PERSPECTIVE ON ISRAEL’S ELECTION : Peace Brake, Not Peace Break

The man really most responsible for Shimon Peres’ apparent defeat wasn’t Benjamin Netanyahu but Yasser Arafat. The Israeli election was a vote of no confidence in Arafat as a credible peace partner. Even more than the Arab suicide bombings, what appalled Israelis was Arafat’s response to them: praising the bombers as holy martyrs, and arresting terrorists just after an attack but then quietly releasing them when the foreign TV crews were gone. True, in recent weeks Arafat did finally begin restraining the terrorists; but many Israelis were convinced he was only trying to ensure that no bombings threatened Peres’ victory and the further territorial concessions it would bring--and that after the elections the attacks would resume. For Arafat, fighting terrorism isn’t a commitment but a tactic.

Most Israelis are still prepared to sacrifice strategically vital and historically evocative territories for peace; they aren’t prepared to exchange territories for terrorism. The deal Peres offered wasn’t land for peace but, at best, land for the chance of peace--a chance that in recent months seemed increasingly remote.

Though both candidates promised peace with security, Peres was in fact offering peace without security, and Netanyahu, security without peace. The electoral choice was between a visionary who often seems detached from the Middle East’s brutal reality, and a dreamless pragmatist who accepts that reality as immutable. Perhaps the Likud’s most effective campaign strategy was simply to quote Peres in his own words: that “a hundred years of terror are over,” that the personal security of Israelis “has never been better,” that Israel’s “next goal is to join the Arab League.” Peres even predicted an end to war globally, telling one campaign audience, “I prophesy to you that there won’t be wars over territory but competition over new technologies.” Surrounded by neighbors like Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, Israelis prefer their leaders to be tough politicians, not millenarian prophets.

And yet Israelis are also wary of right-wing adventurism. The closeness of the vote is a warning from the electorate to proceed rightward, but with caution. If victorious, the Likud leader will have received a mandate to link further Israeli concessions to the Palestinian Authority’s performance in combating terror, and even to initiate attacks against fundamentalist institutions in Arafat-held Gaza in response to any future terrorist attacks. But that’s not the same as a nod to stop negotiations or renew massive building in West Bank settlements. Should Netanyahu be confirmed as the winner, he will have to contend with powerful right-wing forces within his camp. But there are also strong forces pulling toward the center--that is, toward a West Bank compromise that would cede most of the territory to the Palestinians while concentrating Jewish settlements into regional blocs and preserving Jerusalem under Israeli rule. Two new centrist parties--the Third Way, formed by hawkish disaffected Laborites, and Yisrael Ba-Aliya (“Israel on the way up”), led by former Soviet human rights prisoner Natan Sharansky--both support that option.

Netanyahu’s instincts, reinforced by his years spent in the U.S. as a student and later as a diplomat, are more centrist than right wing. Instead of a formal, comprehensive peace between Israel and its neighbors--which he believes is unrealistic in an inherently unstable and antidemocratic Middle East--a Netanyahu administration would try to reach de facto arrangements with Arab countries, aiming to reduce tensions rather than create a Peres-style “new Middle East.” Finally, Netanyahu would try to exploit his good personal relations with the Jordanian monarchy to revive the so-called “Jordanian option,” binding the Palestinian entity to the Hashemite kingdom and thereby aborting an independent PLO state.

His chances of achieving those goals are admittedly slim. His first real crisis will be the future of the West Bank city of Hebron, holy to both Muslims and Jews and home to the most extreme fundamentalists of both faiths. Peres promised Arafat that the Israeli army would withdraw from most of the city after the elections. Netanyahu, who rightly fears Belfast-style violence if the army redeploys, has already indicated he will indefinitely delay withdrawal. Should that happen, Arafat will justifiably accuse him of violating the Oslo Accords, and Netanyahu will face intense international pressure to comply.

Making peace among the Jews will be no less daunting. Netanyahu’s immediate challenge is to deflect the despair of the left, which sees in his apparent victory a threat to the country’s very survival--just as the right had viewed Labor’s government. To create a semblance of national cohesion, he must reclaim not just the political but also the cultural center, reassuring secularists that his coalition with the ultra-Orthodox parties won’t disrupt the delicate balance between Israel’s Jewish and democratic identities. Failure to do so will cause half the nation to view his narrow victory as illegitimate.