Netanyahu's Window of Opportunity

...On the Israeli side, once the Left-wing parties recover from the shell shock of their election loss and install a new leadership, they could attempt to derail the peace process in the hope of bringing about Netanyahu's downfall...

...Will Syria enter the 21 st century...

...There is no alternative to fully reopening the borders to Arab workers (and thereby, incidentally, alleviating the growing social, legal and moral problems of accommodating the more than 200.000 foreign workers in Israel...

...Unlike Rabin, who confessed that he did not understand economics, Netanyahu has a business degree from MIT and worked in U.S...

...who would have to abandon their stated goal of expanding...

...Arab anti-Israel propaganda could become a self-fulfilling prophecy...

...Will King Hussein stick his neck out...

...There is no guarantee that it will really bring peace, or that the Arabs will deliver—Mubarak once assured President George Bush that Iraq would not invade Kuwait...

...Today those areas are saturated with vast quantities of small arms, military vehicles, explosives, and well-trained Palestinian soldiers—much of the hardware having been supplied by or with the permission of Israel...

...It is significant that the Syrian controlled Hezbollah did not assault Israeli positions in Lebanon during the Prime Minister's visit to the United States...

...With the resumption of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority on a "permanent settlement," he will have to serve up a more substantial entree, particularly given the twin bugaboos of Jerusalem and a Palestinian State lurking in the background...

...Close cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian security forces over the past several months has sharply reduced terrorist acts and produced the arrest or liquidation of several prominent terrorists...

...That could have doomed the whole effort...

...Even glitches in the peace process can have severe economic consequences...

...sonal sympathies, Hussein would be left to worry about Syrian-trained terrorist infiltration from the north...

...In his case the inconsistency was fueled by the belief in some circles that he is a clone of ex-Likud chief Yitzchak Shamir—that is...

...Moreover, unlike Shamir, he is in a remarkably good position to make progress fairly quickly...

...After all, Likud contended that in the attempt to keep the peace process afloat Peres permitted Arafat to egregiously violate the accords by, among other things, turning a blind eye to Palestinian political activity in East Jerusalem, refusing to surrender terrorists to Israel, and letting Hamas recruit suicide bombers in Gaza...

...Netanyahu knows that reconstructing an informant network is a long-term, if not impossible, task...

...Still, blocking the process would bring down Netanyahu's whole house of cards...

...As for Assad...

...Nevertheless, if he succeeds that may well be his most important and remarkable accomplishment...

...Eventually, there would be nothing to stop him from declaring a Palestinian State...

...That the previous government was loath to evacuate Hebron out of political considerations— they claimed it was a security issue—is just as well...

...He will have to resort to old-fashioned trust busting, and the howls will be heard from Tel Aviv to Eilat...

...Invade...

...Foreign markets that were once needed only for import and export are now crucial for capital investment...

...Netanyahu might yet be able to conclude a deal with Syria-Lebanon that would permit the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Southern Lebanon in exchange for Syrian-Lebanese guarantees to honor ls-rael's northern border...

...For better or worse, the peace process is at a historical nexus...

...an upsurge in terrorist activity and/or a revolt inside the Palestinian Authority are bound to occur sooner or later...

...Can Lebanon become an independent country again...

...Except for Hebron, Israel is already out of the West Bank's major Arab population centers...

...It remains unclear whether President Hafez al-Assad is afraid of the potentially destabilizing consequences of a peace treaty, or more concerned with his dreams of a Greater Syria, or simply extremely cautious...

...Given its fractious dealings with the religious settler community, any Labor-led pullout from Hebron would have been a painful affair...

...Peres started out with half the country opposed to his policies, and any Labor wavering on the issue of a Palestinian State would have lost him another quarter of the citizenry...

...All this on the theory that over time the threat of all-out war diminishes, especially as the absence of Soviet sponsorship is increasingly felt...

...In his speech before Congress he said that to achieve economic independence...

...while waiting for the peace process to break down on its own...

...In the case of Jordan, he would be content to let King Hussein twist slowly in the wind...

...Another requirement is the continuation of the peace process...

...Rabin envisioned Arafat using the three-year period allotted for the final phase of negotiations to "prove" himself, so that both parties could arrive at a modus vivendi...

...Here too, though, if his agenda is to have any chance, he has to start early and move quickly...

...If Netanyahu persuaded Mubarak on his recent visit to Cairo that he has a real offer for Arafat, Egypt can be uniquely helpful...

...Even if he seemed to swal low the Oslo Accords as a fait accompli, at the very least he would stonewall, and he might attempt to undermine whatever has already been implemented...

...This is all Greek to Israelis...

...since winning the office...

...As for maintaining the cold, limp, touristless, and tradeless Egyptian peace, Shamir would have a fairly easy time of it...

...Arafat, in the meantime, has shown that if sufficiently motivated, he can effectively smother terrorist activity...

...open capital markets, an end to cartels, lower taxes, deregulation...

...Indeed, he may have to form a unity government with Labor to have such an agreement approved—under Israel's new law, a no-confidence vote automatically forces the Knesset to resign...

...On the Syrian front Shamir would have no problem...

...If Netanyahu evinces a readiness to negotiate rather than stall, and convinces Arafat that 75 per cent of Israelis will support an agreement that avoids basic concessions on statehood and Jerusalem, it may be possible to achieve a breakthrough...

...Nothing is more important to foreign investment than political stability...

...Netanyahu, however, brings to the table a key ingredient Peres could not have: a strong national consensus on what the final arrangement should be...

...NOT SURPRISINGLY, Netanyahu has demonstrated a willingness to ease the closure of the territories, but he knows that is a mere hors d'oeuvre...

...Probably not...

...and Israeli firms...

...Nor will legislation be sufficient to carry it out...

...Israeli firms have to compete with the best and the brightest on Wall Street...

...Will Egypt stop putting the brakes on the process...

...a Right-wing ideologue determined to freeze or reverse the foreign policies set into motion by Labor Party leaders Yitzchak Rabin and Shimon Peres...

...Israel—whose economy consists, in part, of several incestuous octopi with tentacles ranging from the government to the media, banks, financial markets, manufacturing concerns, and the unions— needs "free enterprise, privatization...

...Netanyahu's recent visit to Egypt signaled his understanding of Egypt's potential to play the role of helper or spoiler in the peace process...

...Timing could be Netanyahu's greatest asset...

...Many critical questions linger...

...It will be difficult enough today for Netanyahu to get his coalition to accept any agreement palatable to the Palestinians, and his ability to do so will lessen as he approaches the end of his term...

...The economic situation in the Gaza Strip, where a population of nearly 1 million is sustained by the wage earners who once flocked to Israel, is desperate...

...And since it is by this stage obvious that neither Saudi Arabia nor the West will pump in the huge sums needed annually, Israel must try to keep Arafat afloat or risk chaos...

...Is it beyond the pale that Labor politicians would seek to persuade Arafat that he can obtain a better deal from them...

...Two factors, shaped by the terrorist attacks here last February and March, account significantly for Netanyahu's window of opportunity...

...In a nutshell, if Netanyahu were Shamir II, he would hunker down, dodge Arafat for as long as possible, then grudgingly dole out small concessions to pacify the U.S...

...Yet the longer the negotiations take, the greater the chance of external or internal events crushing them...

...that a "low" level of terrorist activity is unavoidable, and is not a strategic threat...

...As long as such a state is economically viable, and enjoys the approval of the Arab countries and the West, what could Israel do...

...Had Shamir been elected Prime Minister once more on May 29, he would immediately have set Israel on an uncompromisingly hard-line course...

...Can Iran and Iraq be brought into the community of nations...

...Can Arafat go beyond face-saving issues and give up Jerusalem...

...NETANYAHU also has an economic agenda...

...One is Arafat's liquidation of the IDF-backed informants who had been paid, cajoled or blackmailed into cooperating with Israel to combat terror...

...Shamir distrusts Arabs and believes the Labor Party's land for peace formula threatens Israel's security as well as its Zionist creed...

...It ignores the generational differences between the two men, and it fails to take into account the changed situation...

...That would be good for Israel and Syria, but tragic for Lebanon's existence as an independent country—and not necessarily in the interest of the United States if it leaves Syria running the drug trade from the Bekka Valley...

...Perhaps Peres wishes to stay on as head of Labor because he sees himself participating in the realization of his dream...

...What remains is to grant the Palestinian Authority formal administrative control over the city—a step that would permit Arafat to save face, reduce Jewish-Arab friction in a place where it has a particularly bloody history, and actually help protect the small number of Jews staying put...

...Israel's economy is dependent on links to the rest of the world...

...Netanyahu will try to isolate him until he decides to be more forthcoming...

...Or debit...

...The statehood issue might be finessed through an arrangement with Jordan...

...He knows he cannot permit foreign investment to dry up...

...What is apparent, though, is that the return of the Golan— which Rabin essentially agreed to, providing security and water arrangements were satisfactory—is not Assad's first priority...

...And though one Israeli general has said recapturing the territories under Arafat's control would be a "Cakewalk," Netanyahu also knows that keeping the lid on afterward would be exceedingly difficult...

...Islamic fundamentalists at home, and Israeli entrepreneurs looking to take Jordan by storm...

...In any event, there is no reason for Netanyahu to take such a drastic and unpopular step...

...But cooperation with Arafat means more than collaboration on security issues...

...For openers, notwithstanding his tough election talk about "returning responsibility for Israeli security to Israel," Netanyahu realizes this cannot be achieved without fatal political consequences...

...Like all politicians, he is keenly aware that the next campaign started the day he took office—and that he cannot permit the peace process to fail if he wants to be re-elected...

...From Arafat's point of view, a workable arrangement may be better than none at all...

...Despite being careful not to run too far ahead of the pack in becoming friendly with Israel, regardless of his perNETTY c GROSS, a new contributor, is a senior writer for the Jerusalem Report...

...Netanyahu himself recently suggested that had he known the extent of the security cooperation during the election campaign, he would have toned down hisanti-Arafat rhetoric...

...Shamir would heartily take advantage of this stance, with very little political cost to him...

...Shamir would also allow Southern Lebanon to remain as it is—a shifting morass of "understandings" and subsequent violations costing the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) some 50 lives a year, played by the Syrians and Iranians for maximum effect upon the bodies of the civilian population...

...and, most tellingly, that it is impossible to construct any proposal good for Israel that the Arabs could accept...

...By many accounts, this already has taken place...

...In 1987, while serving as Prime Minister of the unity government, he nixed a proposed deal made secretly in London by then Foreign Minister Peres and King Hussein that would have granted Jordan sovereignty over the West Bank, co-opted a Palestinian State, and been more advantageous to Israel than the Oslo Accords...

...But the Netanyahu-is-Shamir II picture is by no means accurate, nor is the outcome predicted by the naysayers inevitable...

...Benjamin Netanyahu was subjected to the double-edged experience in early July, when he made his first trip to the U.S...

...The Labor government complained that Likud leaders sought to persuade U. S. Congressmen not to support the peace effort...

...The second is the Labor government's sealing off of the West Bank and Gaza following the attacks, so that some 70,000 Palestinians who commuted daily to Israel to work no longer had any means of earning a living...

...Insiders say Netanyahu has promised an accommodation along these lines— which doesn't require public negotiation or visible concessions from Arafat—to President Clinton and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak...

...Mubarak, who is obsessed with showing that Egypt is the most influential Arab state, has tried to brake Hussein's rush toward Israel and mollify Assad...

...Furthermore, after coming to terms with Netanyahu, he is likely to be able to obtain additional economic benefits from the West...

...Would Shamir continue negotiating with Palestinian Authority President Ya-sir Arafat today...

...Although Netanyahu endorsed elements of the above during the election campaign—he said, for example, he would not deign to meet Arafat—the image of him as Shamir II is an oversimplification...

...Appropriate overtures would be made in the direction of the other Arab countries, too, with the hope that they would be rejected...

...Netanyahu, on the other hand, enjoys the support of the settler movement, has West Bank settlers in his government, and would have a much easier time executing an Israeli withdrawal from Hebron...

...In the same address Netanyahu lamented that there is no Hebrew word for "deregulation," an illustration of the fact that he has no constituency for his revolutionary program...

...TIMING IS CRITICAL Netanyahu's Window of Opportunity BY NETTY c GROSS JERUSALEM IT IS AN abiding paradox of Israel's political life that its Prime Minister usually gets treated like a rock star in Congress and a crumb at the welcome home press conference...