The ‘Favorite Israeli Politician’

Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai recently laid a cornerstone for a new neighborhood in the Jewish settlement of Beit El, just outside the Palestinian city of Ramallah.

Addressing an audience of rabbis, right-wing members of parliament and hundreds of cheering Beit El residents, the stocky defense minister declared that the new homes would stand as symbols of the government’s vow to strengthen West Bank settlements, which the United States views as obstacles to Middle East peace.

“It is vital to allow the settlers to build their lives,” he said.

Soon after that late December ceremony, however, Mordechai threatened to quit the government in three months if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not follow through with promises to turn over more West Bank land to the Palestinians.

“He’s nationalistic but pragmatic,” said a U.S. diplomat who meets the former general frequently. “He looks for ways to solve problems with the Palestinians and is relatively non-ideological in his approach. He’s very self-confident about Israel’s ability to be a mature state, and he’s very much of an optimist, sometimes too much so.”

A reputation for a cool head and cautious decision-making also has made Mordechai a critical, calm presence in the Israeli leadership as tensions rise over the Iraq crisis.

Along with other Israeli officials, Mordechai has said that Israel reserves the right to defend itself if Iraq again launches missiles at cities here, but he has stressed that any Israeli response would be measured and “prudent.”

As the United States moves closer to carrying out its threat to launch airstrikes to force Iraq to comply with U.N. resolutions, Mordechai has been the government’s point man on the crisis.

He has flown to Germany to consult with U.S. Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and to Amman, Jordan, for talks with King Hussein. As worried Israelis line up for gas masks and antidotes for biological weapons, Mordechai’s calm voice has helped to reassure many here with its repeated assertions that there is little likelihood of any attack.

His steadiness and pragmatism, along with a direct, natural style that earned him the loyalty of his troops, have made him a favorite of both the Clinton administration and Israel’s Arab neighbors.

Ahmad Tibi, an advisor to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, describes Mordechai as his “favorite Israeli politician,” a man who still recalls the Arabic of his early childhood and who believes Palestinian rights must be taken into account throughout the peace process.

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In the wake of the angry resignation of Foreign Minister David Levy in January, Mordechai is being hailed as the new top moderate--and one of the few remaining--in Netanyahu’s coalition.

If he resigns, Mordechai could topple the government. The coalition’s majority in parliament has slipped to a single vote since the defection of Levy and his five-member Gesher faction. Signaling his displeasure at the government’s direction, Mordechai has pointedly missed several recent meetings of Netanyahu’s Cabinet.

For many Israelis, however, the broader question is what will happen if he stays. As a strong advocate of the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords, will he succeed in playing a moderating role in a government that now appears reluctant to carry them out? Or will he become isolated, remaining in the coalition but losing influence to those who argue against further troop withdrawals from the West Bank?

With the Cabinet likely soon to take up the debate over ceding land to the Palestinians, Mordechai’s future in the shifting coalition is not yet certain. But what is clear is that this relative newcomer is likely to play a significant part in Israeli politics for years to come.

At 53, the Iraqi-born Mordechai is cast in the classic Israeli mold, a soldier-statesman like his mentor, the late Yitzhak Rabin, and other Israeli leaders past and present.

Although he spent 33 years in the army and joined Netanyahu’s Likud Party only a few months before the 1996 national elections, Mordechai finished first on the party’s list for parliament. And he has consistently ranked as the most popular minister in the government, well above Netanyahu.

His political views place him squarely in the Israeli center, a position underlined by the fact that he was courted by the opposition Labor Party as well as Likud. He speaks frequently of Rabin, who encouraged him to enter politics.

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Like most Israelis, he believes that West Bank settlements should be allowed to expand. But he also supports the 1993 and 1995 peace agreements with the Palestinians and has said Israel should fulfill its promises to pull out of more of the West Bank, while maintaining control over its own security.

Mordechai’s future in the government may depend on the outcome of his growing power struggle with Ariel Sharon, the hard-line national infrastructure minister.

Mordechai and Levy opposed Netanyahu’s decision last fall to include Sharon in his “security Cabinet,” which gave the controversial former general a role equal to theirs in determining Israel’s strategy in talks with the Palestinians. It also allowed the burly Sharon, now 69, to weigh in on the issues of security and West Bank settlements that are Mordechai’s purview as defense minister.

In times of real trouble, Netanyahu has leaned on both men.

When Israeli Mossad agents were caught trying to assassinate a Palestinian extremist leader in Jordan last fall, sparking a domestic and international furor, Mordechai and Sharon sat shoulder to shoulder with Netanyahu during a difficult news conference to explain the affair. Neither commented, but both were there, their solid presence lending an air of stability.

But since Levy’s resignation in a dispute with Netanyahu over the deteriorating peace process and the government’s social policies, the security Cabinet has become an uncomfortable triangle, with the prime minister at the top and the two former military men competing for his attention.

After Mordechai registered his discontent by skipping his second session of the group--and his third government meeting--in the space of two weeks, Sharon was coolly dismissive.

“I hadn’t noticed,” he said of Mordechai’s absence from the Jan. 15 meeting.

A showdown could come soon, with the Cabinet scheduled to launch another round of discussions on how much land Israel should retain or transfer to the Palestinians.

Before Netanyahu’s talks in January with President Clinton, Mordechai and Sharon presented maps depicting their competing visions of Israel’s “vital interests” in the West Bank.

Sharon’s plan showed Israel keeping nearly all of the West Bank land it now controls, or more than 60% of the territory. By comparison, Mordechai’s map showed Israel retaining about 52% of the West Bank in a final peace deal.

But Zeev Schiff, a veteran military affairs analyst for the Haaretz newspaper, argued that even Mordechai’s plan could not be described as “moderate.”

Under either vision, Schiff wrote in a recent column, the Palestinians would be confined to “a narrow strip of ridged land surrounded on all sides by areas controlled by Israel,” and they would never accept such an offer.

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Still, Mordechai’s friends and allies say he is the only one in the government who “sees the whole picture,” as Uri Simhoni, a former Israeli military attache in Washington who once served as Mordechai’s commander, put it.

“He understands that security means not just having the military power but having peace,” Simhoni said.

His supporters also say that Mordechai’s personal and military background have prepared him for the tough battles that lie ahead.

Brought to Israel by his Iraqi Kurd parents when he was 5, Mordechai and his family lived at first in a chaotic transit camp near Tiberias in northern Israel.

When he joined the army at 18, he volunteered for two elite units--paratroopers and naval commandos--but was turned down. A few months later, after he joined an infantry unit and proved his ability, the paratroopers reconsidered and took him in.

He worked his way through the ranks, earning positions of command. He won the Medal of Valor, Israel’s second-highest decoration, in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He is the only general to lead all three of the army’s regional commands.

But he never attained his ambition to be the army’s chief of staff, and he nearly lost his career after being framed in a 1984 incident in which two Palestinian bus hijackers were killed by Israel’s internal security service, the Shin Bet, after they had been taken into custody.

An investigation later showed that after the deaths were discovered, top Shin Bet officials conspired to direct the blame at Mordechai, the top army officer on the scene, whose troops had stormed the bus and freed the passengers.

Mordechai was later exonerated but has never spoken publicly of the incident.

Nonetheless, his dignity during the affair earned him widespread public sympathy and admiration, which may have helped contribute to his election victory.