Another President on the Ropes

Democracy can be messy. While President Clinton’s impeachment moves from the House to the Senate for what could be a long, unpopular trial, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was forced to call for new elections on Monday in what is sure to be a loud, nasty referendum on how to proceed, if at all, with the Middle East peace process.

Clinton and Netanyahu have had a strained relationship from the outset because Washington clearly supported Netanyahu’s opponent, Shimon Peres, in the spring 1996 Israeli national election. Peres was viewed as the champion of Middle East peace, but Netanyahu won a surprise victory after a series of Arab terrorist bombings shattered the Israeli public’s dreams of a smooth process. Netanyahu sought a narrow path of movement toward peace based on Palestinian compliance with past pledges.

The result was inactivity and mutual distrust between the Palestinians and Israelis, interrupted only by brief periods of strenuous arm-twisting by Clinton. After the most recent episode, at the Wye Plantation in Maryland two months ago, Netanyahu found himself in an impossible bind. He could either move ahead with the peace process or maintain his right-wing coalition, but not both. He opted for political survival, but with the call for new elections, anything is possible.

Like Clinton, Netanyahu is a man widely distrusted by the public, intensely disliked by political opponents, but whose core policies are supported by the majority of the population. In this case, it is an effort to make peace with the Palestinians by trading land for peace, but without jeopardizing Israeli security. And that means insisting that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat be held to the same standards of compliance and accountability as Israel.

With the call for new elections in the coming months and the political maneuverings and alliances already under way, Netanyahu will campaign on the theme that he has kept his basic promise to advance the Oslo accords--he gave up most of the holy city of Hebron last year and agreed to further redeployment at Wye--while resisting American pressure to simply cave in to Arafat’s demands. The problem is that even Netanyahu’s political allies don’t like or trust him.

The Labor Party candidate, Ehud Barak, has proved to be a disappointment. A brilliant man with a sterling military record, he has done little to delineate his or Labor’s position on Middle East peace, other than to criticize Netanyahu, since replacing Peres.

The most appealing candidate of the moment is Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, the former army chief of staff, who is Israel’s equivalent to Colin Powell. He has no political record--in fact he is still in the army and cannot enter politics for another 60 days--but is extremely popular. Perhaps that will change when he enters the fray and begins to take controversial positions.

Shahak is believed to be in the center-right of the political spectrum, as are Dan Meridor, the highly respected but less than dynamic former justice and finance minister, and Roni Milo, the former Tel Aviv mayor who has staked out an anti-Orthodox position. Further to the right are Likud purists like Benny Begin, son of former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who vigorously opposes Netanyahu’s ceding of land to the Palestinians.

Success for those running against Netanyahu depends on whether they can form effective coalitions rather than run separately and how they will appeal to the Orthodox population, whose size and political clout are growing. The religious-secular rift is Israel’s most serious domestic problem, and unless strides are made to bridge the gap, the Orthodox--about 20% of the country--may opt for their own candidates. Indeed, the second-largest party in Israel is Shas, a Sephardic religious party highly successful in providing social services to its poor constituents. It stands to gain the most in the next coalition government if no one secular candidate reaches out sufficiently.

The U.S. would like to see the peace process move forward and Netanyahu out of office, but if it plays a heavy hand, as it did two years ago, it is possible that neither will happen.

At best, the process will remain frozen, though it could deteriorate rapidly if Clinton does not have the clout, or interest, to remain involved. Arafat has promised to declare a Palestinian state unilaterally in early May, a move Israel opposes strongly. If both Washington and Israel are too distracted to head off such a disaster, which seems likely now, 1999 could be the year of the next Middle East war.