A Vote for Realism
Bar-Illan, David
A Vote for Realism by David Bar-Illan Jerusalem Prime Minister Shimon Peres's defeat was far more dramatic than the result of his head-to-head contest with Benjamin Netanyahu might indicate. His...
...Almost every European statesman, every Arab head of state with a Western orientation, and virtually every Jewish community leader abroad endorsed Peres...
...David Bar-Illan is executive editor of the Jerusalem Post...
...And, as recent local elections in the universities show, the power of Hamas has not diminished...
...A day before the election, he averred that a vote against Peres was a vote against peace and that the United States would "minimize the risks" if Israel wisely chose the path of peace-an unambiguous promise of financial aid in exchange for a Peres victory...
...But this only increased the general anger and unease: the impression that government policies were dictated by wishful thinking rather than a realistic assessment of developments...
...The assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shocked the nation more than any event since the Holocaust...
...To oppose his disciples, the implementers of his policies, was seen by many as nothing short of blasphemy...
...Egypt, Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia have been on a shopping spree of late...
...They simply wanted to claim credit in the Arab street for this withdrawal, particularly since Israel kept pledging to continue its retreat no matter what the terrorists did...
...and begun a peace process with the Palestinians that promised to end a blood-drenched 100-year conflict with the Arab world...
...Nor has any other Arab country, with the possible exception of Jordan, shown progress toward democracy...
...Even more telling, the Jewish components of the coalition seem to have lost 13 of their 56 seats...
...But these are precisely some of the suggestions Peres has made in recent years, and it is under the influence of these visions that he has acted in dealing with the PLO...
...The answer is as simple as it is obvious: terrorism...
...He swore to achieve the return of the Palestinian refugees and their descendants to their homes in Israel-a sure prescription for Israel's disintegration...
...It did not take Israeli Jews long to wonder why, if the terrorists really wanted to destroy the Israeli-Palestinian rapprochement, they did not put a swift end to it by suicide-bombing Yasser Arafat and his government...
...The Israeli press not only favored government spokesmen over opposition candidates to a point of absurdity...
...And if relatively progressive Algeria cannot make the transition from military rule to a democratic system without risking a takeover by Islamist fanatics, it is doubtful that any Arab regime can...
...Both Egypt and Syria have vast quantities of chemical weapons, while Libya has built a monstrous underground plant for their production...
...only a substantial increase in the vote for the Arab parties diminished the size of the debacle...
...His government coalition, which commanded a bare but unshakable one-seat majority in the Knesset (61 of 120), suffered a shattering trouncing in last Wednesday's elections...
...Even in a world partly addicted to Orwellian doublespeak, the words "exploding buses" and "peace" are irreconcilable...
...To local businessmen and foreigners alike, the country has radiated prosperity and promise...
...President Bill Clinton himself, putting the prestige of the White House on the line, departed from diplomatic norms and openly supported Peres's candidacy...
...Personal income is up...
...Its three components-Peres's own Labor party (the super-dovish Meretz) and the two Arab parties (one nationalist, one Communist)-were reduced to a total of 52 seats...
...Algeria, a relatively remote country that covertly trades with Israel, has failed in its attempt to become a democracy...
...When Arafat ordered a 21-gun salute for this killer and called him a hero and a martyr, the difference between the Hamas "enemies of peace'' and the Palestinian Authority's "partners in peace" seemed to blur...
...Israel's standing in the world is more solid than it has ever been...
...Nor could the public be persuaded that the terrorists were "enemies of the peace process" who could only be defeated by Israel's stubborn adherence to the process...
...Nor has any Moslem regime in the region reduced its acquisitions of arms...
...For, on the face of it, the Peres government should have been unbeatable...
...The Iraq-Iran war, the Gulf war, the civil wars in Lebanon and Iraq, the savage 40-year ethnic-religious war in Sudan, and the blood-drenched Islamist uprising in Algeria (in which more than 40,000 have been killed over the past four years) all dwarf the Arab-Israeli wars in number of casualties and complexity of motives...
...Moreover, for the first time in Israel's history, foreign friends-old and new-volunteered to support the incumbent government in an election campaign...
...He assured his audience that the Oslo agreements are no more valid than treaties the Prophet Muhammad signed and later abrogated when his followers grew stronger...
...Israel has signed a highly popular peace treaty with Jordan...
...The Islamic countries possess 3,000 missiles, virtually all of which can reach Israel...
...Inflation-though high by Western standards-seems manageable at 12-14 percent...
...Instead of improving its relations with Israel as a result of the Oslo agreement, Egypt has conducted a relentless anti-Israel campaign in the international arena, zealously pursuing the goal of disarming Israel's nuclear capability while knowing only too well that both Iran and Iraq are likely to possess nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future...
...In this kind of neighborhood, it is an exercise in futility to dream of Israel as a member of the Arab League, a participant in a Middle Eastern NATO-like alliance with Arab armies, a catalyst for a regional Marshall Plan financed by the G-7 industrial nations, and a partner in a Benelux-like union consisting of Israel, Jordan, and a Palestinian entity, where "100 years of good neighborliness" has begun...
...The growing Israeli distrust of the Palestinians inevitably reflected on the Peres government...
...On the contrary...
...exchanged representatives with Tunisia, Morocco, Oman, and Qatar...
...On the economic level, too, Israelis feel comfortable...
...Among Jews, Netanyahu won a large majority, close to 60 percent, a fact that is nothing short of stunning...
...Unemployment is lower than in any Western country, and the newspapers are full of stories of huge investments by foreign companies, all said to be attracted to Israel by the peace process...
...And he rationalized the Oslo agreements as the first step of the 1974 "plan of phases,'' a 10-point PLO blueprint for Israel's gradual destruction, whose first phase was to be the acquisition of land from Israel by peaceful means and the establishment of a Palestinian sovereignty that would serve as a staging area for a future war...
...This distrust of the Palestinians convinced a substantial majority of Israeli Jews that Peres's vision of a peaceful, prosperous, and liberal Middle East as stable and cooperative as today's Western Europe was a chimera...
...Chances are the Netanyahu government, unlike its predecessor, will begin to acknowledge the brutal facts of the Middle East, and understand what Peres never did: that you cannot build a New Middle East by appeasing the corrupt, murderous tyrants of the old...
...The government also had an unmatchable emotional advantage...
...None of the terrorists wanted for murder by Israeli authorities has been extradited to Israel, in clear violation of the Oslo accords...
...Most of the Hamas members arrested in the highly advertised roundups designed to help Peres in the elections and placate the Americans have been released, and now that the Israeli elections are over, it is doubtful that any of them will stay in jail...
...More than 160 nations have diplomatic relations with the Jewish state, almost half of them established or upgraded during the Labor government's four-year tenure...
...And the distrust increased with every speech Arafat made to Arab audiences...
...He called for jihad (holy war) "till the battle is won...
...The media, too, both in Israel and abroad, were almost unanimous in their support for Peres...
...The increase in the Arab vote overall, and its almost unanimous support for Peres, was the only reason the contest for the premiership was so close...
...Nor were Israelis comforted to see 300,000 Gazans, the largest gathering of Palestinian Arabs in the country's history, participate in the funeral of "the Engineer," a terrorist responsible for killing at least 50 Israelis...
...What, then, caused the government's defeat...
...they pried into Netanyahu's personal life with unprecedented savagery...
...Hoping to persuade Israelis that the terror victims were the last casualties before the new dawn, both Peres and his predecessor Rabin called them "sacrifices for peace...
...The much-touted Arafat crackdown on its "military wing" has not touched the terror group's training camps, financial resources, and organizational structures, nor has it disarmed its cadres...
...Islamist agitation has given Egypt, a less despotic country than most in the region, a pretext to limit what little freedom its press had...
...It seemed more reasonable to suppose that Hamas and Islamic Jihad had no objection to a process that entailed Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza...
...They seemed to realize that to pursue such a vision, Peres had to ignore the turmoil and conflict still plaguing the Arab world...
...Even though the Israeli army's evacuation of the Gaza Strip and the Arab cities of the West Bank was humiliating to some, it proved generally popular: Israelis had not enjoyed seeing their sons chasing stone-throwing, petrol-bomb-tossing Arab teenagers every time they turned on the television...
...The Arab-Israeli conflict is by no means the only source of trouble in the Middle East...
Vol. 1 • June 1996 • No. 38
