Why all James Baker’s Trips to the Middle East Won’t Produce Peace : Israel: The radical right now controls foreign policy. Unless the electoral system is reformed and the tyranny of the minority ended, any agreement is far off.

Once a vocal fringe group, Israel’s small, radical right has taken over the nation’s foreign policy. The tilt was first evident during last October’s Temple Mount crisis. Since then, policy seems routinely to veer right.

It is now certain that Ariel Sharon’s ability to embarrass Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in public, and to impose on him new settlements at the worst time, is not a personal matter or an isolated potshot. It represents, instead, the culmination of a significant transformation within the entire Israeli right. The importance of this development for the future of the peace process, and Arab-Israeli relations, cannot be understated.

The unprecedented rise of the Israeli extreme right can best be illustrated by the dramatic shift in the power and prestige of two men: Shamir and Sharon.

Although Shamir won the 1988 elections by a small margin, it was a clear victory. His most pressing party problem was Sharon’s demand that the Palestinian uprising be crushed by military means.

What resulted, in January, 1989, was a lightning strike from above. Skillfully pushing aside Sharon and other Likud leaders he did not like, Shamir promoted four of his young proteges to the rank of full Cabinet ministers, thereby gaining supremacy within the party’s top leadership. His choice of pragmatic ministers--Dan Meridor, Ehud Olmert and Roni Milo--indicated that he also wanted to cultivate a more moderate and youthful image for Likud.

This political operation had begun with Shamir’s surprise decision to form another unity coalition with the Labor Party. The move was bad news for Sharon and David Levy, who had orchestrated a tentative coalition with the radical right and several ultraorthodox rabbis.

Shamir’s decision to break the signed agreements with the small parties and to form a coalition with Labor was considered a political master stroke. The prime minister was now Likud’s unchallenged boss, a true heir of Menachem Begin.

By mid-1989, the major axis in Israeli politics was the personal alliance between Shamir and Labor’s Yitzhak Rabin, the defense minister. Though security-oriented, this strange covenant signified pragmatism, refusal to crush the intifada and responsiveness to U.S. pressure. Its main product was the Rabin-Shamir peace plan: Palestinians in the occupied territories would elect their own representatives to negotiate a permanent solution with Israel. Sharon and the radical right saw the initiative as disastrous, a sure recipe for a future Palestinian state. But they could do nothing.

Overconfident of his control of Likud, however, Shamir had moved too fast and too carelessly. Besides Sharon, with whom he really could not work, the prime minister had alienated Levy, Likud’s most popular vote-getter, and Yitzhak Modai, the leader of the Liberal faction. To Shamir, Levy was incompetent, Modai too erratic to put in charge of the national purse.

If Shamir had taken on only Sharon and Modai, he would probably have been successful, since Levy’s cooperation could have assured the prime minister a party majority. Levy was neither a radical nor a menace to Shamir. He deeply desired the post of foreign minister and was confident that his party seniority would get him the job. But Shamir’s decision to give him a minor position turned Levy into an avenging vulture.

The opportunity for the three ministers to get even was created in summer, 1989, when the Rabin-Shamir peace plan started to take off. Likud activists were hard put to ignore the risks involved in the plan, since it could not guarantee the exclusion of the Palestine Liberation Organization after the election in the occupied territories had been conducted.

What followed was a classical Sharon maneuver: slow galvanization of internal party opposition, an appeal to the “sacred principles” of the Likud and a well-timed surprise attack. The lobbyists of the settlers in Judea, Samaria and Gaza eagerly helped. A special session of Likud’s central committee was convened to discuss the peace plan. Shamir blinked.

Outflanked by the three disgruntled ministers and unable to secure a clear majority for a modified election plan, Shamir began sending contradictory messages to the Bush Administration. A coalition crisis with Labor was inevitable: In March, 1990, Shimon Peres, hopeful of forming an alternative government, brought the Cabinet down by a Knesset vote of non-confidence.

The demise of the unity coalition and the danger posed by Peres punctured Shamir’s authority. Though surviving at the helm, he lost much of his power and prestige. The silent Likud revolution he had tried to make had ended in a fiasco. It took Shamir an unprecedented three months to form a new coalition, which ended with humiliating results. In addition to incorporating the true believers of the radical right, Shamir had to make huge concessions to the religious parties, which also became indispensable to his brittle coalition.

But Shamir’s greatest calamity involved the three “constraint ministers.” Against his will, each received what he had wanted in 1988. Levy became foreign minister, Modai, minister of finance, and Sharon, minister of construction and supreme coordinator of Russian immigration. No Israeli prime minister had ever had three of his four senior ministers forced upon him. Although Shamir’s proteges didn’t lose their Cabinet posts, they were cut down to “confidants” of a leader in chains.

To survive, Shamir also had to make excessive concessions to the settlers of the West Bank. Millions of dollars were reallocated for new housing projects. Perhaps the most telling act was symbolic--authorizing permanent construction of a yeshiva in the middle of Nablus. The ceremony in the traditional center of Palestinian nationalism meant a curfew for nearly 1 million Palestinians. Thousands of overexcited orthodox Jews danced in the streets. The person honored with carrying the new Torah scrolls was none other than Maj. Gen. Rehavan Ze’evvi, the prophet of “transfer” and a future government minister.

Shamir’s right-wing coalition relies on support from 66 Knesset members out of 120. The fly in the ointment is that seven of them represent three extremist parties, which either call for a “transfer” of the Arabs out of the occupied territories or for their relegation to second-class residents in a Greater Land of Israel. At least five others--members of the Likud and the National Religious Party--share the same convictions. These 12 radicals are determined to block even a tactical peace move. Operating as Sharon’s commando detachment inside the Knesset, they are a powerful veto group.

Shamir’s peacemaking maneuverability is thus extremely limited. He knows a showdown with Sharon on the issue of settlements will not only kill his government coalition but also bring about his downfall. Several Likud leaders are eager to replace Shamir at any time and at almost any price. Most Likud activists who elect the prime minister would rather work with the radical right and stay in power than part ways and move to the Knesset’s back benches. With reelection in 1992 almost certain, Shamir, 76, is hardly the man to take chances.

The irony is that the radical right’s hijacking of Israel’s foreign policy is legal. It is, in fact, similar to the successful takeover of Israeli Judaism by the ultraorthodox minority. Capitalizing on the nation’s obsolete electoral system, both groups have created the paradox of a constitutional tyranny of the minority. Just as less than 20% of Israel’s citizens decide how the rest of the nation’s people should practice religion, less than 15% determine the fate of the peace process.

The reason the Israeli government has greatly disappointed Secretary of State James A. Baker III’s peacemaking efforts, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future, is not because Shamir, Levy and the majority of the Israelis are opposed to his ideas. Rather, it is because the majority almost does not count.

As frustrating as this sounds, progress on the Israeli side of the great Middle East divide does not depend today on fresh ideas and competent leaders. Long before the government of Israel can move in the direction of peace, it will have to reform its electoral system. Only a strong prime minister, directly elected by the Israeli people and free of minority blackmail, will be able to make the decisions that will assure the survival of the Jewish state.