
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 30, 1990                   TAG: 9003300783
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SHIFT IN ISRAEL

ISRAEL'S pushmi-pullyu government, an unlikely and ungainly political creature, survived six years for lack of something better. It collapsed a few days ago, and one of its halves - the Labor Party, led by Shimon Peres - will try to form a governing coalition with more compatible partners.

This puts the Mideast peace process on a siding, but once it gets back on track, it may move faster. Peres is more flexible than Yitzhak Shamir, leader of the Likud bloc that has shared governing power with Labor since 1984. If Peres can persuade enough of the small religious-based parties to join with him, he will be able to put together a government.

Under the parliamentary system as practiced by Israel, that's no guarantee of success. Likud and Labor are evenly split in the Knesset, 60 legislators each. When the division is so close, this gives inordinate power to the most strategically placed of the 17 small parties. The Likud-Labor government fell because the Shas Party pulled away from Likud.

The best hope is that this reflects a shift in sentiment within the Knesset itself: away from Shamir's hard-line stalling tactics and toward the U.S.-sponsored peace plan. Shamir, prime minister since 1986, has received a serious political wound; if Peres can form a government, it may spell the end of Shamir's career. In the past couple of years he has emerged as the chief obstacle to talks between Israel and Palestinian representatives.

It has been more than a decade since Israel reached its first peace settlement with an Arab neighbor, Egypt; and it is no less wary of the adversaries that hem it in on three sides. But the nation seems weary of the unending tension and ready to consider swapping some of the land it has occupied since the Six-Day War of 1967 for a modus vivendi with some of its neighbors.

Jerusalem also is aware that the ground is shifting beneath its feet. With the Soviet Eastern European bloc breaking up and Moscow preoccupied with internal troubles, the Arab nations have lost a dependable ally. But by the same token, Israel's strategic importance to the United States has diminished.

Within Israel, moral objections to the occupation are growing. The nation was founded both as a refuge for Jews and as an attempt by some to fulfill biblical prophecy: Many Israelis consider the territory taken in 1967 as part of the lands conferred on their people by the God of the Old Testament. Less sure of this birthright are those who prize Israel's democratic form of government and its commitment to justice and human rights; they see those values eroded when their country rules another people by force.

Ido J. Dissentshik, editor of the influential Israeli newspaper Maariv, wrote recently: "Israel must realize that the world will not allow the Mideast to remain the only local conflict endangering an era of peace on Earth." For understandable reasons, a beleaguered Israel has been very intent upon staking out its own interests and stubborn in defending them. But broader interests need to prevail.

by CNB