Underdog Starts Campaign Early : Peres, the Man, Takes on Likud’s Rightist Ideology

“Here Comes Peace!” a popular Israeli song promised over the loudspeaker as the motor launch neared the dock of this resort on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee.

Moments later, the boat’s most important passenger--foreign minister, alternate premier and Labor Alignment leader Shimon Peres--bolted across the gangplank and onto the crowded beach to shake more hands and, he hoped, win over a few more skeptical voters.

“This time, the elections are not between parties, but about what kind of existence the country will have,” he told them. Pointing to the young son of one sunburned vacationer he added, “We don’t want these little kids to have to fight again.”

Motioning toward her husband, the lad’s skeptical mother retorted, “That’s what they said when he was a little boy.”

Even its most loyal supporters concede that the center-left Labor Alignment faces an uphill struggle as it heads into national Israeli elections Nov. 1, and Peres has hit the campaign trail early.

He has become what one veteran Israeli observer termed “the prophet of the peace process,” even over the objections of some party stalwarts who think the issue is an almost guaranteed loser, given the ongoing Palestinian uprising in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Along the way, he has in a very real sense turned the campaign into a test between a man and an ideology: Shimon Peres vs. the Israeli right, dominated by the Likud Bloc.

Likud is headed by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, a man so nondescript that even one of his principal election aides comments, “He’s completely colorless, of course.” Likud’s attraction is not its leader so much as its commitment to retaining control over all of what it calls the greater Land of Israel, including the occupied territories, and its tough image toward Israel’s Arab neighbors.

Shooting From the Hip

“Likud people shoot from the hip,” Peres campaign adviser Moshe Theumim said. “When Labor wants to shoot from the hip, they first of all have to have five discussions about which hip.”

In its efforts to attract wavering Likud voters, Labor is trying to broaden and popularize its appeal. Its official campaign slogan, for example, is “Security--Peace.”

Also, Labor stresses the introduction to its 1988 candidate list of 16 new faces, many of them young and charismatic, to counter its image as the tired party of the self-satisfied Establishment.

(Israelis vote not for a candidate, as in the United States, but for a party “list.” Seats in the 120-member Knesset, or Parliament--and, indirectly, the prime ministership--are awarded based on a party’s share of the national vote.)

More Popular Than Party

Still, as Labor’s campaign gets under way, it is clearly dominated by the person of Peres. “Polls have shown that Peres is more popular than the party, and we have decided to push him intensively in a campaign of his own,” explained party spokeswoman Michal Cohen.

Ironically, a little more than four years ago, Peres was considered within that same party as an electoral liability. Detractors saw him as an opportunist whose strong suits were intrigue and infighting. He was “Slippery Shimon,” the Israeli equivalent of former President Richard M. Nixon when he was reviled as “Tricky Dick.”

The Polish-born Labor leader was particularly impugned by the Sephardic Jews--those of African or Arab origin--who now make up both Israel’s majority and Likud’s power base. The most charitable of these critics considered him the elitist head of an insensitive party of Ashkenazis, Jews of European origin--a party that mistreated their immigrant parents and still looks down on them. When Peres campaigned in the Sephardic stronghold of Kiryat Shemona north of here in 1984, residents showered him with tomatoes.

‘National Unity’ Coalition

Neither major party emerged from those 1984 elections with a sufficient plurality to form a narrow government, so Labor and Likud joined forces in the so-called “national unity” coalition that has ruled ever since. Peres was its first prime minister, heading the unusual coalition for 25 months before stepping down in favor of Shamir as part of a prearranged power-sharing deal.

While both sides were constrained by the partnership, Peres was nonetheless able during his tenure as premier to put his personal, activist stamp on the government. And it was during that period that the turnaround in his image occurred.

He was prime minister when Israel finally pulled most of its army out of Lebanon; when it enacted an emergency economic program that slashed inflation from an annual rate of 800% to about 20%; and when it at least partially revived its “cold peace” with Egypt. After two years, “Slippery Shimon” was “Statesman Shimon,” with one of the highest popularity ratings of any Israeli prime minister ever.

Virtual Dead Heat

Shamir took over the top job in October, 1986. When voters are asked who makes the better premier, the polls show Peres still tops his Likud rival by a significant margin even as the parties they head emerge in a virtual dead heat. During his recent all-day campaign tour here, near the Sea of Galilee, many people even addressed the Labor leader as “Mr. Prime Minister.”

“It’s a great honor to meet you,” said a smiling woman in her 30s who approached Peres during a stop at the Luna Gal water park. “While you were prime minister we saw the light.”

“Good work with the inflation!” chimed in another fan.

As a campaigner, Peres has the advantage of seeming indefatigability. On this recent day of campaigning, for example, the Labor leader had been up until 3 a.m. the night before because of a surprise party for his 65th birthday. He nonetheless charged energetically ahead of his entourage throughout a crowded, 12-hour day here. Having kicked the cigarette habit himself a little over a year ago, Peres occasionally scolded young smokers he met on the way.

There were also reminders during his tour that the Labor leader hasn’t solved all of his earlier image problems.

‘I Caught Him Lying!’

After listening to Peres for a few minutes, an elderly man wearing a baseball cap with a “Las Vegas” insignia said, scowling, to a companion: “A million times I caught him lying! Only Shamir--may he live to be 120.”

Also, as much as he tries, Peres cannot seem to be what so many Israelis want in their politicians: someone who is dignified, but still “one of the guys.”

In a telling exchange during a campaign kickoff television interview, he repeatedly dodged questions about his reputedly icy demeanor.

“The things that really moved me belong to my own personal life, and I am not willing to expose them,” he said.

“Maybe this is the ‘short circuit’ you have with a public that likes also feelings, not just intellect and cold analysis,” the interviewer said.

“Since I have no choice, I decided to live in peace with my weaknesses and not only with my strengths,” responded Peres.

“You think that these are weaknesses?”

“Yes.”

Too Anxious for Peace?

Peres’ biggest problem, however, seems to be the fear that he is too anxious to make peace; the perception, as a key aide put it, that “Shimon has no red lines.”

Privately financed Labor polls show that while the public strongly favors Peres for what is perceived as the reasonableness of his stand on the occupied territories, his economic policy and his ability to secure U.S. support, he badly trails Shamir on another key quality: the ability to withstand pressure.

“The prevailing feeling is that you can’t hand Peres the keys because you don’t know what room he’ll unlock,” commented Daniel Elazar, director of the Jerusalem Institute for Public Affairs. “A lot of people in this country think Peres will give away the store.”

“Shimon,” entreated a middle-aged vacationer here the other day, “are you going to give back all the (occupied) territories? Or will you leave us something?”

Keeping Jewish Character

The point is not giving up territory, Peres replied, but ridding the country of responsibility for more than a million Arab residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip who threaten Israel’s democratic, Jewish character.

Labor is underlining what it calls “the demographic issue” by distributing mock Israeli identity cards with a question mark on the inside where a photo of the bearer would normally be.

“This is one of 1.7 million ID cards which will be issued to the Arabs of the territories” if the political right is allowed to extend Israeli law there, the mock card warns. That would mean an Israel with 45% Arabs, it warns, adding, “We must not lose the majority!”

Another Achilles heel, said a Peres strategist, is the popular belief that despite its seeming rigidity, Likud is actually more likely to make peace than Labor.

It is a theme on which Likud is moving strongly to capitalize. Last month, the party adopted a new campaign slogan: “Only Likud Can!” In a press conference a couple of days later, Likud Knesset candidate Meir Shitrit told foreign correspondents that Israeli history proves “only hawks can make peace with a national consensus”--a reference to the peace treaty with Egypt, signed while Likud founder Menachem Begin was prime minister.

Hiding Real Intentions

Nonsense, responds Peres, it’s all a charade to disguise Likud’s real intentions.

“When I look at the right-wing coalition, I don’t remember such extremism,” he told journalists here.

Jordan’s King “Hussein wanted peace,” the Labor leader told a pot-bellied Likud supporter during an animated confrontation on Tzemach beach, at the Sea of Galilee’s southern tip. “But Likud wouldn’t let him. We could have started negotiations a year ago and prevented the intifada ,” Peres said, using the Arabic name for the Palestinian uprising.

“Why do we have to grovel to the Arabs?” interjected a man who identified himself as Prosper, a 25-year army veteran.

‘I Don’t Grovel

“I don’t grovel to anybody,” responded Peres. “Maybe you do.”

“But why don’t the Arabs say they want peace?” Prosper pressed. “Why is it only we who keep saying it 24 hours a day?”

“You want me to tell you why?” Peres asked rhetorically. “Because we are Jews!”

“OK, let’s say what you talk about works out, and a month later they start an intifada in Jaffa (near Tel Aviv),” the army man countered. “How will you handle it?”

“With force,” Peres promised.

Some Labor supporters fear the party’s message is too fuzzy to be effective, particularly since Hussein announced a few weeks ago that he was stepping aside in order to give the Palestine Liberation Organization the chance to deal directly with Israel. The so-called “Jordanian option”--envisioning negotiations between Israel and a joint Palestinian-Jordanian delegation under the king--was the cornerstone of Labor’s peace policy for years.

Missing Arab Partner

How can Labor keep talking about peace negotiations when there is no Arab partner? these skeptics argue.

Peres responded during a brief respite on board the launch from Tzemach beach to En Gev. “Why look for an Arab partner all the time?” he said. “Look for Israeli leadership.”

As for the pessimists in his own camp, he commented: “They say we don’t have a message. The Likud doesn’t have a message! The professionals around us have lost their professionalism.”

So far, at least, Peres says he is encouraged with the campaign. Recalling the response of sunbathers back at the beach, he said, “Four years ago, I wouldn’t have gotten such a reception.”