Netanyahu's second year

...Beyond that, the budget for 1998 has to be settled, pitting the cost-cutters of the Milton Friedman school against high-spending "populists" such as David Levy...

...That's how it is with me, despite all that's written in the papers...

...True, there is not a soul left who believes a word he says...

...I told abu-Mazen," reported Deri, "that for all the difficulties, [the Palestinians] have an interest in reaching an accord with Netanyahu...

...But if the Likud were to be led by Yitzhak Mordechai, as becomes more probable by the day, the result would be very different...

...That order was felt by its critics to be excessively secular...

...But they might prefer their present situation...

...For all that, though, a second scenario is still considered the more plausible by many observers...

...He could even be reelected, on that basis, to a second term...

...The appointment of a party hack as attorney general (in itself contrary to the letter of the law) and then the discovery that an ex-minister on trial for fraud (and hoping for lenient treatment) had had a hand in selecting the candidate, almost resulted in criminal charges against Netanyahu...

...and Sarah's the punishment, and the more we know about the punishment, the better we understand the crime, and vice versa...

...The skeptics expect the government to founder on one or another such issue, with elections coming some time in 1998...

...If you know where you're headed, everything is much simpler...

...where many of the remaining ministers declare publicly that he is not to be trusted...

...His dependence on every faction in the government, and their consequent ability to blackmail him, are now so great that it is against their interests, at least in the narrow party sense, to see him fall...

...He forced the resignation of the Minister of Finance, Dan Meridor, a key figure in the prime minister's Likud Party and a potential rival for leadership...

...Counted among the most prominent advocates of this optimistic line are the president of the country, Ezer Weizman, and the leader of the Shas Party, Aryeh Deri, who even while on trial for various economic crimes, still commands respect as a political analyst...

...It would require a leader of exceptional skill and subtlety to ensure that a house so divided could be kept standing, and there is precious little in Netanyahu's record to suggest that he is such a man...

...and it is this alliance that has kept Labor out of power for fourteen of the last twenty years...

...In this reading of things, the real Netanyahu is specifically the man who chose to open the tunnel and to start construction on Har Homah, thus putting the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations into a deep freeze for many months...

...These were not random actions, nor thoughtless responses to pressure, but a deliberate attempt to put an end to the peace process at the lowest possible cost...

...and the television channels, both public and private), but also from every political camp: left, right, and center, the Likud no less than the Labor opposition...

...In their view, the days of this government are numbered and the only question is how soon it is going to fall...

...Netanyahu has never made it a secret that he has ambitions not only to perpetuate but to deepen the "counterrevolution" set in motion by Menachem Begin in 1977...

...Many of the attacks come in satirical form, sometimes involving the prime minister's wife, Sarah, who against all political traditions in this country insists on appearing at his side, often with their small children, on official occasions, both at home and abroad: a would-be "First Lady" to match our presidential prime minister...

...With me, the aim and the goal are totally clear...

...Here, the ability to anticipate how others will react to your every move is obviously crucial...

...To all this has to be added the long list of FALL • 1997 • 17 Politics Abroad disgruntled heads of state around the world, from Bill Clinton down, who have conducted what appeared to be successful meetings with Netanyahu only to find that promises made and assurances given were rendered meaningless by subsequent inaction or counter-action...

...It was Begin's achievement to rally the peripheries against the center...

...That attempt, one of the great moments in the history of this country, was cut short by an assassin's gun...

...If the result of the stalemate in the peace process is to undercut the standing of Arafat and to bolster the strength of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, then that is simply part of the net bonus...

...After all, Netanyahu has overcome every crisis—a political Houdini able to slip out of any trap...

...Begin was brought to power by an electoral alliance of the religious parties, the Oriental Jews (in large part), and much of the middle class...

...The subsequent Arab riots left dozens, both Palestinians and Israelis, dead, and caught the prime minister (who had been amply warned of the possible violent reaction) off guard while in the midst of his grand tour of the capitals of Western Europe...

...I am no weather vane...

...In the resulting atmosphere of paranoia and hatred, he will be able to make maximal use of his one undoubted political gift: the demagogic ability to place the blame for every problem or mishap on his opponents, be it the left or the Palestinians...

...He provided crucial support (aberrant in his own Likud Party) for the law initiating the direct election of the prime minister...

...Nothing could suite the radical right better, so goes this analysis, than to return Israel to a state of siege, with nobody but its sworn enemies to speak for the Palestinians...

...Netanyahu is sometimes compared to Ronald Reagan, another vote-catcher not obviously qualified for the top job, but Reagan had the sense to surround himself with people of proven experience...

...The trouble began immediately after Netanyahu's defeat of Shimon Peres in May 1996, when, as the first directly elected prime minister in Israeli history, he expected—much like an American president—to select his cabinet almost at will and without extensive consultation...

...pessimists, after all, have no monopoly on foresight...

...for route-finding is a lonely activity pitting the individual against nature...

...Shas, the religious party representing much of the "North African" community...

...What was meant to have been a neat surgical operation became a three-week crisis, as one coalition party after another threatened to bring down the government unless its demands for more financial support or political influence were met—and met they were, at least on paper, and at a potential cost of something like one billion unbudgeted dollars...

...So ringing is the call to begin to move forward that nobody asks: "And where are we meant to go...

...Within not much over a year the prime minister has reached a situation where three members of the government, two ministers and one deputy minister, have resigned and regularly denounce him...

...You orient yourself, choose a clear route and note various detours in advance so that if you run into difficulties you can cut off to the right or to the left and so keep moving to your predetermined destination...

...The moment the Supreme Court ruled in June that there was insufficient evidence for an indictment, Netanyahu decided to reimpose his authority by yet another bold and decisive move...

...The relevant model is not the lone route-finder, but the chess player who has to pay as much respect to his opponent's plans as to his own, readjust his tactics accordingly, and combine flexibility with determination...

...He won the elections in much the same way, making minimal use of the party and maximal use of television, ably assisted by Arthur Finkelstein, who was brought in from the United States to advise him on the art of "negative advertising...

...In reality (according to this argument), Netanyahu belongs with the hardliners in his government...

...a family that indoctrinated him in childhood and youth with Revisionist doctrines of intransigence as the height of wisdom (Jabotinsky's famous theory of "the iron wall...

...But this struggle will become harder the longer FALL • 1997...

...the small Third Way Party...

...But it would, of course, be bitterly appropriate if the man who orchestrated the vicious campaign of incitement against Yitzhak Rabin in 1994-1995 should also be the man to preside over the destruction of his peace project...

...To what end...

...Viewed from this perspective, the most significant episode of Netanyahu's premiership has not been any one of the many blunders, nor even his fateful decision to launch the Har Homah construction project on the southern outskirts of Jerusalem, but rather the agreement that he reached with Arafat to hand over most of Hebron to the Palestinian Authority...

...But all this was as nothing compared to the Bar-on affair, which kept the country occupied JERUSALEM throughout the first half of 1997...

...Then in September came his decision to open the northern exit of the Hasmonean tunnel that runs alongside the foundations of the Temple Mount and empties out into the heart of the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem's Old City...

...What follows is a small selection from the comments and jibes that nowadays fill much of the press...

...Netanyahu, though, believes that this dramatic reversal by no means went far enough...

...Once again the attempt to carry off a brilliant coup, stunning in its sheer temerity, rebounded, all but bringing down the government...

...and sections of Natan Sharansky's "Russian" immigrant party) have the whip hand...

...Only he can push through difficult concessions and achieve an agreement that will hold up for many years...

...nationalist certainly, but also too universalist and Western...

...It cannot be said that the prime minister has as yet made much progress on these two fronts...

...Rather than build the partnerships essential for success (whether with his cabinet colleagues or the Palestinian leadership), he prefers to dictate and bully, thus turning potential friends into fierce enemies...

...so, time and again, declares the man who cuts Oslo down to size, freezes the peace process, puts an end to prosperity at home and to economic opportunity abroad . systematically halts any initiative and all progress on every front...

...but on the other hand, key parties and politicians in the coalition saw the defeat of Peres as the popular rejection of the Israeli-Palestinian agreement and as a mandate to freeze the peace process...

...Anybody who has ever had to deal with the problems of orienteering has to understand that...

...Whoever claims that there is no alternative to Bibi is saying in effect that he is reconciling himself not only to his astounding weakness as a politician but also, and above all, to the moral and political corruption that the regime has brought down on us...

...and a government-appointed committee, chaired by a retired president of the Supreme Court, is drawing up recommendations on how to prevent any such scandalous nominations to this post in the future...

...It failed utterly in that task...

...18 • DISSENT Politics Abroad This choice of metaphor should be seen, I believe, as symptomatic...

...Extremism on one side feeds extremism on the other...

...But she's no longer content to be a constant thorn in the prime-minister's side: she wants to be Sarita...

...Or here is Sylvie Keshet of Yediot Aharonot: Bibi's the crime...

...the outsiders and the alienated against the order of things associated with forty years of dominance by the Labor movement...

...Interviewed for Ha'aretz in July, Deri maintained that only Netanyahu's right-wing government can command the broad public support required to reach a final status agreement with the Palestinians...

...His long train of mishaps stems from his determination to concentrate control over all key areas of policy (economic, foreign, military, and judicial) in his own office, staffed by his personal appointees, who are even more inexperienced than he and, worse, of mediocre caliber...

...From the first, the government has been riven by a profound internal contradiction...

...where he is at war with the media, who see him as a potential threat to free speech...

...But there is a third and much darker analysis of the direction in which we are heading...

...How, then, is all this going to end...

...If they act to defeat the government and elections are held, the new leader of the Labor Party, Ehud Barak, could well emerge as prime minister...

...where he is on the worst of terms with the army command and intelligence chiefs (they insist on providing him with prognoses that he would rather not hear...

...What better way to sabotage the Oslo accords than to choose Jerusalem as the site of the confrontations, thus provoking maximal rage on the Palestinian side and rallying the greatest possible support from Israelis and from world Jewry...

...The minister of defense, Yitzhak Mordechai, and the minister of foreign affairs, David Levy, have (doubtless to Netanyahu's chagrin) become particularly indispensable and therefore powerful...

...But the gods of history are often cruelly unforgiving...

...Farcical is the adjective that best describes the series of blunders ("unforced errors" in tennis terminology) committed by this man, whose every word and gesture signal supreme self-confidence, the will to command...

...A record of this kind, without precedent in Israeli history, has exposed Netanyahu to a barrage of criticism, likewise unprecedented, not only from the media (all the major newspapers...

...The plot to subvert the rule of law thus backfired: the attorney general who replaced Bar-on (in office for a mere three days) is well qualified, a man of integrity...

...And as for the partial withdrawal from Hebron and the endless talk of breakthroughs in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, they have to be seen as no more than smokescreens...

...According to the pessimists, then, Netanyahu has an excellent chance to remain in office until the end of his term in the year 2000, confident that—with the support of close to 50 percent of the population, of the pro-Israeli lobby in America and of the U.S...

...The rhetoric of peace serves a triple purpose: it gives expression to the sentiments of most Israelis...

...and, above all, it provides the moderate wing of the coalition, supposedly committed to a policy of peace, with a justification for remaining comfortably in office, rather than risking the unknown of new elections...

...Doron Rosenblum, another well-known Ha'aretz correspondent: If there's any recurring comic interlude in the chilling . . . political culture initiated by Binyamin Netanyahu, it is the way that after every new affair . . . he declares in a firm voice that it is time to put aside all such trivia "in order that at last we can get the wagon moving...

...This witticism seems particularly apt here in Jerusalem, where we are now well over a year into the government of Binyamin Netanyahu, the wouldbe heir to Vladimir Jabotinsky...

...The second redeployment envisaged in Oslo-2 has to be completed before the end of the year...

...Netanyahu finds it hard, perhaps impossible, to internalize this obvious fact...

...And here is Yisrael Harel, a central figure in the ultranationalist settler movement, Gush Emunim, attacking his own party for remaining in the government coalition...

...The subsequent delays were initially put down to the fact that he was cannily "keeping his cards close to his chest," but in the end he was humiliated as key appointments were forced on him by coalition partners determined to call his "presidential" bluff...

...And in his race for office, Netanyahu indeed acted very much as if in an orienteering contest, joining the competition for party leadership with his own team, his own fund-raising campaign (primarily centered in the United States), and his own strategy...

...How can a man who was such an astounding success in first taking control of the Likud Party and then in conquering power—all within the space of a few years—prove so incompetent once in office...

...In the first redeployment, Israel offered 2 percent...

...Only a hair's breadth stood between the prime minister and an indictment—a Watergate case that had its Deep Throat, but no tapes...

...According to the opinion polls, if elections were held today, Ehud Barak would come out the winner, with a lead over Netanyahu of 10 percent to 15 percent...

...and Mordechai is riding a huge wave of individual popularity...

...So far the civil service, military, professional, and academic elites have fought hard, often courageously, to maintain their integrity and uphold the standards of a democratic system...

...But surprise us he will: one fine day we'll wake up and find that the Arabs have surprised us...

...fundamentalists share a common interest in each other's success...

...In such a clash of ex-generals, Mordechai comes out ahead by a few percentage points...

...and he exploited the new primary system to the full, reaching over the heads of the party leaders to the mass membership below, presenting himself effectively as the only person with a chance to snatch power back from Labor...

...He executes some brilliant gambit, sits back, and expects the rival player to declare himself check-mated...

...There are, in fact, no fewer than three possible, albeit very different, scenarios...

...The time has come, he insists, for a major attack on the elites, who, by and large, remain committed to a belief in the possibility of "land for peace" and genuine compromise with the Palestinians...

...If the most nationalistic government in Israeli history could withdraw from the city of Abraham, from the very heartland of the patrimonial territory, and survive nearly intact (only one minister, Benjamin Zeev Begin, resigned), then, so the argument goes, it can survive almost anything...

...There are, doubtless, many reasons for this pattern of behavior: an almost total lack of experience in actual government (he had been a student, junior army officer, a furniture salesman, a diplomat, and, briefly, deputy foreign minister...

...When her publicity-seeking, sometimes accompanied by violent outbreaks of temper, attracts adverse comment, Netanyahu criticizes the media, declaring that surely one thing has to remain sacrosanct: the privacy of his family...

...21 Netanyahu stays in office, especially if the country finds itself isolated, threatened by—or even involved in—war (and war with Syria is a possibility that cannot be discounted...

...Seen in this light, the more moderate coalition partners (Levy and his Gesher Party...

...Congress—he can put an end to Oslo...

...it goes some way, at least temporarily, toward mitigating Israel's increasing isolation in the world...

...That may well be, but is not necessarily, the case...

...As one analyst 20 • DISSENT Politics Abroad put it recently, Netanyahu has proved that he has exceptional ability as a tightrope walker, but "he would be well advised not to look down from the heights of his success—the number of those waiting for him [to fall] keeps growing all the time...

...And in what direction...

...To illustrate this point, it is enough, perhaps, to listen to Netanyahu talking about himself (the words come from an interview published late last year): In complete contradiction to what is said against me, and in contrast to other leaders, I am not somebody lacking a sense of direction...

...From a slogan, "the national camp" could become a solid political fact...

...One by one, doors that were wide open are closing in his face...

...I do not venture to say which of these three scenarios is the most likely to become reality...

...Once firmly allied, these two ministers could impose a peace policy on the government, forcing Netanyahu even against his natural instincts onto that path of reluctant compromise trodden in the past by other hardliners (de Gaulle vis-avis Algeria...

...Nixon vis-a-vis China...

...On the face of things, of course, it would seem that Netanyahu is heading for a mighty fall...

...Very different skills, though, are required to run a highly fractious coalition government...

...lead a democratic, but divided, country...

...Labor had its chance to shape the future along positive lines after the Six Day War, in the years 1967-1973...

...It is too early to assess the full significance of these extraordinary developments...

...and this time, word has it that Israel's peace partners (the Palestinians, the United States, and Egypt) expect a very large part of area "C" to be transferred to Arab rule...

...A Labor-led coalition could never muster the strength to undertake so terribly divisive an enterprise...

...and where he has cut himself off from regular dialogue with the neighboring Arab rulers (Arafat, Mubarak, Hussein) as well as from the leaders of the Western world...

...Paradoxically, it could well be that the more he blunders, the better his chances of survival...

...and conduct an effective foreign policy under the most complex circumstances...

...And in that case, when you have a map and a compass and a good sense of orientation it's easier for you...

...It may not be so...

...the radio stations...

...Twenty years later Rabin, the architect of victory in 1967, together with Peres, made a truly heroic effort to correct the fateful misjudgments made under the leadership of Levi Eshkol and Golda Meir (with their own, albeit more junior, participation...

...Major difficulties await the government in the near future...

...On the one hand, the election campaign was waged on a platform promising "a secure peace" (and, however reluctantly, recognition of the Oslo accords...

...What can be said, however, is that the farce that follows in the wake of tragic drama can itself be transformed into yet another tragedy...

...and a temperament unusually egocentric, with suggestions of paranoia...

...Either of them, not to speak of both, could bring the government down tomorrow without undue personal FALL • 1997 • 19 Politics Abroad risk: Levy will be needed in any coalition government, whether headed by Labor or Likud...

...From Yoel Marcus of Ha'aretz: Leading the procession of those who are expected "to surprise us" [by some positive new start], is Bibi who with every new failure wins credit by promising that we will yet be surprised...

...Alternatively, if pushed to the wall, Netanyahu might choose to bring the Likud, or at least its rump, together with Labor into a nationalunity government pledged to keep the peace process somehow alive...

...harsh, but also unnecessarily humanist...

...What is more, he is anxious to transform the right-wing coalition from a loose alliance of parties into a bloc united by common values under his leadership, and this looks increasingly possible as the ultra-Orthodox become more chauvinistic and the secular nationalists absorb religious—exclusivist—attitudes into their Jewish identity...

...I know where I want to go...

...22 • DISSENT...

...The answer would seem to be that precisely those traits of character that made possible his meteoric rise have also been the cause of his subsequent failures...

...After all, what choice remains, in the last resort, to the extreme right-wing of the coalition: the National Religious Party, the Tsomet Party of Rafael Eytan, and the hardliners in the Likud...

...The first runs, with various permutations, along the following lines...

...The reasoning here is very simple...