Peace Must Come From the Israeli Right

JERUSALEM —  With the renewed outbreak of organized Palestinian street violence and Israel’s threat to suspend further territorial withdrawals, it is hard to recall that only two weeks ago, the Netanyahu government actually began transferring parts of the West Bank to Palestinian rule.

Yasser Arafat, perhaps hoping to redirect fundamentalist outrage at his “collaboration” with the CIA against Palestinian terrorism, has manufactured a new crisis. He has incited Palestinian passions over Israel’s refusal to release terrorists convicted of murder--a commitment Israel never made at Wye--and encouraged violence, including the near-lynching of an Israeli soldier and an unprecedented invasion by hundreds of rock throwers into a West Bank settlement.

For Benjamin Netanyahu, the Palestinian mini-intifada is a political disaster. He can’t proceed with withdrawal while Palestinian mobs with the tacit support of Arafat’s police attack Israeli soldiers and civilians. But stopping the withdrawal and destroying the peace process undermines Netanyahu’s intended message in the next elections--which may be imminent--that only he can deliver peace with security. Nor will a reversion to hard-line policies regain him the support of the ideological right, which feels betrayed by his endorsement of withdrawal.

The latest Palestinian attacks have strengthened the credibility of the anti-Wye right, which argues that territorial concessions to the Palestinians won’t bring peace but only violent political blackmail. Netanyahu has been made to appear the fool, no shrewder than the Labor Party leaders he once castigated for trusting Arafat and exchanging territories for terrorism.

Ironically, the final blow to the Wye accord could come during President Clinton’s goodwill visit to the region later this week. The initial purpose of that visit was for Clinton to preside over the unambiguous repudiation of the Palestinian Covenant’s clauses calling for the destruction of Israel. The Palestinian parliament voted in 1996 to cancel the covenant’s genocidal clauses. But this move was not legally binding because the PLO’s now-defunct Palestine National Council is the only body authorized to change the covenant’s text.

Nevertheless, then-Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres hailed the farce as nothing less than the single greatest event in the Middle East’s last 100 years.

According to statements by Palestinian leaders, Arafat doesn’t intend to reconvene the disbanded PNC but only to invite a symbolic number of its former members to join in yet another vote by the current Palestinian parliament. That would be interpreted by many Israelis--and not only on the right--as one more Arafat evasion, a public relations maneuver meant to appease the Americans while winking to the Palestinian public.

Netanyahu was elected in part because he managed to convince a majority of Israelis that the first Palestinian abrogation of their charter was a sham. Should the latest Palestinian vote turn out to be no more legally binding, he will feel that he has no choice but to repudiate Wye altogether.

With Netanyahu’s coalition falling apart, new elections seem likely within the next three months. Those hoping for a Labor Party victory as a way out of the impasse should recall that Netanyahu won the last elections over the twin issues of Palestinian violence and failure to change the Palestinian covenant--precisely those issues that could force Netanyahu to suspend Wye. Once again, Labor will have a hard time refuting Netanyahu’s argument that a peace partner who can’t recognize the other side’s right to exist isn’t a peace partner at all.

The best hope for the peace process is for Israel to be led by a pragmatic right-winger who alone can deliver a strong consensus for territorial concessions. But Netanyahu can’t do that if Arafat tries to play him for Shimon Peres.

Finally abrogating the covenant would send a timely message to the Israeli public that the despair of the hard right is not an accurate reading of Middle East reality. Anything less would undermine the willingness of the Israeli center to continue surrendering tangible assets for a so-far elusive peace.