Northern exposure, centrist worries, Friday, November 25, 2005

The IDF handed over to the Red Cross three bodies of Hezbollah gunmen killed earlier this week during their orchestrated attempt to kidnap some Israeli soldiers in the divided village of Ghajar on the Lebanese border. The Israeli willingness to hand over the bodies, in response to a Lebanese government request, marks a change in approach toward the bodies of Hezbollah gunmen killed by Israelis. Usually, they are buried here, and await a prisoner exchange. But this time, say Israeli sources, the mere fact that the Beirut government made the request, albeit through third parties, shows that there is a change in Lebanon – and maybe Hezbollah power really is in decline.

The Lebanese militia certainly had a bad week. A well-planned, concerted attack by missiles launched into Israeli positions – and in a few cases, at Israeli homes on the border – was meant as a diversionary tactic while the three dead men and some of their associates shot up the Lebanese side of the village of Ghajar, heading toward the Israeli side, where Israeli troops are on constant patrol. For weeks, IDF sources have been predicting a Hezbollah offensive meant to kidnap a soldier or two – Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, has publicly enunciated the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier as a strategic goal for the organization.

But the very Hezbollah bravado in announcing their plans put Israeli troops on alert, and indeed, with the approach of Lebanese Independence Day this week– by which time Hezbollah leaders were predicting a successful kidnapping – troops along the northern border were on high alert. Sure enough, when the Hezbollah rockets began falling, and the jeeps pulled into southern Ghajar, the troops were ready.

There was some grumbling, particularly among the more hawkish of the military correspondents quoting unnamed ‘senior officers’ that Israel did not strike back with force.

Considering that Israeli policy is to regard Hezbollah as a proxy for Iran and Syria, and considering that in the past, Israel has struck at both Lebanese and Syrian targets to make clear it regarded Beirut (then under Syrian sway) and Damascus responsible for cross border attacks from Lebanon into Israel, it seemed to those hawks and unnamed officers that such an orchestrated Hezbollah assault deserves a much harsher Israeli reaction.

But Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made the decision not to strike inside Syria, nor to strike back further north than some Hezbollah positions almost within spitting distance of the border. The air force was sent into action, and along with some precision bombing of Hezbollah positions in south Lebanon, it dropped leaflets in Beirut telling Lebanese that Hezbollah’s insistence on fighting Israel was not in Lebanese interests.

The reason for the ‘weak’ Israeli response to the Hezbollah assault is obvious: the international pressure on Damascus to cooperate with the Mehlis investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri. The U.S. has made clear to Israel that it should keep a low profile regarding Syria in the coming weeks, as the Alawite regime squirms under international pressure.

Meanwhile, inside Israel, it is politics as unusual. There has been a flurry of reports that Sharon has decided to try to find a prominent Israeli Arab to join his party and that he is not averse to naming an Arab as a minister in the next government. Labor’s Amir Peretz has already said that he sees no problem with bringing Arabs into the government as ministers. Israeli Arabs stopped voting for ‘Zionist’ parties from the Left, let alone the Right, after October 2000 demonstrations that coincided with the start of the intifada and turned into riots in which Israeli police shot dead 13 Israeli Arab citizens. Their votes went to Arab parties – but not in enough numbers to turn their position as 20 percent of the population into 20 percent of the Knesset.

Sharon’s reputation among Arabs in general is of course hardly favorable – but the withdrawal from Gaza earlier this year has shaken long-held views of the ex-general. Not that there is sudden affection for Sharon – but as the political earthquake triggered by Amir Peretz’s election as Labor leader continues to reshape the political arena, the Sharon move to the Center, particularly if he keeps emphasizing his plans for more political movement, will certainly have an impact on the voting patterns of Israeli Arabs.

Voting patterns indeed are shifting throughout the political arena, say the polls. For one thing, some 25,000 Israelis registered as new members of the Labor Party since Peretz won the leadership. The polls show that Peretz is attracting voters from both Left and Right, including Likud and Shas voters. Perhaps even more significantly, the polls show that the combination of Peretz at the head of Labor and Sharon at the head of a new, putatively Centrist party, has reversed an historic trend that began with the elections after the Rabin assassination: declining numbers of Israelis going to the polls. According to pollster Mina Tzemach, some 20 Knesset seats worth of voters who did not vote in the last election, are indicating they will be going to the polls – and they won’t be voting Likud.

The ‘ruling’ party convened its central committee yesterday in Tel Aviv and it was a shocking sight for a generation of Israelis whose only memory of Likud central committee sessions are of stormy, crowded and emotional conventions. For the first time since the party was founded by merging four Rightist parties in the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Ariel Sharon was nowhere to be seen. And instead of the usually 2,000-3,000 delegates and hangers on who usually attend, barely 500 people showed up at the Tel Aviv Exhibition Grounds for the meeting, which was called to rally the troops and vote on a date for their primaries. Despite their obviously forced bravado, Likud politicians appear to be in a state of panic, with at least six candidates for the party leadership and more likely to join the race. Despite years of appearing to be crown prince of the party, Binyamin Netanyahu’s image is so tarnished by his past performance as prime minister and more recently as a neo-Thatcherite finance minister, that he is only barely holding onto his lead as the front runner in the race for the party leadership, followed closely by Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, himself in a battle with Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom over which of them is more deserving of the title ‘compassionate to the poor.’ That’s going to be the issue of the election campaign – at least until the next Palestinian terror attack against Israelis or some other ‘security’ incident, which will play into Sharon’s hands. Meanwhile, employees of the Likud have been told they are not allowed to support Sharon – and the party even installed a special phone line for loyal Likudniks to ‘inform’ on suspected Sharon supporters. Even the eternally optimistic Reuven Rivlin, a Likudnik by birth, admits the situation is grave for the party. He is trying to get the Likud leadership to unite behind one leader – but he refuses to name the leader he would choose.

On another front, the Palestinian Authority was holding festive ceremonies marking the opening of the Rafah border crossing to Egypt, where for the first time in their history, the Palestinians now have control over a border. True, the border crossing is meanwhile only open four hours a day – but the reason is technical: the Europeans are supposed to provide 70 third-party security inspectors, at Israel’s demand, and so far have only come up with 20. But presumably, within a few days, Palestinian Gazans, long under Israeli lock and key, will be able to leave Gaza with relative ease – they’ll only have to pass Egyptian inspection.

Yitzhak Rabin's Last Speech, which he delivered at the Tel Aviv peace rally on Nov. 4 1995

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