Israel ' s Houdini
Goldberg, J. J.
dens explains this transformation in The Third Way, his important recent book. "No one any longer has any alternatives to capitalismmthe arguments that remain concern how far, and in what ways,...
...Both challengers support the peace accords...
...But as the struggles of the new German government show, the road there is still under construction...
...It's a tribute to Netanyahu's prodigious political skills, supporters and critics agree, that he's managed to change the subject so handily...
...But Giddens is alive to the need for certain social protections if what you desire is a risk-taking society...
...Ironically, if Mordechai faced Netanyahu head-to-head in a two-way race he would win handily, 49 percent to 38...
...Giddens's welfare state would also cooperate extensively with community institutions that are independent of government...
...It's worse news for Israel, which sorely needs healing rather than further fraying of its tense social fabric...
...Barak hopes Levy and Meimad will mollify a few thousand Sephardic and Orthodox voters-just enough to turn the race...
...The standard account is that if government provides too much security, no one will want to take risks...
...Early polls are not encouraging...
...Figuring out what those are and whether they can be enforced across national boundaries is one of the central political problems of our time...
...When last November's Wye River Agreement forced him to make decisions, the coalition fell apart...
...The other deal was with Meimad, a small group of Orthodox Jewish intellectuals who support the peace process...
...The strongest critique of the third way is that its careful balancing act sounds too good to be true...
...The election, it now appears, will not be decided on urgent questions of how to proceed in talks with the Palestinians, much less on the still-disputed principle of whether to continue the peace process at all...
...Much of his own Likud party is in open revolt...
...One deal gave the number-three slot on Labor's parliamentary slate to David Levy, a veteran Likud leader and former foreign minister with a strong following among workingclass Sephardic Jews...
...But nothing is more dissolving of tradition than the 'permanent revolution' of market forces...
...Soviet immigrants who detest anything resembling socialism...
...Complicating the prospects of an opposition merger are Barak's latest moves to broaden Labor's appeal...
...Still more defectors have crossed the aisle to join Labor...
...Relations with the Palestinians are strained to the breaking point...
...The core problem with contemporary conservatism, Giddens says, is an inconsistency at the heart of its creed...
...But why should progressive parties pretend to have answers they don't, or attempt to build systems that can't work...
...J.J...
...Why...
...Mordechai, himself a Sephardic Jew born in Iraqi Kurdistan, believes he can woo those voters away from Likud by offering a platform that resembles Labor's, but without Labor's baggage...
...As for the global economy, Giddens sees its expansion as removing more and more activity from the regulatory reach of individual nations...
...That was brought home in the recent battle between Germany's Social Democratic chancellor, the centrist Gerhard Schroeder, and his left-wing finance minister, Oskar Lafontaine...
...Resentments among Orthodox Jews, Soviet immigrants, and Sephardic Jews run too deep...
...Three-fourths of Israelis support the peace accords with the Palestinians that were initialed in Oslo in 1993 by the government of the assassinated prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin...
...Israel's voters may simply be too deeply entrenched in tribal loyalties to switch affiliations, regardless of party policies and their impact on Israel's future...
...That seems to confirm the Center party's view that Labor is demographically doomed...
...It is, however, an unstable coalition, virtually incapable of making decisions on the peace process...
...The Labor party leader, Ehud Barak, is a much-decorated former chief of staff, widely seen as a prot6g6 of Rabin...
...Goldberg ISRAEL'S HOUDINI Netanyahu's likely triumph ~ hen Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dissolved parliament last January and called for early elections, he seemed to be setting the stage for what would amount to a decisive referendum on the future of the Middle East peace process...
...The "third way" is worth finding, and Giddens makes an honorable effort to draw us a map...
...Although three-fourths of the population favors the peace accords, about one-half harbors deep antipathy toward the opposition Labor party, the accords' main sponsor...
...But there is almost no chance of Mordechai reaching the runoff...
...Indeed, polls suggest Netanyahu may well be reelected...
...Netanyahu has united these groups into a governing coalition by focusing on their grudges and fudging their foreignpolicy differences...
...As the May 17 balloting approaches, however, the campaign unfolding in Israel does not resemble a foreign-policy referendum so much as a showdown in a long-simmering cultural war...
...That's the reason every party in every country is talking about education...
...To encourage citizens to be "responsible risk-takers/' he writes, "people need protections when things go wrong" and "also the material and moral capabilities to move through major periods of transition in their lives...
...Nothing prevents it except competing egos and the question of who leads...
...Right now they are hurting each other more than they are hurting Netanyahu...
...That may explain some of the listlessness of contemporary politics...
...These arguments are certainly significant," he continues, "but they fall short of the more fundamental disagreements of the past...
...Lafontaine resigned, protesting that "the heart isn't traded on the stock market yet...
...Utopias and searing critiques of the status quo are exciting...
...In the politics of democracies, interests and passions intervene...
...Netanyahu held it together for thirty months by avoiding decisions, employing stalling tactics that kept the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue alive, but just barely...
...Rather, the vote will turn on the angry religious, ideological, and ethnic divisions that have strained Israel's body politic for decades...
...They were joined by the outgoing military chief of staff...
...Three top leaders of Likud, including his former justice and defense ministers, bolted to form a new, centrist opposition party...
...Individualism and choice are supposed to stop abruptly at the boundaries of the family and national identity, where tradition must stand intact...
...His surviving even this far came at a high cost...
...Part of his advantage is the very strength of his opponents...
...In such a close race, the smart money is on Netanyahu...
...U.S.Israeli ties are at their lowest point in decades...
...Some observers are betting on a last-minute BarakMordechai deal to share the first and second slots in a combined Labor-Center slate...
...In what he calls "depoliticized global space," there are no rules establishing "rights and obligations...
...Polls show the runoff as a Barak-Netanyahu tie, 45 percent to 44...
...In early March he completed lengthy negotiations with two key groups representing demographic sectors where Labor is weakest...
...Unless Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Mordechai can find a way to bury their egos and join forces, therefore, Israel could be headed for four more years of Benjamin Netanyahu...
...The deeply ingrained habits of Israeli voters leave Mordechai running a distant third, taking about 20 percent to Netanyahu's 35 percent and Barak's 30 percent...
...Sephardic Jews of Middle Eastern origin who resent Labor's paternalistic rule in Israel's early years...
...No one any longer has any alternatives to capitalismmthe arguments that remain concern how far, and in what ways, capitalism should be governed and regulated...
...The third way idea is seductive because it seems to represent realism with a heart...
...Former defense minister Yitzhak Mordechai, leader of the new Center party, is a popular and charismatic ex-general with a strong personal following...
...But Giddens--the director of the London School of Economics who is thought of as British Prime Minister Tony Blair's favorite social philosophertries to show that the third way is more than a marketing slogan...
...The Paris daily, Le Monde, noted archly that it was pure "coincidence" that at the moment Lafontaine quit, Anthony Giddens was visiting Bonn to unveil the German edition of The Third Way-of which Schroeder is a public fan...
...Both see themselves as the alternative to Netanyahu...
...Nothing of substance separates the two challengers or their parties, except one thing: The centrists are convinced Labor cannot win...
...This is bad news for America and the West, which have a strong interest in seeing the Middle East achieve some sort of stability...
...The array of forces dedicated to Netanyahu's downfall today is truly impressive...
...9 1999, Washington Post Writers Group J.J...
...Giddens is perceptive on the thorny question of risk versus security...
...Commonweal 9 April 9, 1999Netanyahu's math is simple...
...But where Lafontaine saw a socially minded heart beating, German business saw a statist cancer growing...
...Anti-Labor animus comes in various colorations: Orthodox Jews who dislike Labor's secularism...
...It's good news for Netanyahu, though...
...The upshot is we shouldn't dismantle the welfare state, but rather reconstruct it into a "social investment state" to provide "resources for risk-taking...
...An election decided on issues of war and peace would almost certainly end Netanyahu's career...
...Netanyahu opposed the so-called Oslo accords at the time...
...Will the gambits work...
...Its "devotion to the free market on the one hand, and to the traditional family and nation on the other, is self-contradictory...
...Polls suggest Mordechai is right about Labor, but wrong about himself...
...Still, the outcome of the May vote is by no means assured...
...Insiders call it wishful thinking...
...Center-left parties trying to calibrate market efficiencies against concerns for social justice are not working in some sanitized laboratory...
...as prime minister he has managed to steer them into a ditch...
...His relations with the military high command, which tends to support the peace process, are frosty...
...Under current law, if no candidate wins a majority of the popular vote, the top two meet in a runoff three weeks later...
...For all his failures of policy and governance, he remains popular on the street...
...By recasting the vote as a contest of ethnic and social resentments, though, he stands a very good chance of reelection...
...Goldberg is a syndicated columnist and the author of Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment (AddisonWesley, 1996...
...Barak remains mired in his dead heat with Netanyahu, despite his efforts...
...The antipathies are profound, unrelated to policy, and seemingly resistant to change...
...The strains have left the prime minister standing, but wounded...
...Commonweal | 0 April 9, 1999...
...Israeli society is as bitterly divided as it has ever been...
Vol. 126 • April 1999 • No. 7
