Agonizing Reappraisal in Israel

...So the country soon witnessed almost farcical off-again-on-again negotiations for a broad Likud-Labor Party coalition...

...The religious parties are divided between those who support Shamir and those who advocate concessions to the Palestinians on the grounds that in the Jewish religion concern for the "sanctity of life," including prevention of war, supersedes the commandment "to settle the land...

...And these were certainly not lessened by the PLO chief's aides reassuring Arab newspapers that his Algiers speech was "only an improvement on the strategy of stages"—whereby the Palestinians would first obtain whatever they could by political means, the better to be able to later achieve their final aim (i.e...

...The Secretary was particularly angered by the brazen comments of Abu Abbas (the murderer in the A chille Lauro affair), made two weeks earlier at the Palestine National Council's Algiers meeting...

...declared that he had failed to meet its conditions for opening a dialogue with the PLO...

...The problem now, from Israel's viewpoint, is that the intifada has strengthened the hand of the Palestinians who insist on nothing short of full independent statehood...

...In addition, Shamir was reluctant to cause a split with American Jewry—especially exercised about the conversion issue— and at the same time face a possible conflict with the new U.S...

...An agreement was virtually completed when Washington's readiness to speak with the PLO threw a monkey wrench into the process: Likud's Right wing, worried that a partnership with Labor would weaken Shamir's resistance to expected U.S...

...But Labor's backbone, the debtridden kibbutzim, cooperatives and trade union-affiliated industries—fearing a cutoff of the financial assistance they need to achieve a recovery—persuaded the party's 800-odd member Central Committee to convene and order a resumption of talks with Likud...

...All of these events coincided—and interacted—with the drawn out efforts to form a new government following Israel's inconclusive elections in early November...

...Labor's doves and intellectuals to the Left of them have called for an Israeli offer to negotiate with Arafat...

...Likud young generation leader (and former ambassador to the UN) Benjamin Natanyahu has declared that the U.S...

...Although Peres agrees with Shamir that Israel should not talk to the PLO, he has proposed "free elections of the Palestinians' genuine representatives,' with whom Israel could negotiate...

...This plus negotiations with the Palestinians, hecontends, could save Israel from a major economic collapse...

...They even pressured Peres to seek control of the Finance Ministry, rather than the Foreign Ministry, in the new government...

...Investments are down, tourism has not yet recuperated from the blow of the intifada, unemployment is up, and inflation in October-November once more climbed to an annual rate of 25 per cent compared with 17 per cent in the first nine months of the year...

...President over the extremist policies that would be forced on him by the far Right secular parties...

...On December 13, responding to Arafat's General Assembly speech in Geneva, the U.S...

...either...

...Arafat's unwillingness to unconditionally accept Israel's right to exist (he has merely acknowledged the obvious fact of its existence) appeared to confirm that he still hopes to achieve his aims without providing such guarantees or altering the PLO covenant, calling for Israel's destruction...

...Hence the stringent and controversial austerity budget Peres pushed through the Cabinet during the first days of January...

...But there was a strong public outcry against the arrogant financial and religious demands of the potential Orthodox partners, including their insistence that conversions to Judaism by Conservative and Reform rabbis should no longer be acceptable to the Jewish State...

...Eliahu Salpeter, a regular NL contributor, is a correspondent for Ha'aretz...

...Israeli diplomats and Foreign Ministry experts confidently predicted that the PLO chiefs "explanatory" press conference the next day would not satisfy the U.S...

...On December 2 came the hijacking of a Soviet airliner to Tel Aviv...

...That demand is unacceptable to most Israelis, including a majority of those who are ready to withdraw from the occupied territories if sufficient security guarantees are provided—for example, an interim full autonomy leading to some kind of Palestinian confederation with Jordan...

...Apart from this apprehension, shared by moderates and Rightwingers alike, Israeli reactions to the latest turn of events run the gamut of the country's whole political spectrum...

...After the re-establishment of the Jewish State in 1948, Arab rejectionism was seen by Israelis as something that had to be overcome...

...to address the UN General Assembly by noting that the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) continued to bear responsibility for the terrorist acts of his associates...

...Typically, amid the total preoccupation with the PLO and the Palestinians, most Israelis had again diverted their attention from the country's worsening economic situation...

...relations...

...He further stresses that Israel must now urgently coordinate its policies with the U.S., to assure Washington's standing firm against the acceptance of an independent Palestinian state and all forms of terror, not excluding the intifada...

...ARAFAT'S CHALLENGE Agonizing Reappraisal in Israel By Eliahu Salpeter Tel Aviv As 1988 wound down a variety of developments seemed to augur well for Israel, despite its internal political turmoil...

...Scores of small— and several big—factories have closed down because there is no demand for their products at a price necessitated by their lack of efficiency and/or the government freeze on the dollar exchange rate...

...the elimination of Israel...

...After a year of paying a heavy price in lives and economic losses, they compelled the PLO leadership to try and reap the political fruits of the struggle now...

...With the 1967 victory the matter declined in importance, and Right-wingers actually appreciated the fact that Arab rigidity obviated the need to publicly oppose the " peacefor-territory" UN resolutions...

...decision to open a dialogue with the PLO "has eliminated the chances of peace" in the Middle East...

...Thus Shultz' announcement to the contrary on December 14, immediately after the press conference, produced shock and confusion in Israel—which had not been fully aware of the hectic exchanges involving Washington, Stockholm, Cairo, Riyadh, and Algiers before and after the Geneva UN session...

...For Israeli doves the uprising reinforced the urgency to end Jewish rule over a million Palestinians...

...The 197 3 Yom Kippur War reinforced the Right-wing view, and left the bulk of the country wishing for Arab recognition yet very suspicious that it would not be sincere...

...On November 26, Secretary of State George P. Shultz explained his refusing Yasir Arafat entry into the U.S...

...Practically everyone here agreed, though, that the American decision had opened a new phase in the Middle East dispute and, possibly, in Israeli-U.S...

...Consequently, when Shamir says that Arafat's peace proclamations are a deception he is echoing widely felt worries...

...pressure, insisted that the coalition document should stipulate the opening of a large number of new settlements in the West Bank and Gaza...

...It took another week of jockeying, but by December 22 the Likud-Labor coalition finally became a reality...

...Hawks insist on a formal annexation of the territories to make irreversible Israel's right to the entire Holy Land...

...The Labor Party's Left wing, meanwhile, protested that a partnership with Shamir would give Likud seemingly wide backing for its hard-line stance...

...Both parties and the vast majority of the Israeli public in fact needed the pause to adjust themselves to the changed situation...

...Then Labor's Executive Committee rejected the whole notion by a vote of 56-53 in a secret ballot—against the advice of the Party's leader, Shimon Peres, and its number two man, Yitzchak Rabin...

...This, more than anything else, explains why Arafat accepted the U.S...

...Prime Minister-designate Yitzchak Shamir had been expected to quickly establish a Likud administration with a slim Knesset majority provided by three small far Right and four small Orthodox religious parties...

...The plane's prompt return to Moscow, with the handcuffed hijackers, earned Israel unprecedented expressions of official Soviet appreciation and friendly media exposure in the USSR...

...It is incongruent, they argue, to assert simultaneously that Israel is the strongest military power in the Middle East and that a small Palestinian state would endanger its existence...

...conditions for talks...

...Israel's aid to victims of the Armenian earthquake a week later was similarly highlighted on Soviet television, and there were vague hints that Jerusalem's cooperation had improved the chances of renewed diplomatic relations between the two countries (broken off by the Kremlin in 1967...

...The thousands of Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza had increased their pressure on Jerusalem to smash a threat that they feel has made them front-line targets...

...But the intifada had added a new element to the positions of all concerned...

...On the Arab side, the intifada not only gained the Palestinians the sympathy of world public opinion, it also won them a dominant voice over their own fate in Arab councils...