World Perspective : ISRAEL : Peres Weighs Early Vote Amid Party’s Cries of ‘Now or Never’

In the next few weeks, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres is expected to make the most fateful decision of his long and sometimes tortured political career. And in parliament’s hallways, in the coffee shops of the cognoscente, on editorial pages and televised political talk shows, the debate rages: Will Peres opt to hold elections in May? Should he?

At stake, says Labor Party Chairman Nissim Zvilli, a staunch proponent of early elections, is no less than “the future of the State of Israel.”

Political hyperbole? Perhaps. But what is most certainly at stake is Peres’ own political future and his chance to leave a lasting mark on history.

At 73, Peres is unlikely to get another chance to lead the Labor Party in parliamentary elections.

After all, he has brought Labor to four electoral defeats, a record so appalling that the party dumped him in February 1992 in favor of his archrival, Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin went on to lead Labor to victory that June, becoming prime minister and securing the current government’s four-year term.

Elections are still scheduled for Oct. 29. But Rabin’s assassination in November at the hands of a right-wing Jewish law student so altered the political landscape here that many believe there is little chance that elections will be held as planned.

Thrilled by public opinion polls that show that 50% of voters would vote for Peres as prime minister if elections were held tomorrow (with only 29% saying they would vote for his Likud rival, Benjamin Netanyahu) and that Labor will increase its parliamentary seats in the next election, the Labor Party is all but begging Peres to agree with Likud to hold early elections.

Publicly, Peres has appeared ambivalent on the issue.

He agreed to bring forward Labor’s internal primaries to March, a move that prepares the party for early elections. He asked Interior Minister Haim Ramon to speed up the technical process of preparing voter lists, so elections could be held as early as mid-May.

But he has also said that, for now, he sees no reason to move the elections up.

Labor now can count on 63 votes in the 120-seat Knesset. But two of its faction members have said they will vote against the government on any deal with Syria involving withdrawal from the Golan Heights.

Syrian-Israeli negotiations resumed this week at Wye Plantation in rural Maryland. If the six days of talks produce results, Secretary of State Warren Christopher is expected to return to the region for shuttle diplomacy that Israeli officials say could well determine whether Peres opts for early elections.

If Christopher produces no dramatic breakthroughs in his visit, due to begin Feb. 12, then Peres is expected to conclude that a deal with Syria is impossible before October. If no deal can be struck by then, goes the argument of Zvilli and others, then they should take advantage of the upswing in public mood after the successful redeployment of Israeli troops out of Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank and the doldrums that the political right has experienced since Rabin’s assassination.

But the decision is not easy for Peres, said Avraham Diskin, a political scientist at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.

Peres watched his popularity soar in polls in 1984, only to suffer electoral defeat. While still in power, he is desperate to conclude a peace treaty with Syria and to see more progress made on the Palestinian front.

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Weighing in Peres’ decision will be that these elections will differ from previous Israeli balloting in that the prime minister will be directly elected by voters for the first time.

So the next elections could offer Peres a last crowning achievement and vindication for his years in the political wilderness. But they may also offer the ultimate political humiliation, if voters instead choose the telegenic, much younger Netanyahu.

Asked whether he believes that four-time loser Peres can lead his party to electoral victory this time, Zvilli says he has no doubts.

“This time, the elections are taking place in a completely different atmosphere,” he said. “This is a vote about the future of Israel. They will be very serious and very difficult elections, and it is not certain that Labor will win a full majority. But we believe that Shimon Peres is a leader that the people now believe in. We believe he can do it.”