Netanyahu Sworn In With His New Cabinet

After a last-minute brawl with his own allies, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was sworn in Tuesday night, along with his Cabinet of largely right-wing and religious party leaders whom many Israelis and Arabs fear will halt Middle East peacemaking.

Netanyahu’s coalition government was approved by a parliamentary vote of 62 to 50 that was delayed for five hours in a dispute over the role in the new administration of hard-line former Defense Minister Ariel Sharon.

The 46-year-old Netanyahu was clearly rattled when he presented his Cabinet to the Knesset, apparently caught off guard by the sudden threat of his designated foreign minister, David Levy, to withdraw from the government if Sharon was not given a weighty Cabinet post.

Sharon, the architect of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon who had sought the Defense or Finance Ministry, waited at his ranch in the Negev Desert while Levy did his bidding. In the end, the crisis was resolved when Netanyahu agreed to create a new ministry of national infrastructure for the retired general. Levy was sworn in as foreign minister, although it wasn’t immediately clear whether Sharon would accept the position.

Among the other members of Netanyahu’s Cabinet are:

* Retired Gen. Yitzhak Mordechai of the Likud Party as defense minister.

* Dan Meridor, a popular Likud moderate, as finance minister.

* Avigdor Kahalani as internal security minister. His Third Way party broke away from the Labor Party over the issue of retaining the strategic Golan Heights in negotiations with Syria.

* Natan Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident who heads a party of Russian immigrants, as trade and industry minister.

The Education, Labor, Interior, Religion and Housing ministries go to leaders of three religious parties that have an unprecedented 23 votes in the new Knesset.

Netanyahu is the first prime minister elected in a direct vote of the Israeli people, but his government still had to be confirmed by a majority of the 120-member parliament.

Netanyahu is the ninth prime minister of Israel, but the first born after the founding of the state in 1948. In his speech to the Knesset on Tuesday, he vowed that his conservative government will lead Israel along “a new path.”

The Likud Party leader won the May 29 election against the incumbent Labor Party chief Shimon Peres largely by opposing the outgoing government’s peace agreements with the Palestinians and negotiating policy with Syria, and by playing on fears of terrorism by Islamic fundamentalists.

Trying to quell international concern for the Mideast peace process, Netanyahu on Tuesday extended a hand to the leaders of Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia to “widen the circle of peace” and offered negotiations “without preconditions.”

“I appeal especially to our close neighbors, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, Lebanese President Elias Hrawi, to Saudi King Fahd and to the rest of the Arab leaders: Let’s conduct direct negotiations for peace, negotiations that will lead the Middle East to an era of stability and prosperity, negotiations without preconditions,” Netanyahu said.

“That is the key: There are no preconditions! Each side can present its concepts and positions without forcing the other side to accept these conditions in advance,” he said.

But then he reiterated the hard-line positions laid down in his government guidelines this week that have given rise to conflicting interpretations of his intentions.

Netanyahu said he will proceed with interim and final negotiations with Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority “under the condition that it fulfill all of its obligations” under the peace accords signed with the previous Israeli government.

At the same time, he made no mention of Israel’s living up to its commitments under the accords. And in clear and carefully chosen words, Netanyahu warned that he will send Israeli troops back into Palestinian-ruled areas to fight terrorism if necessary.

“Everyone who deals in terror must know that our response will be harsh,” he said. “The [army] and security forces will receive, as is needed, full freedom of action to act against terror.”

Under the peace accords, Israel ended its 28-year occupation of six West Bank cities and promised to continue negotiations for further withdrawal from the West Bank. The Palestinians have made clear that they would view a return of Israeli troops to West Bank cities as a violation of the peace accords, as they would a strengthening or expansion of the West Bank Jewish settlements.

In his speech, Netanyahu called Jewish settlers “the true pioneers” of Israel and said his government will encourage settlement in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights--lands Israel captured from its neighbors in the 1967 Middle East War.

His guidelines state that settlements are “of national importance to Israel’s defense.” They promise to alter the outgoing government’s freeze on state funding for new settlement construction and “allocate the resources necessary” for the consolidation and development of settlements.

The United States views Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza as an obstacle to peace and held up loan guarantees for immigrant housing during the previous Likud government, when then-Housing Minister Sharon was expanding settlements.

The guidelines rule out Palestinian demands for an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza with east Jerusalem as the capital. They also assert that Israel will retain sovereignty over the Golan, whose return Syria demands in exchange for a peace agreement.

Reactions to the apparent contradictions in Netanyahu’s statements have been split between those who take them at face value and those who argue that many Israeli leaders have proven more flexible once in office, including former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was slain by a Jewish extremist for his peace policies.

About 20 Arab leaders have scheduled a summit in the Egyptian capital this weekend to discuss the meaning of Netanyahu’s election, but Palestinian and Syrian leaders generally are taking Netanyahu at his word.

Ahmed Korei, head of the Palestinian Legislative Council, said on the Voice of Palestine radio that the new policy “can only be understood [as] an Israeli desire to assassinate the peace process.” He warned that “if Israel chooses to abandon the peace process, then we, I’m sorry to say, will have to adopt other alternatives, of which there are many.”

Syria’s state-run radio on Tuesday urged Washington to force Netanyahu to reverse his policies and accused the new Israeli leader of practicing “the law of the jungle.”

“What kind of future is the peace process approaching after Netanyahu? And what would the Arabs negotiate with Israelis who allowed themselves to keep the land and plant it with [Jewish] settlements?” a radio program asked. It called the Israeli government’s policy “an overt war against peace, a sharp turn against the U.S. initiative and blatant aggression against international resolutions.”

The United States, which sponsored the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements, appears nonetheless to be taking a wait-and-see approach to Netanyahu. U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher--who plans to visit Israel and Egypt next week--said this week that it is too early to comment on the new prime minister’s policies.

Palestinians refer to Netanyahu’s guidelines as the “Four Nos”--no Palestinian state, no Jerusalem, no Golan and no return of Palestinian refugees. But the “wishful thinkers,” as one diplomat calls them, focus on what is not in the guidelines: There is nothing to explicitly prevent Netanyahu from withdrawing from the West Bank city of Hebron or from giving up more West Bank land, as required by the peace accords, and nothing to force Israeli troops back into Palestinian-controlled cities or to force the closure of the Palestinians’ unofficial headquarters in Jerusalem.

Few people on either side of the debate view Netanyahu’s attempted sidelining of Sharon as an indication of his policy direction. Rather, they say, Netanyahu did not want such an internationally controversial figure in a top post; nor did he want to increase the popular man’s power.

Sharon was the key to a critical preelection alliance with two smaller parties and to rallying religious voters to help Netanyahu win his slim victory. Sharon is also a vocal opponent of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process who still calls Arafat a terrorist.

His new post would give him control over defense industries, government land, railroads and roads in the West Bank and Gaza.

Before the new government’s swearing in, the outgoing prime minister, Peres, implored Netanyahu to work with Arafat.

“I am convinced that the majority of the people of Israel support the peace process and want to continue it,” Peres said.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Who They Are

Brief biographies of top Cabinet members in the new Israeli government presented by Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday:

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FOREIGN MINISTER

David Levy, 58

Born in Morocco; speaks French; rose from construction worker to a senior position in the Likud Party; a political maverick who served as foreign minister 1990-92; left Likud in 1994 and set up Gesher Party; allied with Netanyahu in exchange for a pledge to be reappointed foreign minister.

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DEFENSE

Yitzhak Mordechai, 52

Born in Iraq; a retired major general and political newcomer; served in every major command from the Golan Heights to the Gaza Strip; was northern commander during Israel’s 1993 “Operation Accountability” in Lebanon but left the army after being passed over for promotion.

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TRADE AND INDUSTRY

Natan Sharansky, 48

Spent nine years in a Soviet prison and became a symbol of the struggle of Soviet Jews for the right to emigrate to Israel; his Yisrael Ba-Aliya party won seven seats in the elections, double what most polls predicted; says his new party will better the lives of the 700,000 former Soviet citizens who have come since 1990.

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FINANCE

Dan Meridor, 49

Seen as a relative moderate in Likud because of his liberal views on social issues; a second-generation Likud figure, Meridor served as Cabinet secretary to the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin; rumors of his appointment as finance minister this week prompted a rally on the Tel Aviv stock market.

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SCIENCE

Binyamin “Benny” Begin, 52

Became a leading Likud figure in recent years on the strength of an unequaled pedigree as the son of the party’s revered founder, Menachem Begin; respected for his straightforward honesty but also seen sometimes as an unbending ideologue who bitterly opposes the peace process with the Palestinians.

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AGRICULTURE/ENVIRONMENT

Rafael “Raful” Eitan, 67

A former army chief of staff; heads the right-wing Tsomet Party that merged with Likud; opposed the Israeli-Palestinian autonomy accords and advocates strengthening Jewish settlement in the West Bank; served as agriculture minister under the last Likud government.

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INFRASTRUCTURE

Ariel Sharon, 68

Orchestrated Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, but was forced to resign after inquiry held him responsible for killings in Palestinian refugee camps; rejects negotiations with Yasser Arafat, calling him a murderer; this post gives him control of defense industries, government land, railroads and roads in the West Bank and Gaza; has not formally accepted the position.

Source: Times wire reports