Netanyahu scores a major victory
Palestine-Israel, Politics, 1/23/1998

Contrary to all expectations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had scored a major victory upon his return from the US, despite the fact that nothing seems to have been resolved in his two meetings with President Bill Clinton and with his Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

A poll conducted by Israel's leading daily, Yediot Ahronot, showed Friday morning that Netanyahu, who until last week suffered at least a 10 percent difference in publicity in favor of opposition Labor Party leader Ehud Barak, was this week running neck-and-neck with him. The reason, explains the paper, is Netanyahu's success in standing up to US pressure.

The poll showed that were elections for the prime minister to be held today, Barak and Netanyahu would each receive 41 percent of the votes while 10 percent said they would not vote at all and 8 percent were undecided. Asked if Netanyahu's trip to the US was a success or failure, 41 percent said it was success, 38 percent believed it was a failure and 18 percent gave no response. The majority of those questioned (60 percent) said they do not expect relations between Israel and the US to change in the aftermath of the trip while 17 percent said the relations would improve and 18 percent said they would worsen.

Netanyahu's speedy recovery against Barak is a clear indication that ³the right² in Israel is still capable of setting the rules of the political game in the country. When the peace issue was not on top of the public's interest or agenda, thanks to a number of domestic scandals and mounting rate of unemployment, it was easier for the Israeli public to take sides against the present government. But when the peace process is brought back to the foreground in light of the trip to Washington and the reported pressure the US Administration has put on Netanyahu, the Israeli public was again united in favor of its right wing government.

For many, Netanyahu seems to have fulfilled what he promised when he ran for election under the "peace and security" ticket. Israelis believe that peace does not necessarily come in the form of treaties signed with their Arab neighbors but with the cessation of suicide bombings and other sorts of attacks by Palestinians. Therefore, it seems that current lack of peace along with the absence of concrete progress in the political process is more appreciated by the Israelis than having political processes and suicide bombings going on almost simultaneously.

That image might have changed had the US Administration come out openly with statements of disappointment from Netanyahu. Officially, it avoided doing so. Off the record, White House and State Department officials were outspoken in their criticism of the Israeli government and its slow approach to the peace process. But what made things worsen even more for the Palestinians was the latest scandal involving President Bill Clinton on his alleged sexual relations with a former White House intern. Regardless of whether the allegations against Clinton were true or false, they must have derailed his thinking with regard to the peace process in the Middle East.

Those allegations had the US media busy covering developments on this new Clinton scandal more than anything else. The fact that the US media will be busy with this scandal for a long time to come makes it clear that the affair is not going to fade away and might even cause a premature end to the Clinton Administration.

It is because of this element that a confrontation with Israel and its Jewish lobbyists in the US is the last thing Clinton and his vice-president Al Gore want to see occurring. Pressuring the Palestinian side, therefore, is much easier, but that is risky too. Should Palestinian President Yasser Arafat return home with no promising results from his talks in Washington, the state of frustration among the Palestinians might increase. Arafat already warned even long before he left for Washington that his talks with President Clinton would be the last chance for peace to get off the ground. What will happen now that the last chance seemed to have diminished is so hard to tell.

In a statement attributed to Abdul Aziz Rantisi, a spokesman for Hamas in Gaza he said suicide bombings might be renewed if no progress is achieved in the peace process. Palestinian circles in the West Bank even went further to suggest that the new scandal involving President Clinton and his former intern were only a "Zionist ploy" aimed at damaging President Clinton's image and aborting any attempt he might even think of to impose sanctions or to practice pressure on Israel. The "All the President's Women" affair, as one Palestinian said, referring to the Nixon Watergate scandal, has broken out at a time when US pressure on Israel was widely hoped for by the Palestinians who today fear that Arafat might become under an enormous US pressure to meet the Israeli demands and not vice versa.

Arafat himself had rejected Israel¹s move to cancel the third-phase redeployment. In his discussion with the US President, Arafat talked about phase pull-out figures of 40 percent, vastly larger than those envisioned by Benjamin Netanyahu¹s right-wing government. Arafat¹s aides said President Clinton told the Palestinian President the US will insist on a double-digit, second-phase pull-out and will demand that Israel carry out a third phase. During their first talk, Arafat went over the national security map drawn by Israel and insisted that if such a map were to be implemented it wouldn¹t leave any room for a Palestinian state.

Arafat also submitted a letter to Clinton listing the articles of the Palestinian national charter annulled by the Palestinian National Council. The Palestinians say the letter proves Arafat's fulfillment of his commitment to late-Israeli Prime Minister Rabin based on the Oslo Accords they signed. Palestinian and US sources said Arafat promised the Palestinians will refrain from releasing official copies of the charter that don't include the changes. Secretary of State Albright supported the Palestinian interpretation.

Previous Stories:
  Netanyahu scores a major victory   (1/23/1998)
  Agreements and differences between Clinton and Netanyahu   (1/21/1998)
  Peace ball between Washington and Arabs   (1/20/1998)

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