In Israel, Peace Is Still the Fundamental Question

The media portrayal of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s possible right-wing coalition with the religious parties as an unholy alliance of uncompromising nationalists and coercive religious fanatics borders on the indecent.

The devout Jews who participate in Israel’s political process are neither worse nor better than their Gentile opposite numbers in America and other democracies. They range from fundamentalist to moderate, from hawks to doves and from pro-Labor to pro-Likud. They are relatively small in number--10% of the votes went to the fundamentalists, 5% to the religious moderates--and they can drive a hard bargain, invariably described in their case as extortionate, only because the rest of the electorate is about evenly divided between left and right. By joining one side or the other, the religious parties become kingmakers.

American Jews, mostly non-Orthodox, are panicked by the fundamentalists’ demand for tightening the definition of “Jew” in the Law of Return, the basic Israeli law that allows every Jew to become an Israeli citizen on request. The common belief that this “correction” may delegitimate non-Orthodox Jews is sheer nonsense. Neither the legal status nor the right of any Jew by birth to become an Israeli citizen is affected. The proposed amendment, whose passage in the Knesset is still in doubt, particularly if the Labor Party decides to join the government, requires only that conversions of Gentiles desiring to immigrate to Israel as Jews be approved by the Orthodox rabbinate in Israel.

In principle it is an odious requirement, for it discriminates against non-Orthodox conversions, but in practice it affects only those few converts who want to live in Israel but do not wish to undergo the rigors of an Orthodox conversion--a very small number indeed. Neither Shamir nor Labor leader Shimon Peres favors this amendment--Shamir has repeatedly stated that such matters do not belong in the political arena--but both were willing to accommodate the fundamentalists on this point to gain their support on more urgent issues, not the least of which is the composition of the government in the next four years. In fact, it was Peres’ promise to agree to the conversion amendment in an attempt to entice the fundamentalists away from Likud that forced Shamir to do as much.

Israelis, though concerned by Jewish reaction abroad, are more irritated by the prospect of religious fundamentalists, whose sons invariably study in theological seminaries and are thus exempt from the draft, participating in government decisions on war and peace. But none of theOrthodox members of the government will serve in ministries directly involved in the country’s security.

A more universal concern is that Shamir’s victory will impede the peace process. In fact, the opposite is true. It was Peres’ talk of territorial concessions and of discarding the Camp David accords in favor of the Soviet-Arab idea of an international conference--an idea in which Washington acquiesced--that begat the intifada and brought the danger of war closer. The prospect of an imminent Israeli withdrawal encouraged the Arabs in Judea-Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza to rebel against what they perceived as the outgoing power, hoping thus to gain points with the incoming power--the Palestine Liberation Organization.

The intifada helped Likud not only because most Israelis want tougher measures against the rioters, but because it became clear that Peres’ “territories for peace” policy could only lead to an Israeli withdrawal to the ’67 lines and the establishment of a Palestinian state on the outskirts of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The vast majority of Israelis consider this kind of peace process a prescription for war.

The question now is whether Shamir’s stubborn insistence on the Camp David autonomy plan--a plan pronounced dead by President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, discarded by the U.S. State Department and rejected by King Hussein of Jordan and the Palestinians--can bring peace. To paraphrase Churchill, it is the worst plan around, except for any other. Its chances for success depend on Arab realization that the international conference option does not exist, on American insistence that the Camp David terms must be fulfilled, and on Soviet understanding that the establishment of another Palestinian state in addition to Jordan is incompatible with the survival of Israel. Then and only then will King Hussein and the Palestinian Arabs negotiate directly with Israel within the framework of the Camp David accords. The autonomy plan envisioned in them can provide what Arabs and Israelis need most: proof that they can live side by side with maximal security for Israel and minimal Israeli interference in the affairs of the Arabs inhabitants.

When Menachem Begin came to power in 1977, the very same cassandras who are now wringing their hands over Shamir’s victory predicted all-out war. Instead, Begin achieved the first Israeli peace treaty with an Arab state. No one is better poised to achieve the same kind of miracle with Hussein and the Palestinian Arabs than Yitzhak Shamir.