Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 55, No. 3, Ed. 1 Thursday, January 18, 2001 Page: 2 of 24
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TEXAS JEWISH POST, THURSDAY, JANUARY 18, 2001 — IN OUR 55TH YEARI
As Elections Approach, What Makes Barak Tick?
By Avi Machlis
JERUSALEM - His stand-
ing may be slipping rapidly in
the polls as Israel's Feb. 6
election approaches, but Is-
raeli Prime Minister Ehud
Barak continues plugging
away toward a peace agree-
ment with a doggedness that
has supporters and detractors
alike pondering his motives.
Beyond his immediate elec-
toral considerations - and it’s
not clear whether reaching a
quick peace deal would ulti-
mately help or hurt Barak at
the polls - observers say
Barak is driven by a military-
style sense of mission and,
not least, an excessive ambi-
tion to stake a place in Israeli
history as the leader who ne-
gotiated ultimate peace with
the Palestinians.
Barak's willingness to make
decisions on the country’s
most pressing existential is-
sues - acting with a minority
government and under the
deadline of impending elec-
tions - has aroused intense
criticism from opponents and
even from left-wing academ-
ics who raise the specter of
abuse of power.
Attorney General Elyakim
Rubinstein became the latest
in a line of prominent Israelis
to criticize the premier’s ac-
tions, firing off a letter to
Barak last week questioning
the legitimacy of trying to
make history during an elec-
tion period.
Recent opinion polls show
Likud Party leader Ariel
Sharon widening his lead over
Barak to as much as 28 per-
centage points. Barak shrugs
off the polls, and rejects any
suggestion that he step aside
at the last minute to allow for-
mer Prime Minister Shimon
Peres - who stands a better
chance against Sharon, ac-
cording to the polls - to repre-
sent Labor.
Pundits increasingly say that
Barak, who earned his stripes
in the military on daring com-
mando raids behind enemy
lines, is on a suicide mission.
Yet officials close to Barak
brush off the attorney gener-
al’s letter as politically moti-
vated, and reject mounting
criticism that he is trying to
secure a peace deal simply to
improve his chances of re-
election.
”If Barak wanted to keep his
seat, the easiest thing would
be to bring Sharon into the
government,” said an official
from the prime minister’s
campaign headquarters. ‘‘He
is guided strictly by Israel’s
national and security interests
and will bring any agreement
to the people before signing.
“The prime minister is a
man who does not bend under
pressure,” the official added.
“The more pressure on him,
the more rational he be-
comes."
Ever since Barak resigned
last month and triggered a
snap election for prime minis-
ter, the conventional
wisdom has been that
Barak’s only hope is
to secure a historic
peace agreement.
But that logic may
no longer hold. Clin-
ton’s proposals to di-
vide Jerusalem and
cede sovereignty over
the Temple Mount ap-
pear increasingly un-
palatable to Israelis,
especially as the on-
going violence in the
West Bank and Gaza
Strip has shaken faith,
even on the left, in the
possibility of an “end
to the conflict’’ with
the Palestinians.
Also unclear are the
personal and psycho-
logical factors moti-
vating Barak. With a
tradition of secrecy
and centralization of
power gleaned from
decades in the army,
Barak allows only a
tiny handful of trusted
insiders into his counsel.
However, from the analo-
gies he uses and allusions to
his role models, it appears
that Barak dreams of entering
the pantheon of great Israeli
leaders - such as former
Prime Ministers David Ben-
Gurion and Yitzhak Rabin -
who were visionary enough to
read strategic realities years
before their contemporaries,
and valiant enough to stay the
course despite their detrac-
tors.
“He’s a very megalomania-
cal person, and he really put
into his head that he would be
the one that signs the final
agreement” with the Palestini-
ans, Israeli journalist and his-
torian Tom Segev said of
Barak. “What really drives
him is personal megalomania
and an incredible amount of
arrogance.
“That’s what led him to
make a historic mistake,”
Segev continued. “Rather
than continue the Oslo road”
of gradual agreements, Barak
“put it into his head that he
can reach a final settlement
and try to impose it on” Pales-
tinian Authority President
Yasser Arafat.
Upon taking office in July
1999, Barak sought to redraw
the rules of Middle Eastern
diplomacy, dispensing with
the extended and leisurely
haggling characteristic of the
Ehud Barak
Arab market in favor of strict
deadlines that he believed
would force Arab leaders to
make peace forthwith or ex-
pose their intransigence.
Only one deadline - for an
Israeli military withdrawal
from Lebanon - was kept, and
it is seen as one of the few in-
controvertible successes of
Barak’s tenure. Other dead-
lines, in negotiations with
Syria and the Palestinian Au-
thority, proved ephemeral.
A gifted chess player, Barak
has laid elaborate and far-
sighted plans that contain on-
ly one basic flaw in both do-
mestic Israeli politics and his
negotiations with the Arab
world: a misreading of his ad-
versaries’ intentions. Perhaps,
some say, by resigning and
calling elections within 60
days, Barak sought to force
Arafat to cease prevaricating
and come to an agreement
quickly, rather than face a
more stubborn, Likud-led
government.
If so, that logic also ap-
peared to be unraveling, as
Arafat waited so long to re-
spond to a late December
American peace proposal that
he effectively killed it.
“There will be no agreement
signed before elections,” said
Yaron Ezrahi, a political sci-
ence professor at the Hebrew
University and the Israel
Democracy Institute. “This
election will either be
a referendum on the
outline of a peace
agreement or it will
be an election on the
question of who
should lead the coun-
try in the wake of the
collapse of the peace
process.”
Some political ana-
lysts argue that the
only hope for Barak is
to secure at least a re-
turn to the negotiating
table. He then could
try to convince Israeli
voters he was not
willing to make peace
at any price and had
not crossed any of his
“red lines,” since he
had not signed a for-
mal agreement to di-
vide Jerusalem.
Although a long
shot, such a strategy
could at least let
Barak argue that he is
making a serious ef-
fort to end the con-
flict, in contrast to Sharon,
who has said a final agree-
ment is impossible in the fore-
seeable future.
“Barak needs some sort of
perception that there is hope,
that would force Sharon to put
up an alternative policy,” said
Joel Peters, a political science
professor at Ben-Gurion Uni-
versity in Beersheva. “He will
want to create an atmosphere
that shows there is something
going on.”
The official at Barak’s cam-
paign headquarters confirmed
that this is a “realistic” strate-
gy and is under consideration.
Then again, Barak may have
little choice but to press ahead
with peace negotiations if he
wishes to safeguard Israel’s
reputation in the world. Nei-
ther he nor Arafat wants to
bear international blame for
causing the peace process to
collapse.
Furthermore, though Clin-
ton may now have little
chance of securing his legacy
as the man who brought peace
to the Middle East, he does
not want his tenure to end on
Jan. 20 in disaster.
Clinton “will want to leave
with the parties together
rather than apart,” Peters said.
“There is also an interest in
setting up a framework for
continuity and not to leave a
vacuum before the next U.S.
administration comes in.”
Whatever Barak’s motiva-
tions, polls continue to indi-
cate that Israelis are prepared
to punish him harshly less
than two years after they cata-
pulted him to power.
Barak’s fundamental prob-
lem, explained Barry Rubin, a
political scientist at Bar-Ilan
University, is the continuing
Palestinian violence and the
resurgence of terror attacks,
even within Israel proper.
Even a new declaration of
principles or a fresh round of
peace talks may not help if
Barak cannot restore calm on
the ground. Similar problems
sunk Peres’ candidacy in
1996, even though he began
the campaign with an enor-
mous lead as the inheritor of
Rabin’s peace mantle.
Barak’s “problem is the con-
tinuation of violence in a con-
text in which people do not
believe that successful negoti-
ations will bring the violence
to an end,” Rubin said.
Many Israelis, he added, in-
creasingly believe that the
Palestinians have completely
abandoned the Oslo process
“not only in their tactics but
in their goals,” which once
again appear to be aimed at
“eliminating the state of Is-
rael.”
With little going his way,
another official in the Prime
Minister’s Office said Barak
must employ negative cam-
paigning against Sharon.
‘The only strategy now is to
scare the people,” the official said.
“They are trying to scare the
Arabs into voting Barak by
reminding them of Sharon’s
role in the Sabra and Shatila
massacres” during the 1982
Lebanon War, “and trying to
scare the people by saying the
only alternative to talks is a
deterioration toward an all-
out war.”
Avi Machlis is a TJP/JTA
correspondent.
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Wisch, J. A. & Wisch, Rene. Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 55, No. 3, Ed. 1 Thursday, January 18, 2001, newspaper, January 18, 2001; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth753707/m1/2/?q=%22Places+-+United+States+-+Texas+-+Tarrant+County+-+Fort+Worth%22&rotate=90: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .