Netanyahu’s Peace Policies Making Enemies--and Earning Him Praise

JERUSALEM — During Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s first year in office, U.S.-Israeli relations have cooled, the Palestinian peace negotiations have stalled, and contacts with the Syrians have ceased. The talk of peace that prevailed under previous, Labor Party governments is punctuated now by open discussion of the possibility of another Arab-Israeli war.

But what much of the world views as a dangerous state of affairs is, to Netanyahu and his right-wing supporters, a good record.

“Anyone who thought that the stopping of the mad dash to the 1967 boundaries would pass without some kind of friction was naive,” Netanyahu said in an interview, summarizing his first year. “Overall, we have achieved the main targets that we set out to achieve on the fronts of peace, security and prosperity.”

Netanyahu took office as Israel’s first directly elected prime minister a year ago, promising to slow Israeli-Arab peacemaking in order to give the country “peace with security.” He vowed to strengthen Jewish settlements in the West Bank, to reinforce Israel’s claim on all of Jerusalem and to stand fast against establishment of a Palestinian state or the return of the Golan Heights to Syria--key Arab demands for peace.

He since has continued to zigzag between fulfillment of the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian accord, based on trading land for peace, and attempts to dig farther into territory Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War. In September, he opened a new door to a tourist tunnel in Jerusalem’s disputed Old City, a move that sparked Palestinian riots and armed clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian police in which at least 75 Israelis and Palestinians died.

Then, in January, he signed a U.S.-brokered agreement to hand over 80% of the West Bank city of Hebron to Palestinian control, earning international accolades and anger from some members of his hard-line coalition.

Netanyahu lifted a freeze on Jewish settlement construction that was declared, if not implemented, by the previous, Labor government. In March, he ordered Israeli bulldozers to start work on a 6,500-unit Jewish development in traditionally Arab East Jerusalem. That resulted in a suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv cafe, the suspension of negotiations and a halt to Palestinian security cooperation.

Now he proposes to accelerate final negotiations with the Palestinians on crucial issues dividing them. But he has offered an opening position so narrow that the Palestinians have dismissed it.

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This pingpong policy has supporters applauding Netanyahu for fulfilling his promises. Opponents accuse him of destroying the peace process while blaming its demise on the Arabs. Skeptics, meanwhile, say that, a year into his term, it is still impossible to decipher the intentions of their leader.

“There is a third possibility, which is that he doesn’t know what he wants and is incapable of formulating a coherent strategy,” said Joseph Alpher, director of the Israel-Middle East office of the American Jewish Committee in Jerusalem.

Netanyahu was elected in May 1996 with a slim majority. His popularity rating has dropped sharply to about 35%, reported Hanoch Smith of the Smith Research Institute in Jerusalem, one of the country’s leading pollsters. That decline in support comes from both rightist and centrist voters--Israelis who think Netanyahu has already made too many concessions to the Palestinians and those who think he is moving too slowly in peacemaking.

Much of the dissatisfaction does not have to do with the peace process but with Netanyahu’s inexperience and perceived weaknesses as a leader.

Many Israelis do not fault him for opening the Old City tunnel door, for example, but for failing to understand that this would enrage Palestinians and for leaving for Europe after giving the order. Israelis also say that Netanyahu--widely known here by his nickname, “Bibi”--has failed to assert his power over religious and extreme-right coalition members and that his grasshopper policy is determined by competing pressure groups in his camp.

“It could be, as [former Science Minister] Benny Begin said when he resigned, that for this prime minister, a tactic is getting through the noon news. And a broad strategy is getting through the weekend news,” said Alpher of the American Jewish Committee.

A majority of Israelis say they feel more secure today than they did a year ago, pollsters report, because there has been only one major terrorist attack since the Likud Party leader assumed power--the suicide bombing in Tel Aviv’s Cafe Apropos in March that killed three Israeli women.

Israelis credit Netanyahu’s toughness with deterring terrorism, as when he suspended talks with the Palestinians after the cafe bombing. “The Palestinians are less daring now because they realize that they’ll have to pay for attacks,” said Ahuva Ben-Hamo, 35, a secretary. “I am very satisfied. The Arabs no longer get what they want after every squeak and threat. . . . It’s true that our relations with the world aren’t what they used to be, but this doesn’t mean we should do what the world tells us to do.”

Reuven Shamai, 27, the owner of an ice cream parlor, observed: “We suffered enough at the hands of the leftist government. Bibi advances Israeli interests, unlike [Shimon] Peres and [Yitzhak] Rabin, who advanced Arab interests.”

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But many Israelis fear that Netanyahu’s hard line is leading the country to war. Hanoch Smith said the number of Israelis who believe that war is likely has doubled in the last year, to 40%. A Gallup Poll published in the daily Maariv newspaper last month showed that 56% of Israelis felt there was “a greater chance for war” during Netanyahu’s term.

Army officials openly discuss the possibility of armed confrontation involving Palestinian police forces, and they conducted a West Bank tank exercise this month based on the scenario of a Palestinian uprising leading to war with Palestinian police.

Meanwhile, in New York last week, Lt. Gen. Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, Israel’s military chief of staff, warned that Syria was prepared for the possibility of a surprise attack against Israel.

“War is not just around the corner, and we’re not on the road to war. But there is a different sort of behavior, a different atmosphere and different thinking on the Syrian side with respect to the possibility of war,” Shahak told the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations.

Netanyahu later distanced himself from Shahak’s concerns as the chief of staff cooled his heels outside the prime minister’s door.

Syria has possessed offensive capabilities since 1994, Netanyahu said, “but there are no special signs . . . that we are aware of recently to indicate that they’re planning to carry them out. Obviously we remain vigilant. We also remain open for the resumption of peace talks, and we hope the Syrians will decide to resume them.”

There have been no negotiations between Israel and Syria since then-Prime Minister Peres called what he believed would be a temporary halt to them in March 1996.

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Peres and Rabin, his predecessor, had indicated that they would trade part or all of the captured Golan Heights for a peace agreement with Syria; Netanyahu rules that out. Netanyahu says he will negotiate “without preconditions,” but Syrian President Hafez Assad says that without the Golan, there is nothing to negotiate.

Despite the controversy surrounding the style and substance of his government, Netanyahu retains the air of supreme confidence that helped him win election. His view of the stalled and suspended peace negotiations is that the Arab world is adjusting to a new Israeli government that demands reciprocity instead of “give and give.” In that sense, this has been a year for lowering false Arab expectations.

“We were in fact racing toward these indefensible [1967] lines when we took office, and we told the Palestinians: ‘We’re prepared to have peace, but peace requires mutual compromise. It requires an adjustment of ideology to facts on the ground,’ ” he said.

Asserting that he had made that adjustment with the Hebron agreement and the release of “women terrorist prisoners,” he added that “what is required is a similar adjustment to reality on the Palestinian side. [Palestinian Authority President Yasser] Arafat must tell his people openly and clearly that peace will not be achieved on the ’67 lines. Israel will not reduce itself to a fragile ghetto state on the Mediterranean shores. Equally, he must stop promising them the redivision of Jerusalem.”

Netanyahu draws a parallel between the expansion of Israel’s 140 or so settlements on occupied West Bank lands and Palestinians’ construction in their own towns and villages--a parallel that few other observers would accept.

Israel’s religious community and right wing believe that the land they call by its biblical name of Judea and Samaria is a Jewish birthright. The Palestinian view is that the land Israel captured from Jordan was inhabited by Palestinians until 1967 and should be returned to Palestinians in its entirety for an independent state.

“This whole idea that the construction of housing, homes, schools is a barrier to peace is absurd. If the notion is that we are creating facts on the ground, then both sides should stop creating facts on the ground,” Netanyahu asserted.

His settlement policy has been at the root of his strained relations with President Clinton, one of Israel’s staunchest supporters in recent times. The United States has long opposed Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank. Still, Netanyahu stood beside Clinton in their first meeting in Washington in July 1996--and then embarrassed the president by vowing to expand settlements.

With the East Jerusalem project, Netanyahu has forced the United States to twice exercise its veto at the U.N. Security Council against condemnations of Israel--vetoes that have drawn harsh criticism from the Arab world.

Netanyahu insisted that U.S.-Israeli relations remain strong because of shared values and common interests.

The Clinton administration has decided to back away from stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks for now, allowing the Egyptians to try to restart talks.

Netanyahu, meanwhile, has formulated an opening position for final-status negotiations. His plan calls for Israel to hold on to Jerusalem and surrounding settlement blocs and the Jordan Valley. The Israelis also would hold security zones between Israel and Palestinian “self-rule enclaves.” But there would not be a full-fledged Palestinian state.

“Sovereignty or unbridled self-determination means the acquisition of powers, some of which can spell the destruction of Israel,” he said, referring to possible Palestinian control of airspace and creation of an army.

But the problem with this, critics say, is that while it may appeal to Israelis, Palestinians dismiss it. And it is the Palestinians with whom Netanyahu must make peace.