Mitzna's victory
Mohamed Sid-Ahmed examines the changes likely to affect the Middle East equation in the light of the new leadership of Israel's Labour Party
In the Israeli Labour Party's leadership primaries held on 19 November Haifa's mayor, Amram Mitzna, was voted in as the party's new leader with a 54 per cent majority in place of former party leader and outgoing Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer. Mitzna's two main rivals, Ben-Eliezer and former moderate minister Haim Ramon, garnered 37 per cent and seven per cent of the vote respectively. Mitzna will lead his party in both the Knesset elections and the general elections scheduled for 28 January now that Israel is reverting to the single ballot proportional representational system after a decade of choosing prime ministers by separate ballot.
Mitzna, a former army general with limited political experience, strongly advocates the resumption of peace talks and, as such, represents something new. He has a reputation that distinguishes him from other politicians. Nicknamed Mr Clear, he is known for his integrity. Peace veteran Uri Avnery recently wrote an open letter to Mitzna in which he praised the latter's "moral courage" in resigning from his army post in protest at Sharon's responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacre, a sacrifice that not many high-ranking officers are willing to make. At the same time, however, Avnery said he had been disappointed by Mitzna's attempts to pacify the settlers as a high-ranking officer in charge of security, accusing him of displaying political immaturity by defending two contradictory political lines simultaneously.
Mitzna has said that if he is elected prime minister he will withdraw Israeli troops from Gaza immediately, dismantle the settlements in Gaza and the West Bank and invite the Palestinian leadership to resume negotiations from where they left off. He also spoke of the need for Jerusalem to be shared between the two states. In a nutshell, Mitzna believes that peace comes at a price and is ready to pay that price.
But polls indicate that Mitzna's chances of defeating the incumbent Likud prime minister are slim. What is more likely is that he will revitalise the Labour Party and redefine its role as an opposition party rather than as a junior partner in a Likud-led coalition.
Arafat has announced his willingness to cooperate with the new leadership of the Labour Party to complete the task he began with the late Labour Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He expressed the hope that Mitzna will follow Rabin's line, adding "I am convinced he will".
Indeed, Mitzna's victory could mark a turning point. It could even be a catalyst for change in the ranks of the Palestinians themselves. The negotiations recently conducted in Cairo between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have so far produced no results. But Mitzna is talking of resuming peace negotiations with the Palestinians without any preconditions. He has also declared that the time has come to resort to negotiations and not only force.
Observers say that Mitzna's support for a political and not only military solution of the conflict with the Palestinians has put him at loggerheads with Ben-Eliezer, who defended his backing of Sharon's hawkish line as necessary to prevent the Likud from benefiting alone from the swing to the right by Israeli public opinion in the wake of the second Palestinian Intifada. His predecessor as Labour leader, Shimon Peres, who had justified his equally fervent cooperation with Sharon as necessary to prevent the latter from adopting even more hawkish policies, is blamed for blurring the Labour Party's traditional left-of-centre identity and rendering it ineffective as a credible opposition party. Hence the need for a third alternative Labour line, a need which explains Mitzna's victory in the elections.
In their dealings with Sharon the Labour leadership faces three options. There is, first, the Peres stand, which Avnery described as providing Sharon with a fig- leaf, embellishing his image and transforming him from a repulsive person responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacre into an acceptable leader with whom a Nobel Peace Prize laureate is willing to cooperate, and who as such, should also be looked upon as an advocate of peace. Second there is the stand of Ben-Eliezer who, as a defence minister, took advantage of Peres's stand to put Sharon's plan for the brutal repression of the Palestinians into effect. Finally there is the stand of Mitzna, who opposes both the stand of Peres and that of Ben-Eliezer but who, for the sake of party unity, and despite intense internal struggle, reserves the second place for Ben-Eliezer and the third for Peres on the party's list for membership in the Knesset.
The split in party ranks is a feature not limited to Labour. An intense power struggle is currently underway between Sharon and Netanyahu inside the Likud. Although three Labour candidates were vying for leadership of the party against only two in the Likud the infighting in the latter is likely to be more ferocious if only because, with 330,000 members, it is nearly three times the size of Labour. In an attempt to neutralise Netanyahu -- and confirm his own ascendancy -- Sharon offered his rival the post of foreign minister and guaranteed his continued occupation of the post in the event of a Likud victory. So far the struggle seems to be favouring Sharon, who has an 18 per cent lead over Netanyahu in the polls. This may be due to the fact that Sharon has been concentrating his campaign on the issue of security while Netanyahu's is oriented more towards economic issues. And, despite Israel's recession, high unemployment and growing impoverishment of its lower socio-economic classes, terror and suicide bombings are the key elements determining the position of the average mainstream Israeli.
Sharon will thus continue to enjoy his amazing popularity as long as Palestinian suicide bombers continue to strike fear in the hearts of the Israeli populace. In any case, and regardless of the outcome of the Sharon- Netanyahu duel, the forthcoming elections are expected to sweep the right to power again. However, as Israel returns to the single ballot system, small parties like Shas, which acquired an importance far in excess of their real weight in society thanks to the double ballot system, are bound to suffer. How will this affect the composition of a new Likud-led coalition? And how will it affect the Arab vote in Israel?
Will Israeli Arabs seize the opportunity to affect the political landscape in the country or will they, like those who believe in suicide bombings, not distinguish between right and left, between Sharon, Netanyahu, Ben-Eliezer and Mitzna? Will they take advantage of the emergence of new oppositions to Sharon, whether from Netanyahu on the right or from Mitzna on the left? Even if we assume that Sharon (or Netanyahu) will be elected as Israel's next head of government, the fact is that the lines of alliances and confrontations in Israel have been irrevocably changed. It is unlikely that the forces of the left (even the centre-left) will remain in their present state of disarray. These forces will reorganise their ranks in the knowledge that fragmentation will erode the Ben-Eliezer/ Peres/Mitzna coalition. The Arab parties cannot ignore such developments.
Sharon's say is no longer the only say in town. With over 50 per cent of the electorate still undecided it is difficult to predict what the final result will be after votes are cast on 28 January. It would, therefore, be a serious mistake if the Palestinians adopt a negative stand and boycott the elections as they did the last time, and if the Arab parties reacted to the elections as if it were an issue of no concern to them.
Sharon is sparing no effort to marginalise Arafat and have him replaced by a more compliant alternative. Despite the desperate situation Arafat still holds cards he can play, particularly in the diplomatic field, such as, for example, endorsing the so-called "Clinton parameters", that is, the ideas Clinton put forward in January 2001 as a relevant point of departure for resuming negotiations. This, however, will need the active cooperation of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. It will also entail the revitalisation of the Saudi initiative, which was unanimously adopted by the last Arab summit in Beirut. Last but not least, it will need a mature Arab diplomacy towards the Iraqi problem, now coming close to its most decisive moment. Can the Arabs rise to the new challenges on the Israeli front?
