Barak Took a Gamble That Didn’t Pay Off

Through the political thick and thin of the last year, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has told interviewers that the only thing that could wipe a seemingly permanent grin from his face was an earthquake. On Tuesday, he got the earthquake.

Speaking solemnly to a news conference hours after the collapse of the Camp David peace talks, Barak was forced to defend his willingness to make concessions to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat--a willingness that cost him support at home and that ultimately gained nothing.

A “best chance” for peace, as the summit had been billed, had evaporated. With divided and angry publics awaiting them, Barak and Arafat both headed for home, embittered at each other--and empty-handed.

In some ways, both leaders will, paradoxically, benefit by not having signed an agreement that would have triggered revolt among their right-wing or hard-line constituencies. The likelihood of bloodshed and political upheaval may actually have lessened, at least initially, with the failure of the summit.

But the longer term is bleak. The peace process took a possibly fatal blow, Israelis and Palestinians both are bracing for a surge of violence, and Barak, for one, has to find a way to govern. On the plus side, Israelis and Palestinians have engaged in talks about existential subjects and national myths, breaching long-standing psychological barriers for the first time.

“I do not know what kind of reality we will be returning to after the summit, and what kind of a relationship we will now have with the Palestinians,” Ofer Pines-Paz, a key figure in Barak’s One Israel Party, said in Jerusalem.

Despite President Clinton’s insistence that negotiations of a sort will continue, few analysts or politicians in the region saw much new maneuvering room. If consensus could not be reached at this highest of levels, with the extraordinary personal intervention of an American president, then how or when?

The White House said Clinton failed to secure a pledge from Arafat that he would hold off unilaterally declaring an independent state, a move that could provoke an Israeli military response.

Arafat had threatened to declare a state by Sept. 13, a deadline the Palestinians and Israelis gave themselves to conclude final peace talks. Even before the summit, however, Arafat’s senior aides suggested that date would slip. Under a decision last month of a top Palestinian governing body, Arafat has until the end of the year.

Senior Palestinian leaders Tuesday night were urging calm. Polls have consistently shown that the majority of Palestinians did not expect an agreement to emerge from Camp David, so there may not be overwhelming disappointment on the streets in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that would translate into violence. Volatile frustration over an untenable status quo, in which Palestinians feel they have been handed nothing but a nonviable Swiss cheese “statelet,” remains high and is likely to worsen.

Arafat will argue that he stood up to Israeli and American pressure, and that may strengthen his hand for a while. But eventually he will have to decide whether he can continue negotiations, make compromises or face international isolation.

Sounding an optimistic note, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, in a Washington news conference, said significant progress was made: “The prospects for achieving an agreement after the Camp David summit is much more viable than at any time in the last eight years.”

Barak is left in a highly vulnerable position. He took a huge gamble in making what he considered to be major concessions. And, in the context of Israeli public opinion and Barak’s own vaunted military background, they were major concessions, far beyond what any previous Israeli leader has dared utter.

Yet he was left standing at the altar, exposed, when Arafat refused to walk down the aisle.

At his news conference, Barak for the first time publicly confirmed what exactly he was offering Arafat: Palestinian sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem in exchange for the annexation of several Jewish settlements on the West Bank, which would in turn expand the city’s Jewish majority.

The details already had been leaked to the Israeli media, but hearing Barak describe them, in a 20-minute Hebrew portion of his news conference clearly intended for his domestic audience, was remarkable. His critics said he had forever weakened Israel’s hand in any future negotiation; his admirers said Israel had finally crossed a psychological Rubicon on the way to peace and there was no going back.

Arafat continued to insist on full Palestinian sovereignty over all of East Jerusalem, which Israel captured and occupied in the 1967 Middle East War.

Barak also spoke of his disappointment, and there was a palatable sense of sadness and frustration among many of the Camp David participants.

“I understand the disappointment of the many in Israel who believe in coexistence and extending a hand in peace to our Palestinian neighbors. I too share their disappointment,” Barak said. “If we have to go toward a confrontation, then we will be able to look our children in the eye and say that we did everything, everything, to prevent it.”

In Israel, Barak’s most vociferous political opponents, including the ministers who abandoned him on the eve of the summit, were nearly gleeful at his failure. Right-wing demonstrators took to the streets in celebration before they clashed with police; 11 were arrested.

His government long since collapsed, Barak returns to Israel and faces an array of tricky political options. He can either attempt to rebuild his troublesome odd-bedfellow coalition, or he will have to convene a national unity government--meaning that he will have to invite the major opposition parties, such as the right-wing Likud Party, into his government, a move that would virtually paralyze future actions.

Many on the left and among Barak’s other natural supporters rail at the “national unity” scenario.

“Forming a government with the Likud is showing the entire world that we are saying ‘shalom’ to the ‘shalom,’ ” said Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, one of the original architects of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process.

Another option is to hold early elections. Barak, who scored a landslide victory a little more than a year ago, would face a tough race, although the opposition remains divided and there is no unpalatable agreement to galvanize Barak’s foes.

Whatever Barak does, it is urgent that some sort of functioning administration be put in place, especially if the prime minister does hope to continue the pursuit of peace.

“Israel needs a government,” parliament speaker Avraham Burg said, “any government.”

Burg said the talks went well when they centered on nuts and bolts and practical considerations. But when it came to symbols and icons--Jerusalem being one of the world’s great symbols--the two sides could not come together.

Indeed, by every account, Jerusalem, as predicted, was the deal-breaker, though the Palestinians said other issues also were unresolved.

“If both sides would comprehend the importance of Jerusalem to the other, then we would have reached a compromise,” said Ziad abu Ziad, a Palestinian member of Arafat’s government. “We must not despair, give up on the peace process and let violence raise its ugly head. . . . Jerusalem is the key to everything--to war, and to peace.”

Asked if the Palestinians had not lost a historic opportunity to make peace, Hanan Mikhail-Ashrawi, a Palestinian spokeswoman, turned the blame on Israel.

“The agreement has to be acceptable to the people who are going to implement it,” she told a CNN question-and-answer phone-in program. “It is important that [Arafat] was not pressured to sign an agreement that was flawed. That would have backfired.”