Israel Shows Two Faces in ‘Good Cop, Bad Cop’

A new round of hard-line words and deeds from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has undercut the negotiating efforts of his foreign minister, Shimon Peres, who is in Washington this week seeking support for ways to end the worst Arab-Israeli bloodshed in years.

Peres, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and veteran of Middle East negotiations, has hewed to a conciliatory line when speaking about the Palestinians to President Bush and other top U.S. officials. But back home, Sharon has openly contradicted Peres by striking absolutist positions on outstanding issues that might be a basis of compromise in talks.

Under pressure to make good on his campaign pledge to halt the violence, Sharon declared that his army may act “without restriction . . . beyond any imagination” to crush the 7-month-old Palestinian uprising. He stated that the entire Jordan Valley, which runs along the eastern border of Israel and the West Bank, will remain in Israeli hands “forever.” And he reiterated his determination to expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

His comments came during meetings with army officers and with Jewish settlers distraught over the killing of a fellow settler in a Palestinian ambush, and were reported in Israeli newspapers Thursday.

As Sharon stiffened his positions, Peres was in Washington attempting to secure a greater U.S. role in defusing tensions. Emerging from a meeting at the White House with Bush on Thursday, Peres declared that Israel and the U.S. “see eye to eye on how to handle the peace process. [Bush] doesn’t want to impose; he wants to help.”

Peres added that the Bush administration concurred that “goals should decide more than leaders” when it comes to ending the conflict that has claimed more than 500 lives.

He acknowledged the differences in tone between himself and Sharon but insisted that the two of them were “fully coordinated.”

“He knows every step that I do in great detail before I do it,” Peres said. “I have the freedom to encourage initiatives.”

Premier Furious

Earlier, however, when Peres was quoted as telling an American audience that Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat was not wholly responsible for attacks on Israelis, Sharon was furious.

In response, Sharon’s office dashed off a statement that was clearly directed at Peres: “There is no doubt that attacks today are a result of a strategic decision by Arafat. The organizations that answer to Arafat, including Fatah, and others like Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, understand that they have a green light to continue attacks against Israel.”

In reading the statement, Israeli state radio quoted officials from Sharon’s office as saying that they felt they had to “watch Peres with seven pairs of eyes” to keep him in line. Peres, a member of the Labor Party, later said he had been quoted out of context in discussing Arafat. Sharon, of the rightist Likud Party, said he accepted that explanation.

The back and forth served both to underscore the tensions between this odd couple of Israeli politics--Peres the dove and Sharon the hawk, in a marriage of political convenience--and to create an impression of a two-headed government.

But diplomats and analysts here believe that Peres speaks mostly for Peres, while the tougher statements from Sharon, coupled with yet another army incursion Wednesday into Palestinian territory in Gaza, more accurately reflect the government’s bottom line--and the general mood of an angry Israeli public.

“It is not clear that Peres can deliver Sharon on anything,” said one U.S. official after the Peres-Bush meeting.

The demands on Sharon, elected three months ago in a landslide by promising to quell the violence, are mounting as the Palestinian struggle to end Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza continues unabated.

When he met with settler Geula Hershkovitz--whose 31-year-old son, Assaf, was killed this week and whose husband was killed earlier this year--she asked where the “old Arik” was, using his nickname. Settlers could rely on the old Arik to punish Palestinians relentlessly and ruthlessly.

“I told her, this is the same Arik,” Sharon told reporters later. “We will make sure there is quiet.”

He went on to meet with settlers in the Jordan Valley and declared that the wide swath of land “will remain forever in Israeli hands” and will not be a subject for negotiation with the Palestinians.

Israeli media reported that this was the first time since the 1993 Oslo peace accords that an Israeli prime minister had so absolutely committed himself to retaining territory that it had been assumed would be transferred, at least in part, to Palestinian control.

Palestinian leaders branded Sharon’s foray into the settlements a provocation and incitement, further proof that he was not interested in peace.

From the Jordan Valley, Sharon went on to meet with senior military officers. According to accounts published in the three main Hebrew-language dailies, Sharon told the men to embark on a “new concept of war against terror.”

“The army has absolute freedom of action,” Sharon was quoted as saying. “All restrictions have been lifted. The army has very broad freedom of action, beyond any imagination. There are no restrictions.”

Human Rights Issues

The military already has come under severe criticism from international human rights organizations for using “excessive force” in its repression of Palestinian violence.

When a senior army commander, Brig. Gen. Benny Ganz, spoke of the difficulties of enforcing blockades of Palestinian villages, Sharon reportedly interrupted him: “From every village where there is shooting endangering the safety of [Israeli] soldiers, the army must do everything to paralyze that village.”

Sharon had earlier promised the settlers that new tactics would be used against the Palestinians. “Some we will say, some we will deny, and some will forever remain a mystery,” he was quoted as saying.

Palestinians and human rights observers have blamed Israel for targeted killings, middle-of-the-night kidnappings and mysterious explosions.

Sharon’s comments were criticized by both the right and left. Opposition leader Yossi Sarid, head of the leftist Meretz Party, told Israeli radio that it was “one of the stupidest remarks” ever uttered by an Israeli prime minister because now everything will be blamed on Israel.

And Deputy Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra, of Sharon’s Likud Party, concurred: “These remarks in my opinion would have been better left unsaid.”

For all of Sharon’s tough talk, however, several Israeli analysts said he remained bereft of solutions.

“The army can win,” Amram Mitzna, the mayor of Haifa, who held a senior army command post during the Palestinians’ 1987-93 intifada, told the Haaretz newspaper. “But the price it would have to exact is unacceptable for a democratic state. We are not Syria.

“We can send in F-15 jets, Merkava tanks and so on and so on,” he said. “The physical means exist. But there are things that a state, like the state of Israel, which also has to get up every morning and look at itself in the mirror, cannot do.”

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Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.