agreement. It was the Right that brought down Netanyahu because he went too far - how then should it not do the same to Barak? Today his government commands thirty seats, a fourth of the Knesset - which has now reconvened for its winter session. How can he stay in power?
The new intifada has provided the needed excuse not to go at once to elections, which - say the pollsters - Barak would decisively lose. During the Madrid-Oslo decade, in fact, no one has completed a term: Rabin did not finish three years before his murder, Peres lasted six months, Netanyahu three years, and Barak - not two? 
On the face of things, a national unity or "emergency" government could keep him alive politically for a time. In 1967, when war was about to break out, the Labor Party assembled such a government including the Likud. In 1984, stuck in Lebanon and reeling under three-digit inflation, the Likud called on Labor to join it. 

Yet till now, despite the obvious dangers within and without, the notion of an emergency government has not assumed flesh. Soon after the clashes began, Barak invited Ariel Sharon to discuss forming one. They talked about a three-year period of parliamentary stability. Such a thing would be a windfall for Sharon. Ever since the Legal Advisor to the government decided not to indict Netanyahu on bribery charges, the latter has been threatening him. Polls show that Bibi would thrash him soundly in the Likud primaries were they held today (and go on to beat Barak as well). Yet Sharon had a problem. He did not want to seem to betray the Likud for his own self-interest. He made, therefore, severe conditions for joining an emergency government, demanding a veto in the peace talks. 

Barak too had problems. Clinton was pleading with him not to go with Sharon: the Arab world is burning the American flag when it's only Barak in office - what would it do with Sharon there as well? The Labor doves warned Barak, moreover: by admitting Sharon, he'd be slamming the door in Arafat's face. "We've come so close to an agreement," they said, "we mustn't ditch forever the chance of a breakthrough." Meanwhile, they quietly sewed up an arrangement with Barak's old partner, Shas. Having seventeen mandates, this party is by no means eager for new elections, nor does it want to see a unity government composed of the secular parties. At the very last minute, when the Likud was about to sign with Labor, Shas got in ahead - not joining the government, but giving Barak a security net for a month.

A month in Israeli politics is the equivalent of a year in a normal country. The breathing space, however, will hardly affect the absurd situation in which Israel finds itself. On the one hand, all know that the vision of "greater Israel" is finished - the Occupation cannot return. Yet the Israeli leaders refuse to give up the Oslo formula, which places the country's strategic concerns above the sovereign interests of all the Arab states together. Five years ago, conceivably, when the Clinton regime was in its heyday and Oslo still raised hopes, the peoples of the Arab world might not have blocked the sort of agreement Israel wants. Since then, however, the terms have changed: the American regime has weakened, the Arab world has sampled the bitterness of globalization, and the Palestinian people have tasted the sour cocktail composed of Israel and the PA.

Now that the mood in the Arab world has become articulate, Arafat cannot make a treaty that fails to meet the minimal Arab demands, including those concerning Jerusalem. It is hard to imagine Barak's agreeing to them. It is harder to imagine Israelis approving such a treaty, especially in their present mood.
For Barak or anyone else in Labor, however, the sole alternative to an agreement will be a unity government with the Right, whether in the form of Shas or the Likud. In this case, the Aksa intifada will continue. The danger is that a weakened and isolated Israel may hurl the region into war. The basic reason for that war will be this: Israel cannot reconcile itself to a condition of equality in its relations with the Arab states. 
 

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