Retired General Vows to Unseat Israeli Leader

Having uttered barely a public word, Amnon Lipkin-Shahak managed to capture the imagination of a depressed Israeli electorate looking for a leader. His picture and name filled the newscasts and topped the polls. The white-haired, barrel-chested army general had emerged as a much-hyped symbol of hope without ever indicating, publicly, that he wanted anything more than a quiet retirement.

On Thursday, the speculation and anticipation came into focus. Shahak formally turned in his olive drab fatigues and, through a well-timed newspaper interview, announced his intention to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“I believe in a new way,” the former army chief of staff told a mob of reporters who awaited him eagerly outside the army induction office.

Even in his first comments as a private citizen, however, Shahak was maddeningly vague and did not come right out and say he was running for office. The official announcement, he said, will come after the Israeli parliament formally calls elections, probably within two weeks.

Instead, the 36-year army veteran let the Haaretz newspaper make it clear: The goal is to dislodge Netanyahu from office, and the most effective way to go about this is by establishing a center party, Shahak said in a front-page story in Thursday’s editions of the opposition daily.

“We need peace at home first, and then peace with our neighbors as well,” Shahak told reporters Thursday before paying a call on President Ezer Weizman. There too, Shahak, 54, declined to discuss his plans or his views in more detail.

Shahak’s friends say his reticence has to do with his awareness of just how messy a political battlefield he is marching onto, daunting for someone of untested electioneering skills.

“It took a while to convince him to go into this fight over prime minister,” retired Gen. Yoram Yair said in an interview. Yair commanded troops alongside Shahak in Israel’s Yom Kippur and Lebanon wars and is among his closest friends.

“Many of his friends begged him to join this because we felt he can reunite Israeli society in the center.”

In a country where most senior officials rose through military ranks, Shahak satisfies the overriding Israeli need to feel secure, to be able to make peace without sacrificing national safety.

Elections for the 120-member parliament and for the prime minister’s office will be held on a yet-to-be-determined date in the next few months.

The parliament, or Knesset, voted to dissolve itself Monday in a blistering rejection of Netanyahu’s government and his handling of a 2-month-old U.S.-brokered peace accord. Ever since, Israel’s political parties have been in a tailspin as candidates have emerged, politicians have deserted their parties and new alliances have formed.

Shahak may be able to take advantage of that political flux to build his base of support.

A protege of assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Shahak was linked from early on to Israel’s efforts at making peace with the Palestinians. Rabin gave Shahak, then deputy chief of staff, a crucial role in negotiations following the landmark 1993 Oslo peace accords.

At several tense, pivotal moments, Shahak was instrumental in preventing the talks from breaking down, participants in the negotiations recalled. After a Jewish settler gunned down a group of Palestinians in a mosque in the then-disputed city of Hebron, Shahak took an enraged Yasser Arafat aside for a one-on-one chat and was able to persuade the Palestinian Authority president to continue the talks, according to Uri Savir, Rabin’s chief negotiator.

The Tel Aviv-born Shahak remains close to the Rabin family and has been sought out by Rabin’s widow, Leah. Leah Rabin also is friendly with Shahak’s wife, Talia, a former newspaper reporter who covered military affairs for a small leftist paper.

But Shahak is struggling not to be labeled a leftist or even a member of Rabin’s Labor Party and is aiming instead for the large amorphous “center.” He declined an invitation to join Labor head Ehud Barak--his predecessor as army chief of staff--on that party’s ticket, triggering bitter criticisms that he will split the pro-peace opposition attempting to defeat Netanyahu.

From the moment his name was mentioned as a possible prime minister, Shahak seemed to leap to the head of opinion polls, attracting a large following although his active-duty military position barred him from speaking publicly on political issues.

His appeal speaks in part to the desperation of a disaffected public, fed up with a fractured government and belligerent prime minister and seeking fresh faces.

Shahak, a pragmatist and former paratrooper who is known to have clashed with Netanyahu, conveys an effortless charm that seems to put many Israelis at ease.

“He has something that Rabin had, a sort of father-figure way that radiates an inner calm,” said Uri Dromi, who as a spokesman for the Rabin government worked closely with Shahak, most notably when the two had to explain to an outraged public the 1996 Israeli shelling of a refugee camp in Lebanon that killed more than 100 people.

“He always looks like he’s in control. People here are so edgy, so nervous all the time. But he transmits an air of calm and self-confidence. That’s the secret of his magic,” Dromi said.

But he is an amateur when it comes to campaigning, and he has yet to publicly take on controversies in a country where a single wrong word, even a wrong inflection, can mean hell to pay.

Commentators here often compare Shahak to America’s retired Gen. Colin L. Powell, a widely admired figure whose politics were for a while unknown and who polled well when he considered running for president. Powell ultimately decided not to run, and many believed he did not have the stomach for the ordeal that is a presidential campaign.

Similarly, questions swirl around whether Shahak is ready. The vagueness that gives him broad appeal now could eventually hurt him if he does not stake out clear positions.

“I am very much in favor of him,” childhood friend Gideon Spiegel told Haaretz, “but in my eyes he is like a new, beautiful car standing in a display window, without a scratch. We’ll judge him when he takes to the road.”