The Middle East: A Turning Point?: Begin's Rhetoric and Sharon's Tactics

Amos Perlmutter

From Foreign Affairs, Fall 1982

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Summary:  If one looks long enough at recent events in Lebanon, one can see emerging the new face of Israel?s Begin government, a face markedly different from the first government of Menachem Begin. That first Begin government, which toppled a decaying and increasingly ineffectual Labor Party, had its moderate and restraining elements whose crowning achievement was the Camp David Accords. The then Defense Minister Ezer Weizman, along with Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan, were the reins on Begin?s often frightening rhetoric, steering Begin away from the effects of his worst instincts.

Amos Perlmutter is Professor of Political Science and Sociology at American University, and Editor of the Journal of Strategic Studies. The author of numerous books on the Middle East, including the forthcoming, Israel: The Partitioned State 1900-1980, Mr. Perlmutter wrote this article upon his return from a month-long trip to Lebanon and Israel.

If one looks long enough at recent events in Lebanon, one can see emerging the new face of Israel's Begin government, a face markedly different from the first government of Menachem Begin. That first Begin government, which toppled a decaying and increasingly ineffectual Labor Party, had its moderate and restraining elements whose crowning achievement was the Camp David Accords. The then Defense Minister Ezer Weizman, along with Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan, were the reins on Begin's often frightening rhetoric, steering Begin away from the effects of his worst instincts.

Weizman is no longer in the public eye and Dayan is buried. What has taken their place is a Cabinet dominated by a brash, recalcitrant, and pugnacious government whose chief symbol is Defense Minister Ariel (Arik) Sharon, Begin's sword and man of action. Sharon has taken Begin's rhetoric, his aspirations and his dreams for his own, and brought them to a place that closely resembles a political quagmire where not many Israelis, perhaps not even Begin, had expected to wind up.

Begin, a fanatic and firm believer in the concept of "Eretz Yisrael" (or Complete Israel), a stolid and implacable opponent of any sort of Palestinian national movement, has found the perfect instrument to carry out in vivid action what lies at the core of his rhetoric. Whereas the likes of Weizman and Dayan restrained, modified, and manipulated Begin's instincts, Sharon frees them and carries them to their logical conclusion.

As a result of the war in Lebanon, the Palestine Liberation Organization has been deprived of its independent military operations base. Thus it can no longer realistically avail itself of the military option. Politically, the PLO may have reaped some public relations rewards from its long stay in West Beirut, but, realistically, its role as a political symbol for the Palestinian cause has been considerably weakened. Nor will any host Arab country allow the PLO to establish itself as a military force in its land. As a political force, the PLO may find different homes in different Arab countries; but this, of course, is not the purpose of the PLO, which was established as an autonomous movement, independent of the Arab states and their politics.

The incursion into Lebanon has resulted in a total redrawing of the political map of Lebanon and a virtual occupation of southern Lebanon by Israel. Sharon is taking Begin at his word and even going beyond that by attempting to create a new political order in Lebanon, one divided among Israel, Syria, and Christian-Muslim Lebanese forces. By so doing, he has virtually assured a prolonged Israeli and Syrian military presence in Lebanon. The game has gotten away from Begin, the long-range strategist, who is being impaled by the forceful actions of his defense minister.

Ironically, in this intervention in Lebanon, which has had unexpected and long-term political and military consequences, lie the seeds for a new arrangement for Lebanon, a de facto division of Lebanon. This would mean, if not a politically stable Lebanon (was ...

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