In Israel, Shamir Stands at Center of Right and Left

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s U.S. visit raises a number of questions about his position in Israel’s government. Is Shamir just a dogmatic ideologue, an unrepentant terrorist, a defiant member of the old guard, a right-wing extremist? The answer is perhaps a surprising no, and lies in the nature of contemporary Israeli political life. It says much about Shamir, the political bloc he represents and the party he heads, as well as about the nature and standing, politically and electorally, of the “opposition” Labor Alignment.

The current political situation in Israel is complex and cannot be perceived correctly by looking at public-opinion polls which, in any case, are often deceptive and misleading.

The political spectrum in Israel is clearly divided between two major political and ideological camps--and electoral blocs--containing diverse and sometimes extreme subgroups. Shamir’s power and appeal lie in the Nationalist bloc, composed from left to right of the National Religious Party and Herut moderates, to the Liberals, to the Herut radicals, to the now splintered Renaissance Party and to the extreme-right Kahanite fringe, considered pariahs. Shamir is leader of this bloc.

The alternative, the other major political bloc, is the Liberal bloc, comprised of the Mapam Marxist party, the Progressive List for Peace (the Jewish-Arab minorities party), the Citizens Party, the Liberal Party and Labor, which is deeply divided into several factions. Peres heads the center group of Labor. Jerusalem party secretary Uzi Baram heads the old, historic Mapai Party while the current defense minister, Yitzhak Rabin, heads the United Kibbutz Movement. Ranging to the right, there is also the faction of the Moshavim (cooperative agricultural settlements), which is as close as the Liberal bloc gets to a “complete Israel” movement, causing a convergence with the moderates of Herut in Likud.

If you lay out the two camps on an electoral map stretching from the Kahanites on the extreme right to the Progressive List for Peace on the extreme left, one would find Shamir occupying almost the exact center--along with Peres. The difference between the two is that Shamir is slightly to the right of center, Peres slightly to the left.

Shamir is hardly the extreme, fringe politician he is often perceived to be. In fact, he approaches the center of the center, which explains the role of Likud, the most powerful group in the Nationalist bloc. Likud has repeatedly demonstrated it can win at the polls and can put together coalitions to form a government. In the 1981 and 1984 elections, it stood as a party that could win as a right-of-center party. It is Likud that can form a coalition government, albeit a narrow one, with the support of the nationalist bloc. The crucial fact about Labor is that it cannot form any sort of government in coalition with the Liberal bloc, even if the Arab Communist party rallies to its side.

Likud today is what Mapai was in the days of David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir, an institutionalized party able to form a narrow government coalition. Menachem Begin, a brilliant tactical, electoral and parliamentary politician, built Likud into a center-conservative party with radical and nationalist ideological tendencies. However, its electoral support comes from the parties to the right of Likud.

Ze’ev Jabotinsky built Zionist Revisionism, Likud’s forerunner, as a one-man party. It stayed that way under Begin and remains so with Shamir. Jabotinsky and Begin were both charismatic leaders, something Shamir obviously is not. Nonetheless, Likud is a single-leader party. Jabotinsky and Begin, however authoritarian and authoritative, were constantly challenged from within by powerful and ambitious Zionist Revisionists. Both weathered the opposition, and so has Shamir to date.

Labor, on the other hand, was historically a party divided by ideological splits typical to socialist movements in Europe and the United States, between Marxists and Democratic Socialists. It was never dominated by a single person, even under Ben-Gurion. Betar, Herut and Likud were dominated by charismatic figures like Jabotinsky and Begin and to a lesser degree, Shamir and his allies, the “Princes,” sons of the old underground heroes--such as Benjamin Netanyahu, now Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations--comprising almost a familial rule of Herut-Likud. They give the party its tone, deciding on issues, government appointments and promotions.

Like Begin, Shamir and his followers are ideological pragmatists, a description that would appear to be inherently contradictory; how can someone be ideological and pragmatic at the same time? Yet, there is a long history of nationalist, highly ideological leaders who were precisely that, stretching from Charles de Gaulle to Winston Churchill; and in the United States, from Theodore Roosevelt to Franklin D. Roosevelt and even to Richard M. Nixon. These leaders were not seduced to the point of ideological dogmatism by their own rhetoric and seized historical moments with utter pragmatism. Only De Gaulle could have torn France away from Algeria, and only the staunchly anti-communist Nixon could have launched the U.S. initiative toward China.

Closer to the issue at hand is Begin himself who was seen, when elected, as an unregenerate ideologue of the worst sort--unbending, unrepentant and irresponsible. Yet it was Begin who responded to Anwar Sadat’s challenge and seized the moment to negotiate the Camp David accords.

Then it was Begin who pursued completion of the accords and voted for them, even as Shamir and all Herut members of the Knesset voted against them. Today, Shamir maintains a relationship to his party’s radicals, such as Ariel Sharon and Deputy Prime Minister David Levy, similar to Begin’s earlier relationship to him. Shamit could defy Begin just as Sharon is sure to defy him if Shamir should back an international peace conference to negotiate the projected autonomy of Gaza and the West Bank--the occupied territories. In 1979, Shamir opposed the Camp David accords but since he took power in 1983, he has moved his party and allies closer to the center--even though few are willing to credit him for such a feat, preferring to see him as an extremist of the right.

Why then has Shamir not become the ideological pragmatist that Begin was and unraveled the Palestinian deadlock? Because Shamir lacks a Sadat for a partner--there are no pragmatic ideologues in the Palestinian camp. Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization is unacceptable as a negotiating participant and partner, not only to Shamir but also to Peres. Today, there appears to be no political alternative to Arafat among the Palestinian leaders, not even among the stone-throwing rebels. The PLO remains extremist and terrorist, as it demonstrated by the hijacking of a civilian bus recently, with predictably tragic and bloody results.

In any election, Shamir stands to gain considerably. The Nationalist bloc is better organized and mobilized than the Liberal bloc. It is sewn into one ideological cloth while the liberal group is far less cohesive, a divided mixture of Marxists, Socialists and the urban middle class of Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem.

Shamir, like any politician in a democratically elected country, can act only within the confines of his given political mandate. The mandate now is neither clear nor conciliatory. Like Begin, he is careful not to endanger the future of his party; he wants to win the next election. For him to go beyond his constituency he needs a Palestinian partner, that person who continues to be so conspicuously absent.