So, the Israeli Labor party’s latest predicament has been resolved: it won’t be joining Ariel Sharon’s government of national unity. With just nineteen seats to Likud’s 40, the party’s new leader, Amram Mitzna, elected just three months ago, will head the opposition faction in Israel’s 120 seat Knesset.
Although Mitzna spent the campaign swearing that he would not even enter discussions to join a Sharon-led government, exhaustive negotiations did take place. They focused on whether settlements in Gaza would be removed within a year of the government forming. A step too soon, said Sharon, and a reward for terrorism.
As a result, Mitzna – like most Israeli politicians, a world leader in political plain speaking – proclaimed that ‘Labor is not a dish rag – it is a party with self-respect.’ He added, ‘Now it is clear, even in his second term, that we do not feel Sharon is ready for a historic move like Menachem Begin (Israel’s peace-making Likud prime minister) by making peace with Egypt and, frankly, it’s a shame.’
But it wasn’t long before Shimon Peres, architect of the peace process, foreign minister in Sharon’s last government and Labor grandee, urged his party to join the government at this time of national crisis, saying, ‘Labor isn’t a party of one person and you cannot force your opinion on the party. Half of the Labor membership wants a national unity government. I have been in many fighting oppositions but it is always better to have real influence. Better to be a fish than a net.’
It is clear that, with just nineteen Knesset seats for Labor in the election, these are sad days for our Israeli sister party. In true 1980s British Labour style, following defeat at the polls, Labor has been fighting with itself, with all the ferocity of a party that has yet to come to terms with how deep its loss of support really is. But Labor can win again in Israel, and it soon will.
It will take more than some of our own home-grown Labour party hacks think. You’d be surprised how many have offered advice on pledge cards, rapid rebuttal units, which colours work and which don’t, and so on. But Israel’s Labor party needs more than just a makeover of its message. The reality is much more complicated.
Every peacemaking Labor government or leader in Israel has been defeated at the polls for one reason only – terrorism. Terrorism will destroy the peacemakers every time. This was true for Peres in 1996 after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Riding the resulting wave of sympathy while the Palestinians carried out a campaign of commuter bus bombs in downtown Jerusalem allowed Binyamin Netanyahu to win.
It was also true of Ehud Barak, even after he was turned down at Camp David subsequent to offering a much-maligned deal to Yasser Arafat. A terror-filled election campaign delivered Sharon the scared electorate he needed.
Israelis are not voting against Labor, or against the peace process – they are voting against Arafat himself. In poll after poll, between 69 to 76 percent of Israelis have completely accepted Labor’s vision of a final settlement – a Palestinian state in almost all of the West Bank and Gaza, based broadly on the 1967 lines, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and a solution to the refugee problem. So why did all these ‘doves’ vote for Sharon?
It’s simple – the majority of Israelis do not have any faith in the current Palestinian leadership to deliver a deal. They see that leadership as being more interested in what is essentially a war – and so returned Ariel Sharon, currently the closest thing there is to a war leader in Israeli politics.
Reflecting on Israel’s history deepens the depression. Mention names like Yitzhak Rabin, David Ben Gurion and Shimon Peres, and it is clear that almost all of Israel’s founders came from Labor. Israel’s supporters still look back to these figures with pride. Our own, more senior Labour peers still remember Ben Gurion as the Mandela of his day.
Under their impressive leadership they built the country, drained the swamps and obliterated malaria from the fledgling state. But, despite of the hostility of Israel’s neighbours, they always preached peaceful co-existence.
They were the guardians of the Kibbutz movement – the socialist training camp for many a current British Labour MP. Labor in Israel developed a cradle-to-grave welfare system that was the envy of the left throughout the world. The cliché of making the desert bloom was created for Israel’s miraculous rebirth. Between 1948 and the mid 1980s, Labor almost always held sway in government.
But at their core, Labor’s leaders knew that Israel could never survive as a fortress state. Even though, surrounded on all sides by hostility, necessity has demanded such an approach, the long-term aim was always peaceful co-existence. Their argument was that Israel’s long-term security demanded nothing less.
So what hope for Labor now? How can the party really win back the support of the majority of Israelis, already willing to make painful compromises, but still voting Sharon? Enter Tony Blair, friend of Israel, friend of the Palestinians. Recognising that peace for Israel and support for Labor will only ever come on the coat tails of security, he has initiated the effort to reform the Palestinian Authority.
It is the best chance we have had since the start of this bloody and essentially pointless second Intifada. With the help of a new breed of Palestinian leaders, like Saleem Fayad, who have already made a start in reforming the PA, we will see the emergence of Palestinian leaders with the vision that will, after 53 years, finally obtain the state that Palestinians so richly deserve. The creation of a Palestinian prime minister is a hopeful development. But if the new Palestinian PM is Arafat’s poodle then there is no hope.
So for Labor to win, there must be a reduction in terror and a more constructive Palestinian leadership. Israelis would demand a deal with the Palestinians. A rightwing Israeli government dragging its feet in such a scenario would not be tolerated and would quickly be replaced by Labor.
A vacuum of constructive leadership in the Palestinian Authority will keep Sharon in power. Until then, Labor will remain out of power. But while the party engages in urgent house cleaning, it has much to be proud of. Sharon’s new government was not formed along the lines of a return to the ‘Greater Land of Israel.’ Rather, it is Labor’s vision which forms the blueprint of this and all future governments – that of an Israel living safe and secure in its borders, free from terror, and a Palestinian state in almost all of the West Bank and Gaza. While Labor may have lost the latest battle, their platform has prevailed and they may yet win the war.