The New Israeli Government Resumes the Slow Crawl Toward Peace

By Rachelle Marshall

We are still waiting for positive developments...but I hope somehow that there will be a breakthrough before long and we can start again. That is where we are at the moment.

—The late King Hussein, in a December 1996 interview with Israeli writer Avi Shlaim, New York Review of Books, July 15, 1999.

The time has come to build an open and brave peace that will ensure the future and the security of our peoples, our children, and our grandchildren.”—Prime Minister Ehud Barak in a speech before the Knesset, July 6, 1999.

A magician’s skill lies in his ability to convince an audience that he is doing one thing while in fact he is doing another. Israeli leaders have been masters of the art from the beginning.

In 1948 David Ben-Gurion successfully portrayed Israel as a weak, beleaguered nation struggling to defend its very existence while at the same time its powerful army was fighting to capture more Arab territory. Menachem Begin, a former terrorist leader who launched the bloody 1982 invasion of Lebanon, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, as was Yitzhak Rabin, who for years refused to talk with Palestinian leaders, then, after reluctantly signing the Oslo agreement, delayed implementing it while he rapidly expanded West Bank settlements. Rabin’s successor, Shimon Peres, sealed the borders of the West Bank and Gaza and turned both territories into giant detention camps, yet he, too, is hailed as a man of peace.

Ehud Barak’s election has raised hopes that Israel and the Palestinians will once more resume the road to peace, but the records of past Israeli leaders indicate that the road will be filled with obstacles. Barak is not likely to break ranks. Throughout his career he has given unswerving support to the government in power, and as a career soldier repeatedly helped implement Israel’s policy of responding to Arab resistance with overwhelming force. During his rise to become Israel’s top military commander he was a member of a commando hit squad and once even entered Beirut disguised as a woman in pursuit of one of his victims—whom he assassinated, along with the man’s wife.

Nevertheless, Barak’s government differs significantly from former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s. The coalition includes the ultraOrthodox but pro-peace Shas and United Torah Judaism parties, with their combined 22 seats, rather than the hard-line Likud.

The small Center Party, made up largely of former Likud members, will also be part of the coalition along with the party of Russian immigrants and the dovish Meretz. Barak’s foreign minister, David Levy, favors an exchange of land for peace.

No Arab was named to a cabinet post, however, even though Arabs overwhelmingly supported Barak’s election. Knesset member Ahmed Tibi angrily called the omission “a slap in the face...we did not expect.”

What worries some propeace observers is that the government will include the five-member National Religious Party, which represents settlers who oppose any dismantling of settlements. Also worrisome is the fact that Barak left Likud out of the new government only after extended negotiations with Likud chairman Ariel Sharon, and then only because of Sharon’s refusal to join.

The two men disagreed over two issues: Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, which Likud opposes, and construction of more Jewish housing in East Jerusalem, which Likud favors. Only a week before pulling out of the talks Sharon had told Likud members that he and Barak were close to agreement on a number of the issues to be negotiated in final status talks with the Palestinians, including the future of Jerusalem and West Bank settlements.

“It’s very clear that we’ll have influence over the central issues,” Sharon said at one point. As late as the last week in June Israeli political analysts were predicting that Sharon would be the new finance minister.

Sharon also hinted that Barak had promised to carry out decisions made by the Netanyahu government, which Barak’s spokesman denied. Barak himself has said he will review “all prior authorized decisions,” a statement that still leaves open the question of whether he will allow work to continue on any of the projects actually begun under Netanyahu.

According to Barak’s guidelines, his government will build no new settlements and will no longer subsidize the purchase of settlement housing. Like Rabin, however, he will allow for their “natural growth.” Rabin and Peres adhered to that policy but managed to increase the number of Jewish settlers by 31 percent.

Barak will have to decide almost immediately whether to continue work on two projects in East Jerusalem which, if they go forward, could torpedo peace talks with the Palestinians. One is the construction of 132 apartments for Jews in Ras al-Amoud, where bulldozers began clearing land the day of Barak’s inauguration, and the other is the 6,000-unit Har Homa settlement on Jabal Abu Ghneim.

The prime minister will also have to declare himself on the previous government’s lastminute proposal to take land from five Palestinian villages in order to double the size of Ma’ale Adumin, a settlement of 25,000 people just outside of Jerusalem. The plan would give Ma’ale Adumin an area larger than Tel Aviv and complete the isolation of Palestinian communities from the city. Barak favors annexing large West Bank settlements to Israel but he is likely to put the proposal on hold. Palestinian officials insist that all settlement activity be halted before peace talks can proceed.

During the final days of the Netanyahu government there were disturbing signs that Barak’s rhetoric may differ from the former prime minister’s more than his actions. In a June interview Barak said he hoped to make “the peace of the brave with Syria,” and he has also pledged to withdraw Israeli troops from Lebanon within a year.

But on June 24, only a few days after he said those words, Barak remained noticeably silent when Israel launched its heaviest bombing raid since 1996 against Lebanon. The attack destroyed power plants, bridges, and other facilities throughout the country, including Syrian-held territory, and blacked out Beirut for a week. At least nine Lebanese civilians were killed and 45 wounded.

The bombing was in retaliation for Hezbollah’s rocketing of northern Israel, which killed two Israelis. The rocket attack was in response to the shelling of a village by Israeli-backed forces that killed a woman and her grandson. Israeli analysts said “it strained credulity” that Barak was not briefed on the bombing beforehand.

Barak was similarly silent on June 22, when Israeli police fired rubber bullets at scores of Israeli Arabs who were protesting the demolition of Arab homes in Lod. Azmi Bishara, an Israeli Arab member of the Knesset who had briefly run for prime minister in the recent election, but then withdrew to avoid drawing first-ballot Arab votes away from Barak, said police chased him behind a car and shot him deliberately, even though he was obviously not throwing stones and was wearing a suit. When Dr. Ziad Muhareb came to Bishara’s aid, police shot him too, wounding him seriously in the face.

Members of the city’s Arab community have become increasingly angry because they are not permitted to buy or build houses in Lod and are forced to live in slums, while the government builds new houses for thousands of immigrants from Russia. Mahmoud Muhareb, a spokesman for the citizens’ committee of Lod and a professor at Bethlehem University, also cited the fact that, unlike Jewish residents, Arabs in Lod have no government-financed parks or youth centers, and their schools are crowded and unsafe. He said the police fired without warning at the crowd.

An Israeli radio commentator pointed out that Israeli police never use rubber bullets against Jewish protestors, no matter how violent they become. Whether or not the police will become more evenhanded under Barak will soon become evident.

Shimon Peres went to Lod after the shooting and persuaded the mayor to suspend the house demolitions until after the new government is established. If the demolitions are resumed, there are certain to be renewed protests, but next time the police may be acting under different orders. The newly appointed Internal Security Minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, is not a career policeman but an expert in social policy who reportedly wants to improve relations between Israeli Arabs and Jews.

Barak has promised to pursue negotiations with Syria and with the Palestinians simultaneously, but he is likely to make faster progress with Syria. Return of the Golan Heights is a less emotional issue with most Israelis than the status of Jerusalem or the settlements. Peace with Syria could also lead to the end of Israel’s occupation of Lebanon, where scores of Israeli soldiers die each year. Most Israelis want the troops to return home, and a poll taken last December showed that 40 percent of Israelis would even accept unconditional withdrawal.

Barak’s policies regarding the West Bank and Gaza are still not easy to predict. In the past he has talked of “separation,” and he recently proposed building an elevated bridge between northern Gaza and the southern tip of the West Bank, with no exits other than at the two terminals. The bridge would allow the Palestinians “safe passage” from one territory to the other, as promised by Oslo, while assuring that no Palestinian traveler would set foot in Israel.

If Israel does make peace with Syria and Lebanon, the return of Palestinians who were forced from their homes by the Israelis in 1948 will become an even more crucial issue. The 300,000 Palestinians now living in squalid camps in Lebanon constitute 8 percent of Lebanon’s population but are treated as outcasts. Because the Lebanese government denies them citizenship and even the right to work, most of the residents are destitute and suffer from a range of social problems. Consequently the camps are the source of sporadic violence.

Lebanese President Emile Lahoud has said he will press hard for the refugees’ right to return to Israel. There is no chance, however, that the Israelis will agree.

Nor will the United States urge them to do so if the pro-Israel lobby has its way. Last March 81 senators signed a letter drawn up by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee opposing any exertion of pressure on Israel by the United States. The looming presidential election makes it less likely than ever that the Clinton administration will make demands on Israel.

Israel’s exemption from the obligation to respect universally accepted human rights was illustrated yet again on July 1, when a reporter asked President Clinton to compare his views on the Palestinian and Kosovo refugees. Clinton answered that he “would like it if the Palestinian people were free to live wherever they liked, wherever they want to live.” His seemingly unexceptionable statement was immediately denied by White House and State Department officials, who said Clinton did not mean what he appeared to mean.

In Israel the remark “set off a firestorm of debate,” according to The New York Times. Outgoing Defense Minister Moshe Arens said the return of the refugees “will mean the end of the state of Israel,” and a spokesman for Barak said Clinton’s statement was “unacceptable.”

As peace talks get underway the only certainty is that the climate at the negotiating table will be friendlier than in the past three years. But the reservoir of good will that Barak starts out with in Israel and America could make it even harder for the Palestinians to achieve their objectives, since they can no longer count on the sympathetic support from abroad that Netanyahu’s politics of confrontation aroused.

This time it is Barak who will be given the benefit of the doubt. Even if the negotiations end with the creation of a Palestinian “state” in one form or another the benefits may be minimal.

A Palestinian cynic recently suggested that rather than settle for a state composed of bits and pieces of land inaccessible to one another, the Palestinians should simply set up a Web site and call it Palestine. A more serious alternative is for Palestinians and their supporters in Israel and elsewhere to continue to work for a just peace no matter how long it takes, and meanwhile refuse to settle for anything less.

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Stanford, CA. A member of the International Jewish Peace Union, she writes frequently on the Middle East.