Barak’s Big Agenda

Israel’s Prime Minister-elect Ehud Barak plans to move quickly to restart stalled peace talks with the Palestinians, but he doesn’t intend to stop there. He is ready as well to seek a regional political settlement. Like most Israelis he wants to end the long, costly and frustrating occupation of southern Lebanon. And he hopes to revive direct talks with Syria, among the most obdurate of Israel’s enemies and the key to achieving a quiet border with Lebanon. Barak needs two things for these ambitious hopes to be realized: Arab negotiating partners who are ready for pragmatic solutions to a half-century of sterile conflict and the backing of a stable majority of the newly elected Israeli parliament.

Barak, whose Labor-dominated One Israel party holds only 27 seats in the 120-member Knesset, would like to form a government that embraces more than the half-dozen parties of the center-left. This week’s election gave stark expression to the deep divisions that separate secular and religious Israelis, the poor and the prosperous, those of European background and those of North African and Middle Eastern origin. Barak wants to be a unifier. With 15 parties holding seats in the Knesset, he will have both plenty of opportunities to reach out and manifold challenges to meet. He has even indicated a readiness to talk with the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, provided that its leader, Aryeh Deri, who was recently convicted of corruption, plays no part. There is also a possibility that the conservative Likud, left with only an embarrassing 19 Knesset seats after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s crushing defeat, might join the government.

A coalition based on such potentially disparate interests and ideologies could complicate the effort to reach a consensus on the territorial and other concessions Israel will have to make in behalf of peace. But a broad coalition also strengthens the prime minister’s hand by diluting the bargaining power of the different parties, reducing the threat that any one of them could collapse the government unless it was given a disproportionate share of power--as, say, Shas held in Netanyanhu’s government. A Barak government with a firm 75 Knesset votes would have real authority.

A quick start on carrying out Israel’s earlier commitment to turn more of the West Bank over to the Palestinian Authority would send a welcome signal of the Barak government’s good faith. But even with the best of intentions, negotiations toward a final settlement promise to be arduous. The thorniest issues lie ahead and the most difficult mutual compromises have yet to be made. Barak will be no less insistent than his predecessors that Israel’s security needs must be met, whether in southern Lebanon, on Syria’s Golan Heights or on the West Bank. But he will bring to any security assessment 35 years of military experience and the flexibility that a realistic appreciation of Israel’s formidable strategic strengths allows. For such reasons, he plans to be his own defense minister.

Israelis this week voted in compelling numbers to support the peace process, knowing that at its end a Palestinian state in control of much of the West Bank is certain to emerge. If Barak can forge the kind of coalition he wants, and if the Palestinians and Syria show they are ready for responsible bargaining, the peace process is sure to advance.