Eban on the Sidelines

The long and distinguished public career of Abba Eban, for the better part of 40 years Israel’s most recognizable and eloquent voice in international affairs, is about to end. With next November’s Knesset election Eban will retire from political life, not voluntarily but with his honor untarnished and his reputation secure. This week the Labor Party’s selection committee refused to allot Eban a top place on the list of candidates that it will present to the voters in the fall. For the first time since he was elected to the Knesset in 1959, Eban was thus denied a party ranking commensurate with his abilities, his services to his country and his stature in the world. It was a humiliation that he found impossible to accept. He responded in the only way he could--by withdrawing his name from further consideration as a candidate.

In the end Eban fell victim to the kind of political deal-cutting from which he had always held aloof, had indeed scorned. An intellectual by nature, a statesman by training, independent-minded and always a voice of reason in a political arena where hyperbole and histrionics are not uncommon forms of discourse, Eban had never developed a constituency among the Israeli electorate or significant personal support among the hierarchs of his party. In consequence his reputation abroad was always greater than his standing at home. In the past the very considerable value of that reputation to Israel and its cause was recognized and appreciated by the country’s leaders. Now, apparently, it is seen to count for little.

Opinion polls suggest that Israeli voters have moved to the right under the effect of the Palestinian uprising that began last December. With a worried eye on the election, the Labor Party may have concluded that a moderate and conciliator as outspoken as Eban could only be a liability at the polls. Perhaps. Perhaps, too, what was done to Eban was simply revenge for the candid and politically courageous position that he took last year in finding, as the head of the Knesset’s Committee for Foreign Affairs and Defense, that top leaders of his own party had guilty knowledge in the case involving Jonathan Pollard, the American intelligence analyst who was convicted of spying for Israel. Whatever motivated Eban’s enemies in the party, the deed is now done, and whatever the outcome of the November elections, Israel’s public life will be diminished because of it.