Israel's Changed Political Landscape

...Neither man was quite alarmed enough to make the first move, though...

...Meanwhile, the demonstrations outside the Prime Minister's office during the deliberations inside underscored the Israeli public's deepening political split along ethnic lines...

...The report also included rather astonishing testimony by inhabitants of Sabra and Shatila who said they remained unaware of killings as they were occurring a few blocks away...

...In the weeks that followed the publication of the Israeli inquiry commission's report on the killings, Prime Minister Menachem Begin's coalition government easily survived three no-confidence motions in the Knesset...

...To be fair, it should be said that many decent people in both political camps feel that a move toward "national unity" would mean sweeping under the rug fundamental differences between extremists and moderates that must be resolved before peace talks can be held with the Arabs...

...But the Kahan Commission is the only juridical body ever to set rules for what one must do to prevent others from perpetrating atrocities...

...The reluctance of other civilized nations to give Israel credit for this, it is observed here with a sigh, is of course nothing new in the history of the Jewish people...

...Commission Chairman Yitzchak Kahan and his two colleagues, knowing Sharon, had anticipated this otherwise unthinkable eventuality and stated specifically that if the Minister of Defense proved recalcitrant, the Prime Minister should remove him under Article 21 of the Basic Law (Government...

...The polarization was dramatically evident as the Peace Now members marching through the center of Jerusalem en route to the Prime Minister's office were confronted by Sephardim who heckled them with epithets about Auschwitz and threw an occasional stone...

...After initiating an exchange there on the inquiry, he hurried back to inform his fellow ministers of the "bitterness" the commission's recommendations had provoked in the Army command...

...Rather than averting his downfall, Sharon probably hastened it...

...Three prominent IDF generals—Beirut District Commander Amos Yaron, Chief of Military Intelligence Yeho-shua Saguy and Chief of Staff Rafael Eytan—like the Defense Minister, were deemed unfit to continue in their posts...

...Several Western newspapers have defended their unbalanced coverage of the Lebanese war and its aftermath with the argument that the Israelis themselves, by their insistence on maintaining "purity of arms," ask to be held to a higher standard than their enemies or allies...

...among them...

...He remains in the Cabinet as Minister Without Portfolio, and after some jockeying he was able to retain his membership on the Steering Committee for Negotiations with Lebanon and the Ministerial Defense Committee...

...Thus it can in no way be assumed that Israeli troops stationed near the entrances to the camps all had to know what was happening in them from the moment the slaughter began...

...Ariel Sharon— found, along with six other top civilian and military officials, to bear indirect responsibility for Sabra and Shatila— has been forced to quit as Minister of Defense...

...It should be noted, too, that most of the "ultra-ultras" on the Right, including some small groups suspected of conspiring to overthrow the government, are religious Ashkenazim, immigrants from the U.S...

...It was perhaps inevitable that responses to the commission report, in Israel and internationally, should focus on Sharon and the other public figures found responsible for failing to anticipate the massacre or not stepping in immediately once it became known...

...The world, moreover, has almost totally ignored what may in the long term be the most significant legacy of the Sabra and Shatila tragedy: Israel has become the first country to formally pass judgment on wartime misdeeds that are not actual crimes...

...Still, the landscape has changed, and may change some more...

...In the words of Interior Minister Yo-sef Burg, "There was a whiff of putsch in the air" the night of February 10, when the Cabinet finally voted 16-1 for Sharon's ouster (his was the one negative ballot...

...The other Cabinet members apparently realized Sharon's claim was not exactly true—particularly where his own removal as Defense Minister was concerned—and resented his attempts to sow discord...

...It is true that Labor retains a good deal of support among the Sephardim (immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa and their descendants), and that many Likud backers—not to mention Begin and a great majority of the party leadership—are Ashkenazim (Jews whose roots are in Europe or America...

...Yet portions of the document that have received scant attention, especially abroad, are at least equally important...

...Further, the report gave the names of the Phalangist officers in charge of the operation, along with other related details...

...Begin, Foreign Minister Yitzchak Shamir and the chief of the Mossad Intelligence Agency were reprimanded for poor performance...

...The decision capped three successive days of debate on the "implementation of the commission report"— or, more plainly, how to deal with Sharon's refusal to voluntarily accept the panel's verdict and step aside...

...Shocked, Begin and Opposition Leader Shimon Peres expressed their willingness to explore a joint effort to moderate the hatred on each side, and possibly even consider forming a National Unity government...

...The ploy backfired, however...

...Begin and the rest of the Cabinet, needless to say, did not take kindly to these aspersions...

...International codes define war crimes—what one must not do in the course of a military conflict...

...And the next day at the young kibbutznik's funeral in Haifa, another ugly scene ensued...

...But it is also true that Peace Now and the left-of-center factions of the Labor Alignment consist almost entirely of Ashkenazim, whereas the most vocal and violent of the Likud faithful appear to come from the less-educated segments of the Sephardi community...

...Of the three peoples with some connection to the tragedy—Palestinians, Lebanese and Israelis—only the last and the least involved has dared make a public accounting...

...In fact, many have been predicting that without the prestige of the Defense post to excuse it, Sharon's abrasive manner will shortly become intolerable and result in his being forced out of office altogether...

...The commission unequivocally confirmed that Israeli personnel had no advance knowledge of the massacre, let alone a hand in planning the Christian Phalangist attack or tacitly approving it...

...In a recent public statement, for example, he contended that while his "succeeding in staying in the Cabinet" would keep Israeli possession of the West Bank safe, there was a danger that the government, bereft of his strong hand and chastened by the commission report, would no longer respond to such potential provocations as Egypt's militarization of the Sinai or any Arab country's attainment of nuclear capability...

...AFTERMATH OF THE INQUIRY Israel's Changed Political Landscape byeuahusalpeter Tel Aviv In a war that was in a way waiting to be fought, the massacre of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps outside Beirut last September 16-18 was a disaster waiting to be stumbled into...

...But most politicians are betting that he will not be able to regain anything like his former degree of influence...

...In a last-ditch maneuver, Sharon left the Cabinet discussions to attend a meeting of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF...

...The tremors set off here in the process have not yet fully subsided, but most of the structures of the Jewish State seem bound to withstand the impact...

...Then, the same night that the Cabinet voted to remove Sharon from the Defense Ministry, a hand grenade tossed amid the demonstrators took the life of Emil Grunzweig...

...Nevertheless, Israelis bitterly complain, nobody in the West seems eager to condemn the Lebanese Christians either for committing the crime or for procrastinating over its investigation...

...Euahu Salpeter, who regularly reports for The New Leader from Israel, is a correspondent for the daily, Ha'aretz...

...Although this is to an extent true, a country that is already demanding of its soldiers the world's highest level of battlefield conduct may also be entitled to feel that inordinately harsh criticism from beyond its borders is a sign of prejudice...

...On the contrary, Time magazine, in an inset to its cover story on the results of the inquiry, seemed to justify the Lebanese government's unwillingness to find the murderers...

...And public opinion polls show that the Likud bloc could be re-elected today with a comfortable majority, even if retiring President Yitzchak Navon headed the Labor Party list, as many Begin opponents hope and ultimately expect...