7 -13 December 2000
Issue No.511
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 7 -13 December 2000 Issue No.511 |
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Blowing in the wind
By Graham UsherOne of the traits of Ehud Barak's short tenure as Israeli Prime Minister has been the ability not only to transmit contradictory signals but to do so simultaneously. Within days of his challenge last week that "if the House [Knesset] wants elections, well then we shall have elections", rumours abounded he was in "intensive contact" with Likud leader Ariel Sharon with the aim of forming a national unity government.
Following a "diplomatic and security meeting" between the two men on Tuesday, the vane tilted back to elections. According to Israeli sources, this is less because the two leaders are opposed to a "national emergency" government than to Barak's rejection of Sharon's demand that it be tied to a date for elections sometime in November 2001. Barak's line is that if there is to be "unity," he wants it to last for the rest of his allotted four-year term. Sharon's answer following the parley was "there is no emergency government... we have to go to elections," probably on 22 May next year.
The reason the vane is spinning so zealously is because of the contending forces pulling Barak and Sharon both towards and away from some sort of unity arrangement. One is Binyamin Netanyahu, who received a prodigal's welcome on his return to Israel on Monday after a lecture tour in the US.
The former prime minister currently commands a 20-point lead over Barak in the polls and would almost certainly win the nomination over Sharon as Likud's next candidate for prime minister. At a single stroke he could thus bury the political ambitions of both leaders -- which is why they find "unity" so attractive.
So is Netanyahu really hesitating to toss his hat into the electoral ring? "I am agonising over whether or not to give in to the heavy pressure being exerted on me to return to the leadership of the country," he told reporters at Ben Gurion airport. The seemingly humble reply, though, is Bibi's way of saying that it is not a question of if he will run but when. The only "if" is whether there are in fact going to be elections.
The forces pulling against a unity government are the left wing in Barak's Labour Party and Israel's main diplomatic allies. Both the US and the European Union are fully aware that a unity coalition would not only mean the end of the "peace process" for as long as Sharon and Likud were parties to it, it would also send the clearest signal yet that Barak was readying to impose a "unilateral" military solution on the Palestinian Intifada, now entering its third month.
The only way Barak could free himself from such pressures is the scenario in which the "security situation" becomes so grave in Israel that unity with Sharon becomes less a political choice than a national necessity. If, for example, there was a war.
In the last week, various outlets leaked that the US had conveyed to Lebanon and Syria that should Hizbullah's military actions continue in the "disputed" Shebaa Farms region (which Damascus and Beirut say is in Lebanon but Israel, the US and UN insist is in Syria) both countries could expect a "massive retaliation" by Israel. The threat became more specific via a "senior Israeli security source" who told foreign correspondents on 1 December that Israel has "the military capability to cause significant damage to Syrian forces in Lebanon".
Finally, there was the "memorandum from Bill Clinton to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad", as divined by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, whose epistles are always a good way of distinguishing Barak's real signals from his phoney ones. If Assad allows or encourages Hizbullah to "move the war from southern Lebanon to northern Israel," wrote Friedman in the guise of Clinton:
"Here is what the Israelis told me they would do in response: Israel will attack every Syrian tank and missile battery in Lebanon, Israeli jets will also destroy the Syrian radar and missile batteries just inside Syria that also cover Lebanese airspace. That means a Middle East war. Goodbye, Syria. Goodbye, Nasdaq. Hello, oil crisis."
For wiser Israeli analysts such a torrent of warnings are intended not only to convey to the world that "the likelihood of a regional confrontation has become greater than it was in the past 10 years," in the opinion of the "senior Israeli security source," it is also to ready Israeli public opinion and foster political national unity for "a war that no one wants," he added.
Henry Kissinger once said Israel had no foreign policies, only domestic policies. As Barak faces an election campaign he almost certainly cannot win -- and Israel confronts its second Palestinian Intifada in less than a decade -- the coming months may well test the truth of that thesis.
Related stories:
Iftar under fire
Waning expectations
The other casualty
Barak's last throw of the dice 30 Nov. - 6 Dec. 2000
No holds barred 23 - 29 November 2000
The cost of weakness 16 - 22 November 2000
Crushing the Intifada -- phase two 16 - 22 November 2000
See Intifada in focus 26 Oct. - 1 Nov. 2000
Intifada special 19 - 25 October 2000
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