Perspectives on the Middle East : Peres Fights on Two Fronts, in Lebanon and in the Polls : Israel: The electorate, unhinged by terrorism, demands security; can Labor deliver and also complete the peace?

Like the Likud before him, Shimon Peres is gambling on the assumption that peace in the West Bank lies through war in Lebanon.

In June 1982, the Likud-led government of Menachem Begin invaded Lebanon, in the Orwellian-termed “Operation Peace for Galilee.” While its immediate goal was indeed ensuring quiet on Israel’s northern border by destroying the PLO terrorist infrastructure in southern Lebanon, the hidden agenda of the invasion was far more ambitious: to force Palestinians out of Lebanese refugee camps and into Jordan, where they would overthrow the monarchy and transform the Hashemite kingdom into Palestine, presumably satisfying Palestinian national ambitions and allowing Israel to annex the West Bank.

Like “Operation Peace for Galilee,” the short-term goal of Israel’s current invasion--the more frankly named “Operation Grapes of Wrath”--is to end terror attacks on the Galilee. But its not-so-hidden political agenda is to convince Israeli voters that the dovish Peres can be trusted to fight for the country’s interests, and therefore he deserves a mandate to negotiate a final West Bank settlement with Yasser Arafat.

Though Begin wanted to annex the West Bank and Peres wants to give it away, both men found themselves detoured in Lebanon. The failed 1982 invasion destroyed Begin, politically and personally. And now Peres is likewise gambling his future on a Lebanese operation.

Nothing less than total success--which means absolute quiet on Israel’s borders--will convince Israelis that Peres is as resolute in war as in peace. If, after this operation ends, the shelling of Kiryat Shemona resumes, Peres will be judged a failure. But to achieve real peace for the Galilee, he must broaden the conflict and risk confronting its source--Syrian support for the Hezbollah terrorists. And that could lead to real war.

Until the attack on Kiryat Shemona began last week--less than two months before national elections on May 29--Peres believed he could achieve his “new Middle East” painlessly, with negotiations and international conferences. Even after last month’s series of suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, he refrained from attacking fundamentalist Hamas, based in Gaza, so as not to compromise Yasser Arafat. But with Kiryat Shemona residents turned into refugees and Israelis feeling that their country was under siege, Peres had no choice but to respond to the provocation. To win the election and continue the peace process, he had to out-Likud the Likud--and thereby endanger the peace process. The old Middle East, which prefers irony to vision, has finally caught up with Shimon Peres.

At this point, no one can predict how this will affect the election, not only because the outcome of the military operation is so uncertain but also because the electorate is so confused. In the last five months alone, the public has veered left and then right, shifting with the latest traumatic events. Once so certain in their ideological commitments, Israelis have become politically unhinged.

After the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin last November, a Peres electoral victory seemed certain. Revulsion against the murder created unprecedented, almost hysterical support for the peace process. Young Israelis wept at Rabin’s grave and asked the fallen leader’s forgiveness for having had misgivings about the peace process. The most popular bumper sticker in the country--displacing the ubiquitous right-wing stickers against withdrawal from the Golan Heights--became the simply worded “Shalom Haver”--goodbye, friend--President Clinton’s eulogy for Rabin.

But then came the season of suicide bombings, and it was no longer heresy to mistrust Arafat. Even leftists were suddenly recalling that Arafat had continually violated the Oslo accords by praising suicide bombers as martyrs and refusing to extradite terrorists to Israel. A new, bitter bumper sticker appeared: “Shalom Haverim”--goodbye friends--referring to the Israelis killed in those terrorist attacks that have followed the Palestinian-Israeli Oslo accords.

And now there is the miniwar in Lebanon--this time brought to us not by the right but the left. How, then, are Israelis to respond now: by supporting the left for acting like the right?

In the midst of Israel’s confusion, the country pauses today to mark Yom Hashoah, Memorial Day for the Holocaust’s victims. Cafes and movies are shut, television broadcasts feature black-and-white footage from the death camps, and for one minute this morning, a siren will sound and the country will freeze in silence. But with the worst Katyusha rocket attacks in years, and with a funeral just concluded for the latest victim to die from one of last month’s suicide bombings, mourning for Europe’s dead is almost too much a strain. If Israelis are nevertheless feeling the weight of this day, it is perhaps by recalling how history can spin out of control, and how evil circumstance can force war even on those would-be peacemakers most reluctant to fight.