The Last of the Patriarchs

Aluf Benn

From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2002

Summary:  Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon faces disaster on two fronts: ongoing unrest from the Palestinians on one side and a disintegrating domestic coalition on the other. Seemingly paralyzed, Sharon has not responded well to either. So far, Israelis have remained mostly loyal to the former general, and Washington has stayed largely supportive. Both those situations could change, however, unless Sharon comes up with a plan. He may already have one in mind, but not one anyone else is hoping for.

Aluf Benn is Diplomatic Correspondent for Ha'aretz, an Israeli daily newspaper. He has covered Israel's foreign policy and the Arab-Israeli peace process since 1993.

Many on Israel's right, led by Netanyahu, have dismissed Sharon's inactivity as weakness and have started calling for the reoccupation of the Palestinian territories, the expulsion of Arafat, and increased reprisals against the PA. Sharon, however, has rejected these demands. In mid-February, in fact, he met with Likud parliamentarians and explicitly told them he had no intention of dismantling the PA or reconquering its land. As for Arafat himself, although Sharon has insisted that he is now irrelevant and has toyed with the idea of ousting him in favor of a new, more "pragmatic" Palestinian leadership, he has bowed to the strong opposition of the United States and Europe and hesitated, at least for the time being, to do anything to force his old enemy out.

In fact, both the left and the right in Israel have misinterpreted Sharon's actions. The truth is that he simply has no idea how to end the war with the Palestinians. And indeed, until now, the prolonged low-intensity conflict has helped Sharon hold on to his two most important assets: the national unity coalition and the support of Washington. A diplomatic or military breakthrough could threaten both. The problem, however, is that as the violence has worsened, the Israeli public has grown more and more exhausted and angry and U.S. pressure has mounted. Sharon's holding pattern may not be sustainable for much longer.

THE DEATH OF THE LEFT

Despite the current chaos, Sharon has profited from two precious assets that he inherited from the previous government: a national consensus over Arafat's blame for the failure of the peace process, and a strong popular belief that the Palestinians are indeed out to destroy Israel. These two factors have convinced most Israelis that the current confrontation was unavoidable, the sequel to Israel's war of independence in 1948. This conviction has made the Israeli public much more tolerant of Sharon's stumbling than it might be otherwise.

The effort to blame Arafat for the current conflict began with Bill Clinton and Barak, who convinced most Americans and Israelis that it was Arafat who had rejected the "generous offer" made at the Camp David summit in July 2000 -- and that he had opted for violence instead. Palestinian negotiators only made matters worse by demanding a right of return for the Palestinians who fled or were expelled from Israel proper in 1948. Israelis, understandably, view such a return as an existential threat, one that would undermine the character of the Jewish state.

The failure of Camp David and of the follow-up negotiations at the Egyptian resort of Taba in January 2001 threw the Israeli left into total disarray, leaving it without an effective leader or agenda. For many years, the left had argued that Arafat and the Palestinian leadership were ready to compromise if only Israel would make the necessary concessions. But when the moment of truth came, Arafat balked and struck his old revolutionary stance. His rejection of an unprecedented offer seemed to undermine the very logic of the Israeli left and the Oslo peace process.

Indeed, many on the left became convinced that there was no point dealing with the Palestinians anymore. The favored alternative became "unilateral separation," a synonym for partial withdrawal from the occupied territories to fortified Israeli borders. A few traditional leftists rejected this idea and continued to cling to the Clinton plan: to establish a Palestinian state in almost all the territories. But this view found little popular support. Meanwhile, Shimon Peres, once a leader of the Labor Party, joined Sharon's cabinet, apparently without any clear policy in mind. In December 2001, Labor chose another former general and the current defense minister, Binyamin Ben Eliezer, as its new head. But Ben Eliezer has yet to build much of a constituency.

The first cracks in the national consensus supporting Sharon have only recently started to appear. The left is finally starting to show signs of revival, with the resurrected peace movement once more calling for full Israeli withdrawal from the territories. This time, however, leftists have focused mainly on human rights abuses by the Israeli army. A few reserve officers have even begun refusing to serve in the territories. Unlike in the past, however, calls for resuming the peace process remain marginal; Arafat's remarkably low credibility with the Israeli public has made the prospect of serious talks practically impossible.

FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES

Sharon's staying power can be attributed to another factor as well: timing. His election coincided with a change of administration in the United States, and on taking office, George W. Bush changed the course of American diplomacy in the Middle East from conflict resolution to conflict management. Bush set himself an unambitious goal: mere "regional stability." Having learned the sour lesson of Clinton's peacemaking fiasco, Bush refused to even meet with Arafat, who had been the most frequent foreign visitor to the Clinton White House.