No TURNING BACK

In fact, they weren’t responsible for inciting the murder; Israeli TV showed videotapes of Likud chief Benjamin Netanyahu angrily shouting down those who called Rabin a traitor. But it was characteristic that Labor should so forcefully go on the political offensive after the assassination of its leader. It was not only Leah Rabin, the prime minister’s widow, who claimed that Likud had blood on its hands; nationally televised memorial services were turned into partisan political rallies. And it was characteristic of present-day Israeli politics that Likud should be thrown back on its heels. Israeli politics has become a case study of how one party, Labor, can seize the offensive and force its opponents, Likud, onto permanent defense. Little has been left unsaid after the horror of the assassination, but few have stepped back to appreciate how effective the Rabin government was as a political operation, continuously pushing the peace process forward.

In a time of national polarization, the government did not try to gather a broad coalition to initiate change. Its decisions on momenious issues like ceding authority and land to the Palestine Liberation Organization in the peace agreements ihitially signed in Oslo in 1993 were made by a small, focused group. An entire wing of the party — the Rabin wing, ironically enough — was shut out. These hawkish Laborites, the Israeli version of Scoop Jackson Democrats, have now split off to form their own party, called The Third Way. They vote with Labor on all matters except the peace process. With the dovish faction already having gained dominance, it will now be easier for Acting Prime Minister Shimon Peres to consolidate his leadership of the party he has inherited from Rabin.

After becoming prime minister in 1992, Rabin moved aggressively, even against those who had once been his allies. In 1981, he asked a New York rabbi, Shlomo Riskin, to form a community in the occupied territories on the West Bank. Riskin helped create a town called Efrat, an upper-middle-class bedroom community near Jerusalem, and established himself as a voice for moderate to leftish settlers. But amidst the peace process, Rabin began attacking all settlers, calling them a cancer, and alienating people like Riskin. A government can’t ride roughshod over people. You can’t railroad everything through,” Riskin now says. In fact, on matters of substance, Riskin says he and other settlers could have supported Rabin. But what Rabin did was create a Manichean image of the process, a war between the light — those who supported him — and the darkness — those who didn’t. This made for an effective storyline in the local and international media and energized support on the left, channelling the energies of Israel’s culture war behind the Oslo peace process.

The Rabin government has pushed its peace plan faster than anybody could have imagined. The strategy resembles that of Newt Gingrich: Adopt small measures now that make large measures inevitable down the road. For example, the vast majority of Israelis vehemently oppose giving parts of Jerusalem back to the PLO.

But in January, Arab residents of East Jerusalem will vote in elections for the Palestinian authorities. Once they have voted, with posters and U.N. observers and all the democratic trappings, it will be very hard to say later that they do not live under Palestinian rule, but rather on land that will eternally belong to Israel.

There’s some fancy footwork to disguise this truth according to the Oslo agreement, Jerusalem Arabs will fill out their ballots in post offices from which they will be mailed immediately to the West Bank city of Ramallah. Officially, the Jerusalem votes will be counted as if they were cast in Ramallah. But that’s nonsense. What isn’t nonsense is that Labor official Yossi Beilin, a leading indicator of where government policy is going, is openly talking about ceding East Jerusalem to a PLO state called Palestine.

The peace process has been something of a permanent revolution. “There hasn’t been a month in the past 25 in which there hasn’t been a concession by the government or the revelation of a concession,” says Dan Polisar of Peace Watch, which monitors the Oslo agreements. Starting November 13, Israel will withdraw troops at the rate of one major West Bank city a week for six weeks. Once the Israelis withdraw from these Arab population centers and the PLO police forces take over, it will be virtually impossible to go back. The result, as everyone recognizes, will be a Palestinian state. “It is almost inevitable. What you see now is a state in the making,” says Zalman Shoval, former Israeli ambassador to the United States.

Testimony to Labor’s effectiveness is the fact that many of the policies that the vast majority of Israelis tell pollsters they oppose are coming to pass. If you ask Israelis whether they oppose a Palestinian state, they overwhelmingly say yes. If you ask Them if they think the peace process is leading to a Palestinian state, they say yes. When asked, just before the assassination, if they support the peace process, they narrowly said yes. This is not logically consistent. But Labor has expertly maintained the momentum, and swing voters have been willing to go along. Throughout the long process, it appears that the tough issues are being put off and only small things are being settled, but by the time the tough issues come up the permanent status of Jerusalem or Palestinian statehood — it will be clear that those issues have already been decided.

Aiding in Labor’s efforts has been the Hebrew-language Israeli press, the most uniformly left wing of any in the industrialized world, and which actively supports the Oslo process. To the Israeli media, a radical rightist who said that Rabin has blood on his hands is an inciter of violence, but cabinet officials who say that Netanyahu now has blood on his hands are celebrated as champions of reasonable discourse.

Though facing this hostile media, Benjamin Netanyahu is generally thought to be doing an excellent job as Likud boss. He has pulled the party out of debt, improved management, and recruited new members. He’s an effective spokesman, and he has made superb contacts internationally, in the United States, Germany, and especially Jordan.

But he inherited a party that was intellectually adrift after the leadership of the inscrutable Yitzhak Shamir. After the end of the Cold War, leading right-wing Israelis lost touch with the flow of events. The consensus view on the Israeli right just after the Gulf War in 1991 was that there was no chance of a coming breakthrough in the peace process. Israelis would not soon forgive the Palestinians for dancing on the rooftops as the Scuds fell, it was said. The argument seemed plausible at the time, but it turned out to be wrong.

Then leading Israeli rightists argued that the Palestinians were hopelessly divided. They pointed out that more Palestinians had recently been murdered by fellow Palestinian terrorists than by Israelis. Off-the-record briefings from Israeli security forces sketched out the bitter feuds between Hamas, Fatah, and the various Marxist fronts. Fundamentalism was on the rise. If given authority over places like Gaza, it was said, there would be a civil- war-type bloodbath. Gaza is now in Palestinian hands. No bloodbath (so far).

Aside from their poor prognosticative powers, the Likudniks found themselves at a loss on the central issue in the entire debate: the status of the West Bank. They don’t know what to do about it, nor what to say. They were convinced, and remain convinced, that Israel is not defensible inside its 1967 borders. But what about the Palestinians? The idea of outright annexation, one of the many stratagems considered by the Likud government in the 1980s, was foolish then and is foolish now. Palestinian cities and villages dot the West Bank, and the mere sight of such cities as Nablus or Hebron make the point better than any negotiation: They do not look, fell, or seem anything like Israel, and never will.

For a time, many Likudniks argued that the nation of Jordan was the real Palestine, “that the West Bank Arabs could move across the river and set up a Palestinian regime in Jordan, where they constitute a majority. But that version of Greater Israel has now been abandoned. Other Likudniks dreamed of cultivating Palestinian moderates, who would forsake nationalism in return for practical gains. This cultivation grew a few moderate mayors. They were soon assassinated, and that strategy too was abandoned. Without a convincing vision of a future Israel with a pacified West Bank, the Shamir government could only sit still and do nothing.

The ethos of Likud was forged during the years of struggle, when Israel was practically a pariah nation and when its enemies could count on support from the Soviets. The Likud party, then in power, did not understand how the collapse of communism in 1990-91 changed the dynamic of Palestinian politics. Its leaders did not, could not, make the transition Ronald Reagan made around 1985, when he decided that his enemy, the Soviets, were psychologically crushed, that it was time to stop pounding them and time to start negotiating with them on his terms.

Likud was right to build the settlements because their existence brought home to the Palestinians that Israel was truly a permanent geopolitical fact and would sooner expand than disappear. In retrospect, however, it seems clear that Likud’s Yitzhak Shamir was wrong not to follow up on the Madrid break-through to conduct negotiations on Likud’s terms. Instead he just stalled, the epitome of a party whose vision and creativity had been spent.

Even with Netanyahu’s leadership, Likud has still not completely caught up with the times. The ground is continually shifting underneath the party. For example, Likud said that it would adhere to the territorial principles laid out in the 1979 Camp David accords. But the Labor government has already conceded much more than Camp David, which renders that Likud position obsolete. Other strong Likud arguments have been overtaken by events.

Ze’ev B. Begin, son of the former prime minister and now a leading Likud politician, has a pocket computer organizer upon which he stores egregious quotations by Yasser Arafat — taken from speeches to Arab audiences in which Arafat promises to wage terror or capture Tel Aviv. The conclusion Begin draws is that Arafat is a terrorist with whom it is impossible to do business. That’s a plausible argument, except that it made far more sense before Oslo. Now, the decision has already been made to do business with Arafat. Israel is committed to doing business with Arafat, and if Likud came to power it would be committed by treaty to doing business with Arafat.

Similarly, Begin argues that the Likud cannot contract out its anti- terrorist policy to the PLO. But in withdrawing from Arab population centers, Israel has already done so. In theory, Israel retains the right to go in and find terrorists, but in reality, as long as there are some places under Palestinian control, Israel will be dependent on PLO police for antiterrorist protection.

Sometimes it appears that Likud is on the attack because its politicians can point out problems in the Labor-negotiated Oslo accords. But in reality, the party is responding to the agenda set by Labor and the PLO. Likud is forced to play by Oslo rules. And it would be forced to play by these rules even if the party prevails in next September’s elections. Netanyahu has said his government would honor all of Israel’s signed agreements, as he must. The key question, which will frame any negotiations, is this: Will a Likud government have the power to walk away from the table if PLO demands become unacceptable?

Remember first that the Oslo process has raised Palestinian expectations and encouraged maximalist positions. As the Labor party! has moved its policy toward pre-1967 borders, Palestinians have grown accustomed to the idea that they will regain control over land up to the old border, and even parts of Jerusalem.

Would Likud have the power to say no and leave the table. Llkud member of parhament Tzachl Hanegbi, who is close to Netanyahu, has argued that it would. He says that Likud should immediately freeze all talks upon taking office. He acknowledges that a new intifada, a Palestinian uprising, would break out within weeks. “We will have to put it down ruthlessly,” he told the Jerusalem Report, “No more kid gloves, no more rubber bullets or gravel- throwing machines. In war, like war.”

That may not be possible, given that most Israelis would find another uprising intolerable to live through. And the image of this intifada may not be just kids with rocks. Now there are 30,000 trained policemen among the Palestinians, and on the West Bank these officers possess 4,000 rifles, 120 light machine guns, and 4,000 pistols. As Yasser Arafat said last summer, “We are now in the midst of negotiations, but if the Israelis think that we do not have alternatives — by Allah they are mistaken. The Palestinian people is ready to sacrifice the last boy and the last girl, in order for the Palestinian flag to fly over the walls of Jerusalem, its mosques and its churches.”

Informed Israeli observers acknowledge that a Likud government would have relauvely little room to maneuver. If it won a massive mandate in the next election and if there were blatant PLO violations, then the negotiations could be brokeh off. But Likud could not walk away if Israel were divided on the talks and the weight of world opinion favored the talks. Unless the survival of the country were clearly at stake, Israelis would probably not be willing to tolerate another period of brutal repression that would result in its becoming a global pariah yet again.

What Israel faces, then, is a situation in which Labor has pushed through an aggressive agenda, doling out concessions to the PL0 gradually and avoiding detailed internal debate, and it has made its agenda impossible or extremely difficult to reverse, even if it should lose the next election. It is an impressive political feat, especially given the scale of political opposition.

After the assassination, many felt that the shock would usher in a new political mood, one of greater comity and lowered voices. That hope lasted about 36 minutes, until the first government minister blamed Likud for the killing, and it was utterly blown apart when Leah Rabin launched her television barrage the day after the funeral. In fact, the same divisive issues remain. But the horrible event will certainly not be without long-term consequences. And ironically it may not be the horror of the event that leaves the greatest impression, but one of the good things that happened afterwards.

Though extremely painful, the day of the funeral was also a proud one for Israelis. It allowed them to demonstrate their distinctive style on the world stage. The funeral was characteristically Israeli — massive security and complete informality. One needed credentials to gain access to Mount Herzl, Israel’s version of Arlington Cemetery, but it didn’t look like a credentials — only crowd. All over, there were thousands of soldiers shmoozing in little groups. Natan Sharansky was walking up to the funeral site in shirtsleeves. One fellow wore a dirty Pink Floyd T-shirt, and a tall, bronzed man wore beach sandals and a bright pink surfer’s hat. They mingled with rich American benefactors. Everybody was given a plain blue baseball cap for protection from the sun, but none of the politicos wore them except Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak may have had the biggest entourage (several times the size of the American or Russian group), but the United States won the yarmulke award — the Americans all wore them, and Clinton fastened his with a bobby pin in the front, the functional equivalent of wearing high-water pants.

Israelis were immensely comforted by the massive concentration of political leaders. Few of their nations recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, yet the leaders had all come. Without even swiveling one’s head, one could see Shevardnadze, Chernomyrdin, Chirac, Major, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Claiborne Pell, and Dan Rather — from the sublime to the ridiculous.

The Jerusalem Post, an English-language daily hostile to the peace process, nonetheless burst wth pride at the international prestige that Rabin had brought to his country: “It is clear that foreign observers have gone to the heart of the mattter and see him in the same light as the late Anwar Sadat — a man who made war when he felt he had to, and then risked all to become a maker of peace.”

The tearful tribute by Rabin’s granddaughter won the world’s attention; Israelis thought Clinton’s speech was wonderful. But the most evocative eulogy was given by Jordan’s King Hussein, who was making his first trip to Jerusalem in nearly 30 years. He spoke slowly and lovingly. He mentioned his grandfather, who had been assassinated in Jerusalem when he was a boy. To see Hussein there in Jerusalem, speaking with such warmth about an Israeli leader, was one of those moments of breathtaking histoncal change we have seen frequently since 1989.

This taste of international respectability was sweet to Israelis, who know little of it; they are far more familiar with worldwide hostility and media bias. If the Oslo agreement leads, as Likud’s Cassandras fear it will, to armed conflict, then this sweetness will turn sour in the memory and history will judge the Rabin government’s aggressive thrust for an agreement a catastrophe.

But if relations between Israel and the coming Palestinian state prove relatively non-violent, and there is free movement through Jerusalem, then Rabin’s political strategy will go down as a model of how to push through difficult policies against heated opposition, and history will judge him the visionary peacemaker his eulogists all insist he was.

By David Brooks