Profile : Israel’s New Power Player : Foreign Minister David Levy has the political base for a more independent policy. But does he have the will?

When David Levy, Israel’s new, Moroccan-born foreign minister, was named to his job by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, he was met by a wave of insulting ethnic jokes that painted him as plain stupid.

But the scorn has run its course. Israelis are now turning their attention to whether Levy, viewed widely as a deft politician, will defy predictions and revive plans for peace talks that had been given up for dead.

The speculation is intense because Levy brings an unusual level of political independence to the office. As the most prominent politician from Israel’s largest ethnic community--those Jews who emigrated from Morocco and their descendants--Levy is a power in his own right. By contrast, the position of his predecessor, Moshe Arens, depended mainly on the patronage of Shamir.

If Levy chooses, he could chart a course for change that, observers say, would stand up to challenge from ideologues within the ruling Likud Party whose constituencies are less firm or widely based.

“He is a force in Likud. He can play a pivotal role in keeping the party together if the going gets tough,” said a top Foreign Ministry official.

Levy has defined his mission as a quest to restore close relations with the United States. Assuming Washington continues to center its Middle East policy on brokering Israeli-Palestinian talks, Levy will quickly run into a dilemma: whether to satisfy the Bush Administration or maintain the rightist Israeli government’s resistance to the American formula, which includes an offstage role for the Palestine Liberation Organization.

It was Levy’s Moroccan heritage that underlay the barrage of jokes. (One described him saluting a refrigerator because the brand was General Electric). Israeli society is fragmented between Jews of North African and Near Eastern origin and those of European descent, with the Europeans harboring feelings of superiority. Inevitably, if you heard a Levy joke, it was from European lips.

But it is Levy’s Sephardic, or Oriental, origin that buttresses his power. Israelis who trace their origins to Arab countries constitute 60% of the country’s population.

As a gauge of Levy’s relative influence, political observers noted that he won from Shamir the post of foreign minister, his first choice. By comparison, Ariel Sharon, the former general who is considered a backstage power in the new government, was sidelined to the Housing Ministry after failing to win the job of defense minister, which he openly coveted.

Since assuming office last month, Levy has shown no signs of taking a new approach to the issue of peace with Palestinians, although it may be too early to tell.

His launch as foreign minister was interrupted by a mild heart attack from which he is still recovering. On doctors’ advice, he turned down an invitation from U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III to meet in Paris to discuss peace issues. The meeting has been rescheduled in Washington during the second week in August.

In public statements, Levy emphasized that he will not cave in to Washington pressure for Israeli-Palestinian talks.

“The United States is a superpower, but Israel is not its satellite,” he told Yediot Aharonot, his nation’s largest newspaper. “We will not accept dictates, and we will not give up on issues that are vital to our existence and our future.”

Levy was one of three politicians in the Likud Party--Sharon and current Finance Minster Yitzhak Modai were the others--who fought efforts by the Bush Administration to set up talks to include Palestinian residents of Jerusalem as well as Palestinians expelled from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The three styled themselves the “constraints ministers,” and their opposition helped four months ago to bring down the fragile ruling coalition that had joined Likud and the more dovish Labor Party.

Last month, that coalition was replaced by a narrower, Shamir-led version made up of Likud, far right and religious parties.

As housing minister in the last government, Levy approved secret government funding to help a nationalistic Jewish group acquire a Greek Orthodox building in a predominantly Arab-occupied section of Jerusalem’s Old City.

The uproar over the Jewish takeover of the building, called the Hospice of St. John, upset many American officials, including congressional supporters of Israel. When Congress later approved a $400-million loan guarantee for housing Soviet immigrants, the legislators subtracted a $1.8-million fee--the exact amount of the contribution that Levy arranged for the disputed purchase.

Associates of Levy paint a picture of a politician who is at once pragmatic and committed to Likud dogma, including the tenet that the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip belong to Israel.

“We are all constraints ministers in Likud,” said Parliament member Eliyahu Ben Elissar, a confidant of Levy’s. “The blunder of the U.S. Administration was that it thought it could bring us to do things we will not do--talk to the PLO.”

This does not mean that Levy will make no move to accommodate Washington, Ben Elissar stressed. But it will be along the lines of reducing immediate tensions between Israel and the Palestinians.

One such confidence-building proposal floating around is an offer to reduce the troop presence in the West Bank and Gaza in return for an end to stone throwing by rebellious Palestinians.

“He is a practical man,” advised Ben Elissar, “but don’t expect gifts.”

The silver-haired Levy, 52, immigrated in 1957 and joined Likud as a labor leader having firsthand knowledge of working conditions among Israel’s disadvantaged Sephardic population. As a young man, he worked as a ditch digger, cotton picker and construction worker.

“Those were terrible days,” he said in a biography. “I realized that I had to do something to change my situation. I saw that I had to find a road that would lead to the corridors of power.”

A father of 12 children, he still commutes to Jerusalem from his home in Beit Shean, a parched, unprosperous community near the Jordan River in northern Israel.

Levy was first elected to the Knesset (Parliament) in 1965 and 12 years later gained a Cabinet seat as immigration minister under then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Levy’s tenure as housing minister dated from 1979.

Biographers say Levy resents Israel’s European elite as personified by the Labor Party, which dominated the first three decades of Israel’s political life. Complaining about the treatment of Sephardic immigrants in the 1950s and ‘60s, Levy has been quoted as saying: “Why do they take people who come with goodwill and a lot of love for the land of Israel and grind it into sand?”

He also expresses a certain disdain for intellectuals and once snidely referred to Moshe Arens as “the elegant professor.”

Levy has shown an independent mind during major political conflicts in Israel. Unlike Shamir and Arens, Levy backed the conclusion of the Camp David peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979.

He criticized the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and raised a voice of caution against Israel’s use of its Christian Lebanese allies to help root out Palestinian “terrorists” from then-Israeli occupied West Beirut--a decision that paved the way for the subsequent massacre of hundreds of defenseless men, women, and children in the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps. Levy also cast a key vote in favor of Israeli withdrawal from most of Lebanon in 1985.

Some negative barbs directed at Levy have focused on his lack of English-speaking ability in a post that requires frequent, direct contact with Americans. Defending himself, Levy told a radio interviewer, “There are some English-speaking people who can’t make themselves understood anyway.”

Besides Hebrew, Levy speaks French and Arabic.

He makes no secret of his ambition to succeed the aging Shamir as prime minister. “If you ask me if, through my struggle and through the way I have progressed, I aspire to the throne of prime minister, I say yes,” he told a newspaper interviewer.

It is this ambition that fueled his desire for the prestigious post of foreign minister. Ministry professionals have been cautioning the Americans not to treat Levy with disdain. “He is a man with pride. Just look at how he keeps himself. Not a hair on his head out of place,” said one senior official. “He must be treated with dignity.”

As a potential successor to Shamir, Levy is wary of daggers from his rivals, including the prime minister himself, associates say. The naming, at Shamir’s urging, of Benjamin Netanyahu as deputy foreign minister was seen as a rein on Levy.

Levy’s campaign for power puts him on a collision course with Sharon, another self-declared candidate to succeed Shamir. Aides to Sharon are already complaining that Levy left the Housing Ministry in disarray and that he is partly to blame for the shortage of shelter for newly arrived Soviet immigrants.

Foreign Ministry officials have been cautious in predicting how Levy will respond to the delicacies of international diplomacy. Typically, they characterize him as a “good learner” who is capable of surprises. Some predict that Levy will be swayed by the opinion of his constituency--a constituency that on the one hand has been traditionally hawkish, but which also bears not only a large part of the military burden of occupation but also its economic costs.

Other observers warn that if Levy harbors hopes of improving relations with Washington, he will not be able to defend his ideological beliefs

“If Levy the foreign minister acts like Levy the constraints minister, he will be in trouble,” warned Haaretz, a liberal Israeli newspaper. “Not that the United states will immediately deal us a brutal blow, but (it) will define us differently--no longer as a close ally.”

Biography

Name: David Levy

Title: Israeli Foreign Minister

Age: 52. Born in Morocco and immigrated to Israel in 1957.

Education: Completed the eighth grade.

Family: Married to Rachel Edri. They have 12 children.

Quote: “If you ask me if, through my struggle and through the way I have progressed, I aspire to the throne of prime minister, I say yes.”