Netanyahu Binyamin - From Rabin to Netanyahu: Israels troubled agenda

FROM RABIN TO NETANYAHU:
ISRAELS TROUBLED AGENDA

Israeli History, Politics and Society
Series Editor: Efraim Karsh, Kings College London
ISSN 1368-4795

Providing a multidisciplinary examination in all aspects, this series serves as a means of communication between the various communities interested in Israel: academics, policy-makers, practitioners, journalists and the informed public.

Other books in the series:

Peace in the Middle East: The Challenge for Israel
edited by Efraim Karsh

The Shaping of Israeli Identity: Myth, Memory and Trauma
edited by Robert Wistrich and David Ohana

Between War and Peace: Dilemmas of Israeli Security
edited by Efraim Karsh

U.S.-Israeli Relations at the Crossroads
edited by Gabriel Sheffer

From Rabin to Netanyahu: Israels Troubled Agenda
edited by Efraim Karsh

Israel at the Polls 1996
edited by Daniel J. Elazar and Shmuel Sandler

In Search of Identity: Jewish Aspects in Israeli Culture
edited by Dan Urian and Efraim Karsh

Israel: The Dynamics of Change and Continuity
edited by David Levi-Faur; Gabriel Sheffer and David Vogel

Revisiting the Yom Kippur War
edited by P.R. Kumaraswamy

Peacemaking in Israel after Rabin
edited by Sasson Sofer

Parties, Elections and Cleavages: Israel in Comparative and Theoretical Perspective
edited by Reuven Y. Hazan and Moshe Maor

First published in 1997 in Great Britain by
FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS

Copyright 1997 Frank Cass & Co. Ltd.
Reprinted 2001

Reprinted 2004 by RoutledgeCurzon
2 Park Square, Milton Park,

Abingdon, Oxon, 0X14 4RN

Transferred to Digital Printing 2004

Routledge Curzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0 7146 4431 0 (cloth)

ISBN 0 7146 4383 1 (paper)

ISBN 9781135254452 (ebk)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

From Rabin to Netanyahu : Israels troubled agenda / edited by Efraim Karsh.

p. cm. (Israeli history, politics, and society)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-7146-4831-0 (cloth). - ISBN 0-7146-4383-1 (pbk.)
ISBN 9781135254452 (ebk)

1. Israel Politics and government1993- 2. Arab-Israeli conflict-1993- 3. National characteristics, Israeli. 4. Jews-Israel-Identity. 5. Rabin, Yitzhak, 1922- 6. Netanyahu, Binyamin. I. Karsh, Efraim. II. Series.

DS128.2.F76 1977

This group of studies first appeared in a Special Issue,
From Rabin to Netanyahu: Israels Troubled Agenda in Israel Affairs,
Vol.3, Nos.3&4 (Spring/Summer 1997),
published by Frank Cass & Co. Ltd.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, [stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted?] in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of Frank Cass and Company Limited.

Printed & bound by Antony Rowe Ltd, Eastbourne

In Memory of Robert F. Shafritz
Rabbi, Scholar, Friend

EFRAIM KARSH

The May 1996 election of Benjamin Netanyahu, the 46-year-old leader of the right-wing Likud Party, as Israels youngest ever prime minister provides further proof, if such is at all needed, of the volatility of Israeli politics. A couple of years earlier, with public euphoria sky-rocketing following the signing of a Declaration of Principles (DOP) with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and a fully-fledged peace treaty with Jordan, the standing of the Labour-led government seemed unassailable. Comprehensive peace between Israel and its Arab neighbours, a longstanding expressed objective of the Jewish State, seemed within reach; its promoters were seen as courageous men of vision, its critics - small-minded paranoiacs. Enter a string of suicide bombings across Israel by Islamic militants leaving a long trail of mayhem and blood, and the popularity of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and his government went tumbling down. This trend was reversed overnight by Rabins assassination on 4 November 1995 at the hands of a Jewish zealot. The first such act in the annals of the Jewish State, the assassination sent an unprecedented tremor throughout the nation, raising a tidal wave of sympathy with the slain prime minister and his quest for peace and revulsion with the perceived culprits of his killing, not least Netanyahu who had spearheaded a fierce campaign against the Labour-led peace process, rife with sharp personal attacks on Rabin and his nemesis-turned-partner, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. Then came yet another round of atrocities by Islamic militants in late February and early March 1996, killing some 60 Israelis in four suicide bombings within the span of one week. Labours electoral lead was wiped out once and for all.

More than anything else, then, Netanyahus hair-breadth electoral victory represents the agonized and convoluted state of mind of the Israeli public. Netanyahu was not elected for his charismatic personality or the depth of his ideas; he was catapulted, or rather bombed to power by an atavistic mixture of fear and hope at an extremely vulnerable moment in the nations life, to which his simplistic promise of peace with security seemed a panacea.

Efraim Karsh is Professor and Head of the Mediterranean Studies Programme at Kings College, University of London.

Some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Such was the extent of Netanyahus luck that his electoral rival was none other than the veteran politician Shimon Peres. On the face of it, the scales were unequivocally tilted against Netanyahu. As a newcomer to the political scene, he lacked any executive experience and his political record was essentially confined to the diplomatic-representative sphere: Deputy Ambassador to the United States, Israels Representative to the United Nations, and Deputy Foreign Minister. True, Netanyahus communicatory skills had made him an international media celebrity; but they had also bought him the unflattering title of Mr. Sound-bite, a man of catchy phrases rather than deeds, a poor mans Abba Eban. But then Eban has never become prime minister...

Peres, by contrast, is one of Israels most accomplished politicians. With a career dating back some 50 years, he served for many years in the Ministry of Defence, becoming Director General in 1953, at the age of 29, and Deputy Minister of Defence in 1959 (when he also became a Knesset member), a position he held until 1965. Since then he went to serve twice as Prime Minister and respectively held the defence, foreign affairs, and finance portfolios, among others. In these capacities Peres played a prominent role in the establishment and the development of Israels defence industries, including the nuclear reactor in Dimona; in the containment of the countrys three-digit inflation in the mid-1980s; in Israels extrication from the ill-conceived Lebanese adventure; and, most recently, in the promotion of the nascent peace process.

Yet, for all his remarkable achievements, Peres suffers from the same malignant disease that afflicted British politician Neil Kinock: unelectability. For one reason or another, to most Israelis, he has represented the epitome of the professional politician: slick, opportunistic, non-credible. Five times he made his bid for Israels top spot, never to win. He lost twice to Menachem Begin (in 1977 and in 1981). In 1984, against the backdrop of the hugely unpopular Lebanon War and sky-rocketing inflation, he failed to defeat the lacklustre Yitzhak Shamir and was forced to share a national unity government with Likud (an experience repeated in 1988). Had he headed the Labour Party in the 1992 elections, rather than the late Yitzhak Rabin, Labour would not have returned to power. Similarly, had he relinquished power in favour of a younger successor, such as Chief-of-Staff-cum-Foreign Minister Ehud Barak, Labour would have won the 1996 elections by a comfortable majority, despite the murder of dozens of Israelis at the hands of Palestinian bombers.