Little can contribute to a Middle East peace following the announcement of early general elections in Israel. The American “road map” leading to a Palestinian state and security for the Israelis — already a daunting task to implement — now faces certain delay and an uncertain outcome. Before the elections, though, comes even more uncertainty as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon must first fight to defend his leadership of the Likud Party against the challenge from former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The two have already embarked on a course of confrontation that is expected to last until their fate is decided at Likud primaries later this month. It promises to be a tough campaign as seen by the uncompromising stand already taken by Netanyahu after he was sworn-in last week as interim foreign minister. “I promise you one thing,” Netanyahu told Israeli television. “By the end of 2003 there will not be a PLO terror state created here.” Netanyahu’s campaign strategy is to pose as being tougher than Sharon toward the Palestinians — a hard act to follow but not necessarily for Netanyahu. He failed to implement a single item in the 1998 Wye River peace accord with the Palestinians that he signed and now rejects the idea of a Palestinian state being set up at all. And he also believes that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat should be deported. As prime minister, Netanyahu said he would never compromise on the issue of land for peace and he stayed true to his word. While former leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres had supported the return of land to the Arabs as a means of winning security, Netanyahu’s view was that security was paramount.

Netanyahu was in fact one of the most right-wing prime ministers in Israel’s history. And since his removal from power in 1999 he has moved even further to the right in his views on the Palestinian issue. So aggressive has been Netanyahu’s position that US officials are unwilling to treat his statements as simply campaign rhetoric. They have been studying the text of his comments after he was quoted as telling reporters that President George W. Bush’s proposals were not currently on the agenda. Daniel Kurtzer, the US ambassador to Israel, was forced to hold an impromptu meeting with Sharon last week about his foreign minister’s remarks. Sharon assured Washington that the early elections will not halt discussions on Bush’s road map to eventual Palestinian statehood. Sharon was of course, projecting himself as the embodiment of responsibility and restraint whereas he is no less a hard-liner than Netanyahu with regard to the Palestinians. The record speaks for itself. His 20-month-old national unity government reconquered the West Bank, destroyed the Palestinian Authority and killed over 1,600 Palestinians. What if Netanyahu was to defeat Sharon in a run-off for the Likud leadership and the same public was to return him as prime minister at the head of a more hawkish government?

Such a scenario is likely. Since the outbreak of the intifada, there has been a rightward shift in Israeli society and as a result, Netanyahu could emerge victorious and the hoped-for three-year timetable for peace would be vulnerable in the extreme. The Israeli poll is a hurdle even if the Israel-Palestinian conflict was the only crisis in the Middle East. But any peace progress is further complicated by the other crisis — Iraq. The Security Council resolution might have brought Washington and Baghdad a step closer to war, not peace. In the event, the Arab-Israeli peace process might grind to a complete halt as America turns its attention elsewhere. US inaction will thus simply fuel suspicions that it is preoccupied by Iraq at the expense of resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict. And what Israel’s role will be if war breaks out will have a direct bearing on how any peace initiative will eventually play out.