Hardly had Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appointed his most
outspoken Likud Party rival, former prime minister (1996-99) Benjamin
"Bibi" Netanyahu, to the post of foreign minister, when the
new appointee denounced his boss for his twenty months of failures in
office: "I think one of the things we see is the tremendous escalation
of terror. … The economy is in worse shape. … A lot of that
is derived not so much from the lack of security but from the absence
of a coherent economic policy. … The country is in dire straits,
and we have to get it out." When Bibi says "we," he means
of course himself as the next Prime Minister.
Israel's Labor Party leaders wisely jumped off Sharon's sinking ship
because they could not possibly see him ending his tit-for-tat battles
with the Palestinian resistance. Besides, Sharon's popularity has been
declining rapidly. Netanyahu joined his cabinet only when the Prime
Minister promised new elections in January and thus opened the door
for his 53-year old critic to oust him, the 74-year old veteran general.
The prospect of another Netanyahu government worries virtually everybody
who hopes for an early end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including
many American friends of Israel. In a 1997 poll during Bibi's tenure
as Prime Minister, the Israeli Policy Forum found that 84 percent of
American Jews favored U.S. "pressure" on both the Palestinian
Authority and Israel to rescue the teetering peace process.
Actually, Bibi's three years as Israel's leader were disappointing for
all concerned. His intransigence brought the Oslo peace process to a
halt. His order to open the entrance to an archeological tunnel under
Jerusalem's Old City provoked Palestinians so much that a three-day
gun battle ensued. His decision to build a new Israeli settlement in
disputed East Jerusalem predictably ended ongoing talks with Palestinian
leaders. Later, he managed to alienate King Hussein, Israel's best friend
among the Arabs, with a botched assassination attempt on a Hamas leader
in Jordan.
Last week, Bibi criticized Sharon's tentative acceptance of the latest
peace proposal backed by the U.S., the U.N., the European Union, and
Russia. Bibi insists that any peace plan remains "not relevant,"
as long as the confrontation between the U. S. and Saddam Hussein's
Iraq has not been resolved.
For the Likud leaders, President Bush's preoccupation with the war on
Al Qaeda and with the "axis of evil"--Iraq, Iran, and North
Korea--provides a welcome reprieve from talks with "irrelevant"
Palestinians wanting more than Likud would ever concede. Like Sharon,
Bibi seems determined to make Palestinian elections impossible and rather
wear the Palestinian resistance down before President Bush might seriously
call for the Palestinian state he proposed.
Bibi repeatedly stated that, as Prime Minister, he would expel Palestinian
leader Yasir Arafat from the occupied territories. Like other Likud
members, he might also consider the collective "transfer,"
i.e., the expulsion, of some or all Palestinians from the West Bank
and Gaza. More than once did Netanyahu indicate that he considers peace
with the Palestinians only possible by coercion, not by negotiations.
In spite of Bibi's failure as Prime Minister and peace negotiator, members
of the U.S. Senate called on him last April for advice on how to meet
the challenge of terrorism and bring an end to Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Never mind that there are hundreds of more thoughtful and more open-minded
Israelis or, better yet, Americans on whom the Senators could have called.
In his address, Bibi lost no time equating the terrorist acts against
Israeli oppression with Al Qaeda's terror against Americans not guilty
of daily acts of death and destruction against a subjugated nation.
Bibi even tried to make the Senators believe that the targeted assassinations
of Palestinians never terrorize anybody but are brave acts of self-defense
or unavoidable collateral damage.
Fortunately, today fewer people than ever deny that both Israelis and
Palestinians have a right to independence and self-defense. Regrettably,
Bibi remains among the few convinced that only a captive Palestine guarantees
peace for Israel.