A profusion of land mines

...Immediately after the municipal election returns, a buoyant Shamir, uncharacteristically, went on the offensive...

...Likud did just that in the recent municipal elections, out-organizing its lethargic foe and making the key campaign issue not garbage collection but Yasir Arafat...

...TheLikud is now setting its political sights on the powerful, economically troubled Histadrut (the Labor-dominated union federation), which is due to have elections in the fall...

...And when Arafat claims lack of control over some groups in the PLO, Israelis question whether he can truly deliver in a peace settlement...

...On the Israeli side," says Hebrew University professor Menahem Brinker, a leader of Peace Now, "the urgent task is to keep the debate going, to struggle against the illusion that Israel can get out of the present impasse without talking to the PLO, without directly addressing Palestinian grievances, and without recognizing the Palestinians...

...Since they want both Israeli security and a fair resolution to the Palestinian problem, Israeli peace activists find themselves in an ongoing struggle on two fronts...

...In terms of the Palestinian issue, he says, "We must talk to the Palestinians, whatever their organizational affiliation...

...A public opinion poll in early winter showed a majority of Israelis (54 percent) willing to talk to the PLO...

...And he blasted the Peace Now movement for advocating direct negotiations with the PLO...

...Any Israeli, and any Jew, seeing this, discerns not pictorial sarcasm about Israeli repression of the intifadah, but blatant if subliminal anti-Semitism: the Jew-in this case "the Zionist"-as Christ-killer...

...The Israeli premier is a shrewd politician of patience and nerve...

...In contrast, when Syria's president Assad faced an uprising in Hama a few years ago, he simply and quickly leveled much of the town'together with thousands upon thousands of its inhabitants...

...And for weeks on end...

...We need to reinvent Israeli social democracy and to renew it as an innovative and dynamic force," says Pini Shomer, a thoughtful and energetic Labor activist in his late thirties...

...More importantly, as the Mideast is among the most intractable of conflicts, and as a president has additional global concerns-the USSR and China, for example-it is naive to imagine that a new administration, just establishing itself on the world stage, is immediately going to invest its major diplomatic capital in an attempt at a Mideast quick-fix...

...It printed an editorial calling for new policies from Jerusalem and featured a cartoon by Oliphant of an Arab, leading his pregnant wife on a donkey, approaching an inn with a "no vacancy" sign in a town clearly meant to be Bethlehem...

...After all, within a month of renouncing terrorism the PLO chief responded to Bethlehem Mayor Elias Freij's suggestion of a year-long truce in the West Bank and Gaza with the declaration that, "any Palestinian leader who proposes an end to the intifadah exposes himself to the bullets of his own people and endangers his life...

...They may encourage him/her to consider voting for the politicians who sound the toughest...

...The Soviets, who are slowly but significantly repairing relations with Israel, might try to moderate Damascus, but Moscow's leverage has its real limits...

...This set the stage for the Egyptian-Israeli peace...

...as a result of the creation of buffer zones, reopening the Suez Canal, and other moves, it became increasingly difficult and expensive for the combatants to go back to war...

...However, in making this clear, Washington must also remain ever vigilant to real Israeli security concerns, both because the concerns are legitimate and because ignoring them will only undermine Israeli moderates...

...In fact, following Yasir Arafat's public recognition last December of Israel and his renunciation of terror, there has been adiscernible shift in statements by Labor leaders...

...For all its logic, such a piecemeal approach also has liabilities...

...This means that the PLO must say unequivocally and univocally that a West Bank-Gaza state will fulfill Palestinian national aspirations and not serve as the base for a future irredentism...

...Seen in this light, the Likud victory in municipal elections represents more a vote of confidence in the Likud as a party than an endorsement of Shamir's policies as a whole...

...The reasons why are easily discernible and not ill-conceived...

...The cost of any backtracking by Arafat should be high...

...Its original strength rested on an ability to link its national agenda to innovative grass-roots organization...

...Such things hardly encourage the average Israeli to chance an international peace conference in which "friendly persuasion" by outside powers will seek concessions...

...Peres recently declared that Jerusalem must talk to Palestinians "as they are- as they are organized...

...First he blasted a study issued by the Jaffee Center at Tel Aviv University which suggested that Palestinian autonomy, followed possibly by statehood, might be in Israel's own best interests...

...And thwart him he did...

...In early winter, when British Deputy, Foreign Secretary William Waldgrave traveled to the Mideast, he publicly opined that since members of the Israeli government were former "terrorists," Jerusalem should have no qualms about negotiating with the PLO...

...Shamir's domestic strength is reinforced both by PLO equivocations and by very undiplomatic pressures from some foreign governments and media who demand changes in Jerusalem's policy without any sensitivity to Israeli apprehensions...

...The point is not simply to avoid stepping on the land mines, but to begin to defuse the mine field.n to defuse the mine field...

...In a corner of the cartoon a small character, wearing an Arab headdress, says, "They already got three guys on camels...

...Shamir has outmaneuvered both his opponents within the Likud and more importantly, he has outmaneuvered Labor...

...The Western media, rushing for intifadah photo opportunities, may create the impression that the revolt can go on forever, but, calculates Shamir, one can strike, shut-down one's business, not send one's children to school, and throw rocks at an army for only so long...

...A new president and a new foreign policy team simply cannot do the same...

...Shamir, in the meantime, did his domestic political homework, biding his time and watting for the right moment to thwart Peres...

...One cannot skip blithely across it...

...How, too, are Israelis to respond to the front page of the Manchester Guardian Weekly during Christmas week...

...One must fully appreciate the ironies here...

...The accuracy of Waldgrave's characterization of Shamir-the obvious target since he was, before 1948, a leader of the underground "Stern Gang"-is irrelevant...

...The assumption is that it may be nigh impossible to solve all the intricacies of the Mideast conflict in a swift, comprehensive way...

...In the face of all this, a revolt is brewing in the Labor party...

...Peres counted on a major diplomatic transformation to catapult his moderate policies-and himself-into political dominance, thereby overwhelming Shamir's opposition to territorial concessions by Israel in a peace settlement...

...American diplomacy, if it wants to be constructive, needs to be attentive to what is happening on the ground in the region, for it is a ground filled with land mines...

...JHA 11 this is, however, a matter apart from the A wisdom, or lack of wisdom, of current Israeli foreign policy...

...when the moment of truth came, Peres lacked the political base to gain either cabinet or popular backing for his plan for an international peace conference...

...During the previous national unity government, Labor's leader, Shimon Peres, sought a breakthrough in the Arab-Israeli conflict...

...On the other hand, the PLO must recognize that even the most moderate Israelis expect Palestinians to speak with one voice, and one which recognizes the legitimate rights of both parties to the conflict...

...And in today's Middle East, such a prolonged revolt could have occurred only in territories under Israeli occupation because there the dominating army, whatever its brutalities, has constraints on it...

...Among them is dovish Uzi Baram, who resigned recently as party secretary-general in order to oppose the party's direction-or lack thereof...

...Perhaps another year or two...

...On the one hand, Washington must firmly make it clear to Shamir and Israeli hawks that a policy of maintaining the status quo with an eye toward permanent retention of the occupied territories is untenable...

...Yet the Israeli moderate camp-which along with Labor includes the smaller, dovish Citizens' Rights (Ratz) and Mapam parties, and the Peace Now movement-has been unable to translate such statistics into political momentum for change...

...Arafat, however, was forced into that moderation by the intifadah which is, of course, against the very regime Shamir heads...

...Labor, which for all practical purposes created the Jewish state, is in disarray...

...Arafat, Shamir expects, will eventually follow suit...

...Go-slow diplomacy can go too slowly, and can easily get stalled...

...Israeli moderates, attuned to the fears of their fellow citizens, desirous of a fruitful Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, vigorously opposed to Shamir's agenda but still harboring doubts about that of Arafat, remain caught, once again, in the middle...

...Arafat's recognition of Israel has opened new opportunities that could be lost, and the PLO chief needs results to sustain moderation in his own organization...

...Two other ranking Labor ministers, Moshe Shahal and Gad Yakobi, suggested in early March that talks with Arafat might be possible...

...Even though there has been an undeniable trend to the right, he is convinced that Labor "can recapture the high ground if we come forth as a forceful and clear-cut alternative to the Likud...

...Shomer sits on both the party and Histadrut executives and represents Labor on the city council of Bat Yam, a town just south of Tel Aviv...

...An international conference might be held hostage to Palestinian maximalists or to a Syrian government which, in order to further its own regional ambitions, formulates extreme demands as an Arab nationalist litmus-test, thereby undercutting Arab moderates...

...Key foreign policy players on the Bush team-Scowcroft and Eagleburger-are close associates of the former secretary of state...

...appears to be adopting a cautious approach in nudging its ally (as evinced by the recent visits of Hosni Mubarak and Shamir...

...Indeed, the bank-ruptcy of permanent Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza seems to be self-evident to everyone but Shamir and his backers...

...The latter, although opposed to the premier's policies, now sits in a "national unity" government dominated by Him...

...The innkeeper says, "You might try down at the Batata refugee camp, but try not to get yourselves shot by Israeli security...

...In the words of a well-placed government official: "Labor has the will to do what is necessary to move the peace process forward, but not the power...

...Having secured the premiership in last November's national election, Shamir and his right-wing Likud party reinforced their domestic standing by routing the left-leaning Labor party in late winter's municipal elections...

...Its old guard has brought a vibrant, middle generation into the cabinet with it...

...The squad's declared target, however, was a civilian agricultural cooperative...

...As foreign minister (1987-88), he played to the world stage but failed to take care of his political backyard...

...Like Yitzhak Shamir...

...Consider that the two major successes of American diplomacy in the Mideast-Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy of 1974-75 and the Camp David Accords-required, respectively a secretary of state and a president devoting themselves to it almost entirely...

...In contrast, "tension-reducing measures," "confidence-improving actions," "steps towards autonomy" (such as municipal elections in the West Bank), etc., if ongoing and if pushed far enough, could slowly produce new, and perhaps irreversible conditions leading in a piecemeal, rather than comprehensive, way toward a settlement...

...There is an impressive younger group in its thirties and forties, such as Knesset faction leader Haim Ramon, but it may be too soon for them to seize the mantle...

...Generally, however, Shamir is subdued...

...Shamir thinks he can wait out the Palestinian rebellion...

...Indeed, the Likud mayor of Tel Aviv is a known dove...

...On the other hand, the PLO must be told over and again that a real change in the Palestinian situation depends on its pursuit of a path of moderation, one that recognizes the rights of both sides...

...Peres did so...

...An array of candidates has already declared to replace him, some forcefully challenging Labor's participation in the national unity government...

...Consequently, an active but cautious diplomacy of complexity will be required of the Bush administration in the coming months-a diplomacy which carefully balances short-term needs with long-term imperatives...

...the Likud has the power, but not the will...

...On the other hand, the polling showed just how effectively the Likud can tap into deep and volatile Israeli fears about the PLO's real intentions...

...Since the Israeli premier believes that the cost of giving up the occupied territories which are now home to 70,000 Israeli settlers, will ultimately be much higher than weathering the storm, it all becomes a matter of tenacity...

...In early March, when a unit from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a PLO constituent, was intercepted trying to cross Israel's northern border, Arafat justified this as an attempt to defend Palestinian camps in Lebanon...

...The precedent is the-Sinai Disengagement Accords between Cairo and Jerusalem after the 1973 War...

...repression of anti-government demonstrators in Algiers last fall (shortly before the Palestinian National Council met there, in fact) left almost twice the number of Algerians dead as Palestinians who had died in the intifadah...

...One way to read Washington's distancing of itself from the idea of an international conference on the Mideast, and Secretary of State James Baker's suggestion that both Israel and the PLO begin "tension-reducing" and "confidence-building" measures, is that administration thinking may now be partly paralleling that of Kissinger's step-by-step diplomacy...

...Today the Likud is confident and vigorous...

...Israelis ask why, if Arafat has renounced terror, does he "explain" an attack aimed clearly at innocents...

...Unless Peres, who now serves as finance minister, does something dramatic to reverse Labor's fortunes, he will have great difficulties surviving as party leader...

...He declared that the report's chief architect, former military intelligence chief Aharon Yariv, was "weakening...Israel's position in the international arena and...strengthening [that] of our enemies...

...His strategy is to wait for others to stumble...

...PLO moderation is a diplomatic nightmare for Shamir...

...Labor's old guard-Peres and defense minister Yitzhak Rabin-do not want to step aside, while the party's middle generation-with some exceptions-can only be described as underwhelming...

...A diplomat proposing to engage in "even-handed" mediation simply cannot make such statements and expect to be trusted...

...The U.S...

...The PLO will know how to deal with him...

...MITCHELL COHEN, author of Zion and State: Nation, Class andihe Shaping of Modern Israel (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), is associate professor of political science at the Graduate School and Baruch College of the City University of New York: Currently living in Paris, he has just returned from a trip to Israel...