The narrow victory of Binyamin Ben-Eliezer in the leadership election for Israel’s Labor party is, on the face of it, a slap in the face for peace. It will leave Simon Peres, Labor’s dovish elder statesman, in the hawkish coalition government of Ariel Sharon, considerably isolated. Ben-Eliezer is currently Sharon’s defense minister and hardly less aggressive in his view of the Palestinians than the prime minister.
Ben-Eliezer defeated Knesset speaker Avraham Burg, who was much more in the political mold of Peres and former Premier Ehud Barak. Since he shares most, if not all, of Sharon’s hawkish views, it is hard to see how he will be able to differentiate Labor from the Likud party’s traditionally hard-line and conservative approach to the Palestinians and the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza. For the moment, therefore, Israelis who believe that only negotiations based on the Oslo Accord can bring an end to the terrible cycle of violence have no clear political voice.
Had Avraham Burg emerged as the victor, it is likely that he would have backed the increasingly unhappy Simon Peres and withdrawn from the coalition government, bringing about a fresh general election. Unfortunately, Labor moderates suspect that the Israeli voters have had enough of elections and want a government that can act decisively. They reason that voters feel that the Labor government of Ehud Barak was given a mandate to make peace, and failed. Now the man in the street has given up on negotiations and wants a government that will suppress the Palestinians by main force. The horrible truth may be that much more blood must be shed on both sides, before Israelis remember that each new Palestinian death merely adds to the determination of those who survive to achieve justice.
Some analysts feel that Ben-Eliezer’s victory may bring real benefit to the Palestinian cause. Their argument is that for too long, Israeli politicians whose core beliefs were Zionist and uncompromising hid themselves among the would-be peacemakers of the Labor Party. They pretended to support the efforts of men like the late Yitzhak Rabin and Peres, while all the while working to undermine any real advance toward a negotiated settlement. With Ben-Eliezer in charge of their party, these people no longer have a concealing screen behind which to operate. When they endorse his hawkish determination to crush the Palestinians, they will finally be expressing the black truth within their hearts. In its lurch to the right, the Labor party will place itself in a position to rediscover its soul. The large minority who still believe in negotiations will be able to regroup and position themselves, for the inevitable political counterattack against Ben-Eliezer and his fellow hawks.
Ben-Eliezer himself will have nothing to offer the electorate but the same desperate aggression adopted by Premier Sharon. And while Labor leader, he will also have been a leading member of the coalition government that implemented these merciless policies. When they are seen to have failed, as they surely will, Ben-Eliezer will also be seen to have failed, along with Ariel Sharon and the Zionists of Likud. From the wreckage, a new Labor party may emerge, which will have thrown out its hard-liners and resumed the policies of peace.
