ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, June 1, 1996 TAG: 9606030047
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
A SHARPLY divided Israeli electorate appears to have embraced fear over hope for the time being. For the time being, there may be a high price to pay. It's hard, however, to imagine peace not ultimately prevailing.
No question, the winners of this week's elections include not just the Likud party's Benjamin Netanyahu, but also Yigal Amir and Hamas.
The revered Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, after all, would have likely won re-election easily if he were alive. He also would have continued the peace process begun with the Palestinians in Oslo three years ago. Instead, he was assassinated by Amir, a fanatic fundamentalist Jew who opposes the peace process.
Similarly, the fanatic fundamentalist Muslims of Hamas ignited four suicide bombs during the election campaign with the clear intent of undermining the peace process. The Labor party's Shimon Peres, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, saw his 16-point lead in the polls evaporate as Israelis' confidence was shaken.
The question now is how endurable the peace process will prove in the face of this setback. The answer is neither a given nor necessarily negative.
The question is complicated, to be sure, by uncertainty over Israel's internal direction. As demonstrated anew by the Knesset elections in which religious parties gained several seats, Israel is increasingly a fragmented country struggling with an identity crisis: Will religious primacy prevail, or will the nation continue on a path toward secular, democratic pluralism?
Also complicating the peace question are Netanyahu's stated positions and campaign promises. The Likud leader has grudgingly suggested he will continue the peace process, just more slowly. Theoretically, a factor could even emerge similar to the Nixon-going-to-China scenario, according to which a hawk can sell accommodation more easily than a dove.
But Netanyahu also has said that he will expand Israeli settlements on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, refuse to discuss Palestinian political interests in Jerusalem, and never return the Golan Heights to Syria. It's hard to see how this agenda is compatible with a continuation of the peace process.
The likeliest scenario is not only a breakdown of talks but an increase in tension, alienation and violence - and possibly a return to open revolt in the occupied territories.
Yet it is precisely this scenario that makes despair inappropriate, not only in the sense that the resort to violence must be actively resisted, but also because most Israelis, Netanyahu supporters included, aren't wishing for more hostility.
There are facts on the ground to consider. The peace process already has altered the status of Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territory; some of the changes, fixed by legally binding agreements, would be hard to reverse. There is the fact, too, that the prospect of stability after Oslo helped spur major economic growth and foreign investment in Israel; most Israelis don't want to put that at risk.
And there remains the ultimate reality - suicide bombs and electoral appeals to fear notwithstanding - that Israel's security depends on settlement with the Palestinians, not settlements on Palestinian land. Netanyahu can't change this reality. Israel's friends, especially Americans, should remind him of it at every opportunity.
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