Advertisement

A Battle on Israel’s Right

Share

In next year’s early election, Ehud Barak will again be the prime ministerial candidate of his One Israel Party, but his opponent from the right-wing Likud Party remains to be determined. Ariel Sharon, Likud’s current leader, faces a challenge from former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, now poised for a remarkable political comeback after his landslide loss to Barak last year and subsequent resignation from the Knesset.

Opinion polls give Netanyahu a strong lead over Barak but point to a tight race if Sharon is the Likud candidate. That’s why Barak, despite his denials of any self-serving intent, submitted his surprise resignation over the weekend. By stepping down now--though he will serve as interim prime minister until the election in 60 days--Barak is taking advantage of the legal requirement that a candidate for prime minister in a special election must be a member of parliament. That seems to effectively bar Netanyahu, though he and his supporters promise a fight through the courts.

Barak’s political fortunes are at a nadir. The rapid collapse of his inherently unstable multi-party coalition cost him a Knesset majority. Then came the resumption of Palestinian violence, reminding Israelis of how tenuous their domestic security can be. Barak defines the coming election as a referendum on whether Israel should continue seeking a peace agreement with the Palestinians. He has made clear he is ready to press on with that effort, which seems to suggest he’s ready to make even bolder concessions than those rejected by the Palestinians last summer at Camp David. Likud’s approach to negotiations with the Palestinians would presumably be what it was when it held power: a nominal readiness to talk, but with virtually no substantive movement.

Advertisement

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat says he’s not inclined to help Barak by calling off the current violence. He insists Palestinians are fighting for their dignity and independence and that neither can be compromised. No doubt nationhood is what all Palestinians desperately seek, something to which they are entitled. But it’s hard to see how that objective can be achieved if government in Israel once again passes to the nationalist and ultrareligious parties, which are adamant that the major part of the West Bank and all of Jerusalem remain under Israeli control.

Right now Arafat claims to see not a shekel’s worth of difference, as far as Palestinians are concerned, among Barak, Sharon and Netanyahu, between a leader who is ready to negotiate peace and a leader comfortable with maintaining the territorial and political status quo. If Arafat truly believes that, he has sadly learned nothing about Israel since the 1993 Oslo accords made peace a realistic objective.

Advertisement