ISRAEL: Begin’s Tactics Under Fire

The images still flash sharply through the mind: Egyptian President Anwar Sadat stepping from his gold-and-white 707 upon Israeli soil; Israeli Premier Menachem Begin greeting him at the Knesset in Jerusalem; Sadat and Golda Meir exchanging good-humored banter; Begin’s airport farewell to Sadat amid dreams of peace.

What happened to the “spirit of Jerusalem”? Though U.S. Special Envoy Alfred (“Roy”) Atherton resumed his shuttle diplomacy between Jerusalem and Cairo last week, the peace process is essentially stalled. Both sides have made mistakes, but most dispassionate observers place the larger share of the blame on Israel and its doctrinaire Premier. Few of his countrymen would fault Begin for his aims or his principles, but a growing number disapprove of his tactics as a peacemaker, as TIME Jerusalem Bureau Chief Donald Neff reported last week:

There is no groundswell of Israeli disagreement over Begin’s policies, no sense of growing national doubt. According to the most recent polls, Begin enjoys the support of 68% of his countrymen. Yet he is widely criticized today for his handling of the peace talks, not for allowing the negotiations to founder, much less for his unbending stand on many issues, but for offering too much too soon. Many Israelis believe that his opening offer of Egyptian sovereignty over all of the Sinai was a mistake, even though Begin later indicated that he wanted a special U.N. status for Sharm el Sheikh, retention of two large airbases in the Sinai and the continued existence of Jewish settlements there.

“Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem was brilliant,” says Tali Bashan, 21, a political science student at Hebrew University, “but it was no argument for our making large concessions.” Adds Geula Cohen, a Knesset member and an old comrade of the Premier’s in the Irgun movement: “Begin didn’t think. He gave away the sovereignty of the Sinai like a present, without getting anything in return.”

After months of self-imposed restraint, leaders of the Labor Party opposition have resumed open criticism of the government’s policies in the belief that their attacks could hardly damage the peace process as much as Begin’s tactics have done. “Begin’s method of negotiating on the Sinai was a mistake,” says Opposition Leader Shimon Peres. “He didn’t keep a fallback position. He started from the end, apparently forgetting that negotiations are supposed to result in each side giving something. What else did he expect to give?” Former Labor Premier Yitzhak Rabin makes virtually the same point: “I believe Sadat’s conditions in his Knesset speech were his opening position. But Begin started out with Israel’s end position. What was he thinking of?” Even Begin’s resolute cheerfulness is being criticized. “His unflagging optimism,” declares former Chief of Staff Haim BarLev, “is unfounded.”

Begin’s government is also coming under mounting attack for its underhanded policy on Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. Many Israelis, not to mention U.S. officials, are upset by what they take to be the breach of a promise Begin made to President Carter. Instead of ordering a temporary halt to further settlements—a tactic that would have won him widespread admiration—the Premier baffled his supporters by allowing settlers to remain at the West Bank site of Shiloh as “archaeologists” and by permitting the hasty construction of four new “military camps” on the West Bank for the obvious purpose of housing more civilian settlers. In the northern Sinai, where the existing settlements have neither religious significance nor much security value, Begin’s government allowed bulldozers to clear additional land after the peace talks had begun, thereby confounding Israel’s friends abroad and alarming the Egyptians.

“This government’s policy is like Janus,” says former Transportation Minister Gad Yaacobi. “One head looks to the hard-liners in the Likud and says it is keeping the settlements and the West Bank, and the other head looks toward Cairo and Washington and says that it is all going to be turned over to the Palestinians. The government at some point must decide what its policy is.”

The Likud’s principal coalition partner, the Democratic Movement for Change, voted last week to oppose the creation of any new settlements while the peace process continues. Says Amnon Rubinstein, a dovish leader of the D.M.C.: “The harm created by the new settlements for Israel’s reputation is immeasurable. We are not against new settlements in certain areas of the West Bank in normal times, but not now: it is contrary to accepted rules of conduct during negotiations.”

Despite such unhappiness over tactics, most Israelis support Begin’s broad goals. Even the younger generation, though less preoccupied with the Holocaust than were its parents, seems at least as hawkish on questions affecting the national security. The few outright doves who remain active in Israeli public life are isolated and impotent. The main opposition parties would make more concessions than Begin; many would be prepared to give up part of the West Bank, and some would countenance a future link between the West Bank and Jordan. Shimon Peres would give up the Arab population centers in the West Bank and some surrounding territory but would want to retain at least the Jordan Valley and Jordan hills to a depth of about ten miles to the west. In any case, none of the opposition proposals go anywhere near far enough to meet the Arabs’ present demands. In previous years, Jordan’s King Hussein has been presented with various Israeli proposals for partitioning the West Bank and has turned them all down.

Virtually all Israelis agree on these principles for peace:

>Jerusalem must remain a united city under Israeli control.

> The West Bank must never become a Palestinian state; most parties agree with Begin that “self-determination” would lead to a Palestinian state.

> At least some of the 52 Jewish settlements on the West Bank must remain.

>Israel is entitled to defensible borders, and will never return to pre-1967 lines; many Israelis, however, would probably settle for fairly minor border adjustments in return for peace.

> Israel will never negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

On those five principles, the country stands firm and united, even if the price is the breakdown of the peace talks. To outsiders, such a position may seem shortsighted and intransigent. To siege-minded Israelis it comes as second nature, and of all the 3.1 million Jews in Israel, that attitude is best exemplified by Menachem Begin.

The Premier is respected and admired at home, especially among lowincome, less-educated groups of Middle Eastern origin, for his mystical devotion to Eretz Israel (the land of Israel, including the biblical provinces of Samaria and Judea, which is how Begin refers to the West Bank). At the same time, many Israelis doubt his capacity to lead his country to peace because they fear he is too rigid, too suspicious of the Arabs, whom he barely knows, and too traumatized by Jewish history. His harshest critics call him a Yehudi Galuti, a Diaspora Jew, and it is true that for the most part Begin plays to Israelis’ fears and suspicions, not to their hopes and dreams.

Those fears, grounded in the Holocaust and in the four wars that Israel has fought in the past 30 years, remain strong today. Whatever the explanation (sociologists favor such terms as “Holocaust complex,” “Massada complex” and, since the 1973 war, “October complex”), there is clearly an acute sense of suspicion and concern at work in Israeli society. Public opinion tends to the extreme and fluctuates wildly. Thus 90% of the Israelis thought during Sadat’s November visit that peace with Egypt was possible; now 60% believe there will be another war within ten years. Yet there remains agreement that no risk is worth taking that threatens the country’s security.

The real question is how secure Israel must feel before it will take risks for peace. Since the 1973 war, the U.S. has pumped $10 billion worth of aid into Israel, more than half of it in military equipment, including the latest and most sophisticated weapons in the U.S. arsenal. Israel today is 60% stronger than it was in 1973, in terms of armaments, while Egypt is 10% weaker. In the opinion of many U.S. officials, Israel will never be stronger than it is now, and therefore never in a better position to make peace.

But can Israel bring itself to surrender territory that could be used to launch a new war against it? Even so moderate and rational a man as Archaeologist Yigael Yadin, leader of the D.M.C. and Deputy Premier, says no. “When we come to an issue like the West Bank,” he argues, “Israel’s dilemma is whether to yield to U.S. pressure or jeopardize its very existence. When the country is faced with such a dilemma, Israel will not yield, come what may.” Says David Glass of the National Religious Party: “You can’t push Israel too hard. When we begin to feel that the world is against us, we unite and find a consensus.”

How will the impasse end? For the moment, Begin’s government is secure. The Premier and most other Israelis would clearly like to reach an agreement with Egypt, thereby neutralizing the most serious military threat to Israel and opening new commercial markets for Israeli exports. On the Sinai, there could almost certainly be an agreement, even if it led to the eventual removal of Jewish settlements there.

The real problem remains the West Bank and Gaza. As part of the declaration of principles that he seeks, Sadat is determined that at some future date the 1.1 million Palestinians living under Israeli occupation be given the right of self-determination. Begin has spent much of his life fighting for the right of the Jewish people to have a national homeland, but he fears that self-determination for the West Bank Arabs would lead inevitably to a threatening Palestinian state next door to Israel. Most of his countrymen agree. Whatever Jimmy Carter says to Menachem Begin at their Washington talks in mid-March, he is not likely to persuade the Premier, or the people of Israel, to accept such a state.