Yossi Beilin: Peres' “Poodle,” Is a Central Figure in the Peace Process

By Leon T. Hadar

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Yosef "Yossi" Beilin is Israel's new political star and the latest darling of that country's foreign press corps. The 45-year-old Beilin, a top Labor Party member of the Knesset, played a crucial role in the drama leading to the Oslo Accord—winning his 15 minutes of fame on "Nightline'' and other television news shows.

Now he is mentioned by Israeli journalists and political analysts in the same breath with Likud leader Binyamin ("Bibi'') Netanyahu as a possible candidate for the prime ministership. The consensus in Israeli political circles is that Beilin, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres' top adviser, will continue to play a key role in the Arab-Israeli peace process, pressuring the current Israeli coalition to adopt a more forthcoming position in the negotiations with the Palestinians and the other Arab players.

As Israeli newspapers were summarizing 1993 and making predictions for 1994, they placed "Bibi'' in the "out" column. "Yossi," suddenly, was "in." The rejectionist Netanyahu, heading a divided Likud party, is more popular than ever among neo-conservative columnists in New York and Washington. But in recent months he has found himself more and more marginalized on the Israeli political map. On the other hand, Beilin, who until recently was regarded as a hopeless ''leftist" and political ''loser,'' has enjoyed increasing media attention and public popularity following the deal between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Just recently he was assigned by Peres to sign the diplomatic accord between the Vatican and Israel.

Beilin, the former academic and journalist, and Netanyahu, a military officer and businessman, are in many ways a study in contrasts. Unlike the outgoing and telegenic Likud leader, Peres' deputy is a low-key, behind-the-scenes political party operator. He comes across on television as very stiff and formal or, as someone said, ''a little nerdy.''

While Beilin, happily married to a Tel Aviv lawyer for more than 20 years, has developed his political base in Labor through a large network of personal friend ships and by cultivating ties with that party's top leaders, the Likud chairman, twice-divorced and currently in the midst of a third well-publicized troubled marriage, is a political loner. His position in his party is a product of political demagoguery and well-honed media skills.

Indeed, while Netanyahu has built his political support on advancing the messianic Greater Israel agenda and propagating unyielding anti-Arab views, Beilin's views have reflected what, in the pre-Oslo Accord environment in Israel, would have been regarded as extreme dovish positions—supporting dialogue with the PLO and accepting the idea of an independent Palestinian state.

In the 1980s, when Netanyahu was giving his the-PLO-is-a-terrorist-organization speeches at the United Nations, where he served as the Likud government's ambassador, Beilin, as a Labor opposition figure, was conducting secret negotiations with PLO activists like Faisal Husseini and Hanan Ashrawi in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

In addition to serving as the closest political and foreign policy adviser to the then-opposition leader, Peres, Beilin formed a new ideological and political group inside Labor called ''Mashov." It consisted of influential ''30-something" activists committed to negotiations with the PLO and Israeli withdrawal from most of the West Bank and Gaza. The group included most of the members of the dovish Young Guard of the party, who have ended up occupying top political positions, such as current ministers Haim Ramon and Uzi Baram and Labor secretary-general Nissim Zevili.

There is a straight line linking the Oslo agreement and the current Israeli-PLO talks with the talks Beilin and his colleagues conducted in the 1980s in Jerusalem, London and Paris. They were negotiating secretly then with some of the same PLO figures with whom they are negotiating openly today in Cairo and Tunis. In addition to helping break a psychological barrier to a dialogue between Israel and the PLO, which the conventional wisdom in Israel described then as a terrorist organization and compared to the Nazi party, those secret talks also created the milieu in which PLO-Israeli links would later become possible.

Working Behind the Scenes

Beilin also played an important behind the-scenes role in 1987, during the period of the "national unity government." He served as an aide to then-Foreign Minister Peres, who was trying to open peace talks with Jordan's King Hussein. Beilin was one of the top negotiators with Jordanian officials in London, but those talks led nowhere, mainly because of the opposition of then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

In the Likud era, Beilin and other Mashov members were boycotted by the leaders of mainstream American-Jewish organizations. Israel's U.S. Lobby moguls regarded Beilin and his calls for talks with the PLO as a major threat to their pro-Likud agenda. Beilin himself argued that the organized American-Jewish community's staunch backing for Shamir was strengthening the Likud in Israel.

One major Mashov goal was to counter the more hawkish elements in Labor, most of whom coalesced around Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin and his supporters were very critical of Beilin's overtures to the PLO, which were leaked to the press, while Likud leaders kept referring to Beilin and his dovish political allies as ''Ashafists" (Ashaf is Hebrew for PLO) and ''Arab lovers.'' Rabin, who then was engaged in a fierce contest with Peres for control of the Labor party, described Beilin as "Peres' poodle,'' and promised that if Rabin came to power there would be no place in his government for Beilin.

Indeed, after Rabin defeated Peres in the race for Labor leadership, most Israeli political observers predicted that Beilin and other Mashov members would be eased out of the party. Beilin, aware that Rabin's wing of the Labor Party was trying to show him the exit, began to discuss joining the more dovish Meretz Party.

But, to everyone's surprise, Beilin and other Mashov leaders scored very high during the Labor primaries for the Knesset list, reflecting both their personal standing in their party, and the support for their foreign policy positions among the majority of the Labor members. Recognizing Beilin's party status, Rabin could not veto his nomination for deputy foreign minister after Labor's election victory.

Beilin saw revival of the Arab-Israeli peace negotiations as his main task in the Foreign Ministry. Traveling to the United States, he failed to convince Clinton administration foreign policy aides to revive the stalemated bilateral talks in Washington. Looking for new avenues for negotiations with the Palestinians, including the PLO, he became the driving force behind Knesset legislation to decriminalize talks with PLO officials.

After Norwegian diplomats and the two Israeli scholars who initiated the talks with PLO representatives approached him, Beilin gave them a green light to go ahead with their discussions. At the same time, he gradually involved other Foreign Ministry officials, Peres, and eventually Rabin in the process that led to signing of the Oslo Accord. All participants have said that without Beilin, nothing would have come of the Norwegian talks.

Interestingly, the main conclusion of Beilin's doctoral dissertation, which focused on Israeli foreign policy between 1967 and 1973, was that Israel's determination to maintain the territorial status quo in those years caused it to miss important opportunities for peace with the Arabs, and led to the 1973 war. His role in the PLO-Israeli negotiations suggests that he is intent that Israel not repeat that mistake.