Israeli Parliament Erupts in Anger Over Peace Process

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and leaders of Israel’s political opposition bitterly accused one another Monday of lying to the Israeli people and the international community about the Middle East peace process.

In a special session of the Israeli parliament, leaders of the opposition Labor and Meretz parties launched their fiercest attack to date on Netanyahu, calling the prime minister a liar whose “deceitful maneuvering” is bringing the country closer to war, not peace, with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu, in turn, who was making his first address to lawmakers on the peace process in seven months, charged that Labor, during its years in power, gave secret promises to the Palestinians and Syrians that his Likud government has been forced to negate.

“Don’t talk to us about credibility,” the Israeli leader said, wagging his finger at opposition members. He advised them to bow their heads “in shame.”

Netanyahu also reiterated recent statements that the Palestinian leadership, not that of Israel, is to blame for the lack of progress toward peace.

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For nearly 16 months, negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians have been at an impasse, bogged down in an atmosphere of mutual anger and suspicion that began with Israeli settlement-building in traditionally Arab East Jerusalem and deepened with several deadly Palestinian bombings inside Israel. A recent U.S. initiative to revive the talks also appears stalled.

Monday’s recriminations, which followed several recent high-level attacks on Netanyahu and his policies, reinforced a growing sense among some politicians and analysts here that the prime minister, caught between hard-liners and moderates even within his own coalition, may be unable to commit himself to turning over more land to the Palestinians.

“The government is trapped in a bunker-like mentality, and Netanyahu lives in it like a prisoner,” Nahum Barnea, one of Israel’s most respected columnists, wrote in Monday’s daily Yediot Aharonot.

Netanyahu was forced to address Monday’s parliament session after the Labor Party collected signatures from one-third of the 120 legislators, demanding a debate on the peace process. The angry, often personal speeches were yet another reminder of the depths to which Middle East peacemaking has plunged since Israel and the Palestinians signed their first interim agreement five years ago.

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In his comments Monday, Labor Party leader Ehud Barak sought to capitalize on what many Israelis are calling a growing credibility problem for Netanyahu after recent accusations of deception leveled against him directly by President Ezer Weizman and indirectly by some of his own political allies, including Cabinet Minister Ariel Sharon.

Barak said that Netanyahu, during his two years in power, has frittered away much of the international goodwill Israel gained after signing peace accords with the Palestinians in 1993 and 1995, and with Jordan in 1994. The opposition leader ticked off the names of foreign and Israeli leaders he said no longer believe Netanyahu.

“[Palestinian Authority President] Yasser Arafat is not willing to talk to you. Bill Clinton does not return your calls. [U.S. Secretary of State] Madeleine Albright is tired of your empty words. [Jordan’s] King Hussein refuses to speak with you. [Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak doesn’t answer. The [Israeli] president is not prepared to help you,” Barak said.

The outspoken Weizman last week urged Netanyahu to call for early elections, in his strongest public statement yet of frustration over the deadlocked peace process and his sense of having been misled by Netanyahu. The two men later agreed to keep their differences private, but not before Netanyahu, in his own broadside, accused Weizman of siding with opposition and Arab leaders against the government.

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On Sunday, Sharon, the infrastructure minister, asked Netanyahu in a Cabinet meeting to help him reconcile what Sharon said were contradictory versions of events--both from the prime minister--concerning last week’s tense standoff between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian police over use of a Gaza Strip road. The confrontation ended without violence after a compromise was worked out.

Netanyahu told the Cabinet that he was glad the standoff ended peacefully but, according to Sharon, had told him earlier that he was not happy about the agreement and had not signed off on it. Netanyahu, according to Israeli media accounts, did not deny the earlier conversation with Sharon but said the minister should not have disclosed a private conversation.

Yossi Sarid, the leader of the leftist Meretz Party, and other opposition lawmakers seized on the credibility issue in Monday’s rancorous debate, branding Netanyahu a liar and a “man of tricks.”

Along with the personal attacks, Barak, a former army chief of staff and close aide to assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, told parliament that he feared Netanyahu’s policies are pushing the country toward a renewed conflict with the Palestinians.

“What happened to you, Mr. Prime Minister?” he asked. “Instead of peace, you are bringing us closer to war.”

In equally sharp remarks, Netanyahu suggested that Barak’s speech, which he dismissed, was the result of poor advice from an American “image consultant” hired by the Labor Party leader.

The prime minister said that his government, which reluctantly inherited the agreements with the Palestinians from the previous, Labor-led coalition, has been forced to “repair” and strengthen those accords and to back away from promises made to the Syrians on the return of the Golan Heights. Negotiations with Syria have been frozen since the spring of 1996, before Netanyahu was elected.

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Netanyahu repeated his recent assertions that the current stalemate in the peace process is the fault of the Palestinians, specifically what he called their failure to “fulfill their part” in carrying out obligations under the existing peace deals to crack down on terrorists.

“It’s possible to reach an agreement, and we’ll reach it if the Palestinians do their part,” he said. “But even after the agreement [on turning over more West Bank land to the Palestinians], I can promise neither a rose garden nor a new Middle East. We will be facing tough challenges and struggle.”

He also repeated a litany of specific demands of the Palestinians, calling on them to collect illegal weapons, reduce the size of the Palestinian police force and approve a new national charter that does not include clauses calling for the destruction of Israel.