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Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 July 1999 Issue No. 437 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 July 1999 Issue No. 437
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Focus Books Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters Barak's one-man show
By Graham UsherIn the week when he presented his government to the Knesset, with the support of 75 members, Ehud Barak's credit went up a notch in the eyes of the Palestinian Authority and dropped several leagues in the eyes of his own Labour (now One Israel) Party.
After six weeks of neglect, Israel's new prime minister finally steered himself to talk to his Palestinian counterpart. Barak "sees [Yasser] Arafat as an important and central partner in the diplomatic process," ran a statement from Barak's office on 1 July. The next day, Barak called the Palestinian leader on the telephone, reportedly promising "to follow in the footsteps of Yitzhak Rabin" and pledging a meeting with Arafat as soon as his government was sworn in. According to Barak's office, the prime minister will meet with President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo on Friday, and with Arafat on Sunday before travelling to Washington on 16 July for talks with President Bill Clinton. Barak will also meet with Jordan's King Abdullah.
The real music to Arafat's ears came during Barak's inaugural speech to the Knesset on Tuesday. Insisting that his priority was to achieve a "peace of the brave" to end the "100-year-old conflict in the Middle East," Barak promised that his government would aim for "simultaneous progress" on both the Palestinian and Syrian tracks of the peace process, "but without granting preference to either." Unusually for an Israeli leader, Barak said he understood "not only the suffering of my people, but also "the suffering of the Palestinian people."
Arafat could barely restrain his enthusiasm. "We are ready to move together in order to achieve the peace of the brave which we signed with the Israeli government," he told reporters in Gaza. PLO chief negotiator (and Oslo mastermind), Mahmoud Abbas, was similarly impressed. "There is hope with Barak for peace," he said. "No matter what, the situation will be better than the past three years under [outgoing Israeli leader Binyamin] Netanyahu."
It was not a sentiment unanimously shared by Barak's 26 Knesset-member-strong One Israel faction.
Most Israeli analysts agree that Barak demonstrated some skill in steering parties like the Sephardi orthodox Shas movement and the mainly Ashkenazi Meretz bloc into the same coalition fold. Yet, having done so, he was faced with the onerous task of having only eight governmental portfolios to hand out to the party that elected him leader and organised to make him prime minister. And the same analysts agree that Barak made a mess of it.
The hope among One Israel members was that their leader would distribute the few posts he held on the basis of party popularity, talent and suitability for the post. In fact, as Israeli columnist Hemi Shalev scathingly put it in Maariv on Monday, there was only one quality that truly interested Barak: "loyalty, loyalty and loyalty."
Apart from the Foreign Ministry which, for the third time in a decade, went to the inoffensive and ineffectual David Levy, most of the powers pertaining to the negotiations with Syria and the Palestinians are in the hands of Barak himself, including the post of defence minister. Among the Labour Party's old "peaceniks," Shimon Peres was given the largely ceremonial Ministry of Regional Development, while Israel's best known dove, Yossi Beilin, was shunted off to Justice -- a move many Israeli observers suspect is designed to keep him as far way from the final status negotiations as possible.
The other main ministries were dished out either to Labour Party yes-men or right-wingers, such as the National Religious Party's Yitzak Levy at Housing, Yisrael Baaliya's Natan Sharansky at Interior and Shas' Eli Suissa at National Infrastructure.
Given his thumping election victory, Barak probably assumed he could get way with this humiliation of his own party and supporters. He was wrong. On Monday -- in a clear swipe at their leader -- Labour Party members voted down 74 to 57 Barak's choice for Knesset Speaker, Shalom Simhon, in favour of Avraham Burg, a popular Labour activist who once listed Barak's political skills as "compartmentalising, ostracising and closing doors."
The same mentality presumably accounts for why Barak offered neither a ministry nor even an invitation to join his coalition to the three Arab lists in the Knesset, 95 per cent of whose electorate voted for him on 17 May. Barak "has completely marginalised the Arab sector," commented Al-Balad Knesset member, Ahmed Tibi, to Israel Radio on Tuesday. "We [the Arab lists] cannot support this government."
It is the hope of virtually every Arab leader in the region that they will be able to support this Israeli government. But as Barak embarks on his first regional tour as leader, he will be expected to give concrete answers to questions about implementing the 1998 Wye agreement, freezing settlement construction in the Occupied Territories and the kind of peace he intends with Syria and Lebanon. So far, Barak has offered only red lines to the Arabs, enigma in his coalition agreements and autocracy in his choice of cabinet. At the very least, the Arabs will hope that his dealings with them will be a good deal more honest than his dealings with his own party.
