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| BACK TO THE POLLS | |
 December 22, 1998 
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PHIL PONCE: Israelis will be holding early elections for Prime Minister in parliament sometime this spring. Yesterday, the parliament voted overwhelmingly for the new elections, which will cut short the term of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. For more on the political turmoil and its effect on the peace process we get two views: Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He recently returned from a trip to Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. And Rashid Khalidi, Professor of Middle East History and director of the Center for International Studies at the University of Chicago. Gentlemen, welcome. |
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| Why did the Netanyahu government fall? | ||||||||||||||
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PHIL PONCE: Mr. Satloff, what happened? Why did the Netanyahu government fall?
PHIL PONCE: Professor Khalidi, do you agree with that, that it was the Wye Accord that eventually led to the downfall of the government? RASHID KHALIDI, University Of Chicago: Well, I think the fact that the administration finally put its foot down with the Netanyahu government and with Netanyahu's shilly-shallying going back and forth had a lot to do with it, but I think he'd finally run out of rope with his various coalition partners and with the Knesset. People were tired of the Israeli prime minister talking out of both sides of his mouth, and finally I think reality caught up with him. PHIL PONCE: Mr. Satloff, Prime Minister Netanyahu is reportedly saying that the - the campaign, which is about - which has started - is not going to interfere with the peace process, that it's not going to freeze the peace process. Does that sound right to you? Do you think that's conceivable? ROBERT SATLOFF: Well, there are two levels you have to answer this question on. One is just in terms of the peace process and the other in terms of domestic Israeli politics. In terms of the peace process his policy is that he doesn't take a step until the Palestinians take the steps they need to take so that his actions, the Israeli steps and Wye are conditional on Palestinian actions, and the Israeli government says that there are a number of things the Palestinians still need to do. But I think even deeper you have to look at how this plays out politically. In a four-month election campaign the first part of it he's going to tack to the right to make sure that there is nobody inside Israel running on the right side of him for the settler, ultra-orthodox right vote.
ROBERT SATLOFF: To re-establish his credentials among his base. Then he moves to the center because in the Israeli political system you need the center and the right. You need 50 percent plus one to get elected prime minister. So I do think that as you move on, probably not in the next few weeks but as we move on into this campaign, Netanyahu will need to make an attractive move toward the center, and that means that there will be an opportunity for a lot more of the implementation of Wye than there is today. |
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| The Palestinian perspective. | ||||||||||||||
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PHIL PONCE: Professor Khalidi, in your opinion, would the Palestinians prefer to have somebody else to deal with across the table, rather than Mr. Netanyahu?
PHIL PONCE: Why would they rather have a government that is "sabotaging the peace process?" RASHID KHALIDI: Well, because they are opponents of Yasser Arafat. They're opponents of the Palestinian Authority. They don't believe that this settlement process is leading to the liberation of Palestine or even an Israeli withdrawal. In other words, they feel that this is a bankrupt process and they would like to see it halted. There are many, many different Palestinian views. I think Palestinian public opinion is going to be crucial. Neither the Authority - Palestinian Authority nor Hamas and the other opposition groups are what's most important. I think the degree to which Palestinian public opinion is able to tolerate the continued provocations that Netanyahu is going to throw at them, as he has been throwing at them provocations over the past many months, will very much determine both what the Authority does and what Hamas does. People are unhappy, despairing, angry. We saw a lot of that in the last few weeks. I'm afraid that that will have a big effect on Israeli public opinion and on this election. |
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| Where Israeli public opinion stands. | ||||||||||||||
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ROBERT SATLOFF: Well, I think most Israelis, first of all, are quite pleased that there's an election for the simple reason that they want clarity. What you have now is a completely atomized political system. The major parties are at their weakest point in memory. There are more political parties in parliament than ever before, and there's likely to be even more. And so I think what most Israelis want is a clear leadership. I've had the pleasure in the last week to speak with all the major candidates for prime minister, and the one thing you walk away with from speaking with the head of the Labor Party, from the prime minister, and General Lipkin-Shahak is that the differences among them - PHIL PONCE: And the general is - ROBERT SATLOFF: The general is the former chief of staff. He hasn't announced yet, but he's likely to announce for prime minister. What you come away with is that their differences on the peace process are really quite narrow. In the words of one of them, the difference is kilometers, not principles. PHIL PONCE: So there's no difference, in your opinion, between the Israeli left and the Israeli right?
PHIL PONCE: Professor Khalidi, is that a likely scenario? RASHID KHALIDI: I think it very much depends on several things. One is how much Netanyahu will run against Arafat and the Palestinians. I mean, we're talking about one of the prime demagogues of our era, somebody who plays to the nastiest visceral instincts of Israeli public opinion and who, I think, will try and exploit the situation, as Bob Satloff said, to run to the right at the outset at least, and maybe all the way through the campaign. He's dealing with people who are very unhappy in the Palestinians, and he has shown the capability to provoke, to irritate, to annoy, to do things that really are intolerable to Palestinian public opinion - releasing car thieves instead of political prisoners - refusing to withdraw even after the Palestinian National Council agreed to the latest Israeli conditions at this meeting in Gaza.
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| "Peace with Security" | ||||||||||||||
| PHIL PONCE: Mr. Satloff, would you care to respond to his characterization
of the prime minister?
ROBERT SATLOFF: Well, I mean, I think it's - you know - sort of beneath us - to discuss some - after hearing in that presentation about Saddam Hussein to use terms like demagogue - if it's beneath us to discuss him in terms of being a bomb thrower. The bombs that have been thrown in the recent Israeli-Palestinian conflict have left Israelis dead, so I don't think we should use that sort of rhetoric. I think the reality is that the prime minister ran on a platform of trying to touch the chord in the Israeli public that thought that Oslo was a positive process that had gone awry, and I think that that is still the reality among the most, the majority of the Israeli public, that Oslo makes sense in the idea of making territorial compromise to reach peace and security, but along the way you need to make sure that there is security, which is precisely why the two other candidates for prime minister are both generals, because the Israeli center wants that sense of security. They're all running on the same platform - peace with security.
RASHID KHALIDI: Well, a wise Palestinian attitude would try to show the Israeli public the rewards of a - of a deal which would give the Palestinians sovereignty, statehood, most of the West Bank, if not all of it, and the kind of things that the Palestinians would require to live as a normal people like the Israelis, like other peoples. There's some question whether it's going to be possible, given the kind of grandstanding that we're likely to see in the Israeli election campaign and given the fact that there are factions among the Palestinians which I think don't have necessarily the same aims in view. Finally, there is the problem of the Palestinian Authority. They are relatively weak vis-à-vis their own public opinion. They've been dragged, I think, along in the past by public opinion over the issue of prisoners and over many other issues, closures, and so forth. And the Palestinian Authority may find itself forced to engage in rhetoric relating, for example, to Palestinian statehood, a declaration of statehood in May, which will only play, I think, into the hands of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his - and his supporters. And that, in turn, could certainly have the potential to de-stabilize the situation further and perhaps help Netanyahu - help Netanyahu, in effect, to run against Arafat and to run away from the real issues, which are is Israel going to come to terms with the Palestinians on a basis of equality and really give them self-determination and statehood and thereby gain security as a result? PHIL PONCE: Gentlemen, I'm afraid that's all the time we have. I thank you both very much. RASHID KHALIDI: Thank you. ROBERT SATLOFF: Thank you. |
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ROBERT
SATLOFF, Washington Institute for Near East Policy: Well, the clock
started ticking on the prime minister the moment the Wye Plantation
accords were concluded. He has been trying to hold together since May
of 1996 a government of nine political parties from the center all the
way to the right. He made a move to the center by agreeing to a large
territorial compromise at Wye, and he lost the right. And from that
moment on the die was cast. 
PHIL
PONCE: In other words, to re-establish his base. 
RASHID
KHALIDI: I think that the Palestinian Authority and yes, Arafat's advisers
would be very pleased if they did not any longer have to deal with Benjamin
Netanyahu. I don't know that they're going to be obliged, however, because
a lot depends on Israeli public opinion. There are other Palestinians,
I think, who may, indeed, decide that they would be better off with
an extremist, hard-line Israeli government that's sabotaging the peace
process than they would be with a different kind of Israeli government
that actually tried to cooperate with the Palestinian Authority. 
PHIL
PONCE: Mr. Satloff, how would you assess Israeli public opinion at this
point? 
ROBERT
SATLOFF: There's a difference between the left and the right. The reality
today in Israel is that the center is huge - the center has like 70
percent of the population. The differences between what Netanyahu did
at Wye and what the Labor Party might have done at Wye really are very
narrow, and it's - what's going to come out in the election campaign
is that the right - the far right and the far left are marginalized
hopefully and the huge Israeli center will have its voice be heard.
He's
shown again and again that he's capable of remarkable degrees of playing
to the gallery, and I'm afraid that that - as well as I've said before
- how the Palestinians are able to put up with another four months -
I mean, this has been going on for seven years - since 1991 - and the
Palestinians still have not seen most of what they were told they should
expect early on - or much earlier on in the process. So there's a lot
of frustration on the Palestinian side. There are people willing to
exploit it on the Palestinian side. Then we have a bomb thrower in the
current Israeli prime minister, whom I'm afraid will also exploit. 
PHIL
PONCE: Professor Khalidi, what posture do you think the Palestinians
should take during this campaign?