Maof

From: JCPAinfo Vol. 2, No. 17 December 4, 2002 • 29 Kislev 5763

Last week, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon won the Likud leadership primary.  He will be the party’s candidate for Prime Minister in the Israeli elections on January 28, 2003.  The following are excerpts from remarks made by former Ambassador Martin Indyk at a panel discussion on the upcoming elections, held at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy on November 25, 2002.  Ambassador Indyk is currently the Center’s director.  Transcripts from the discussion can be found at www.brookings.edu/dybdocroot/sabancenter/

What I thought would be most useful …is to look at the impact on U.S. interests and U.S. policies both of the election campaign itself, which is going to run through until January 28, and also the impact of its potential outcome.

First I should say I was just in Israel last week and had a chance to talk with both Prime Minister Sharon and with Amram Mitzna, the new leader of the Labor Party. So I have some first-hand sense of where they're coming from. In terms of what happens in the campaign itself, obviously the campaign is being conducted in the midst of an intense Israeli-Palestinian confrontation. In the last ten days Israel lost 28 people killed in three terrorist attacks -- two toddlers, four teenagers, grandmothers, grandfathers. That kind of incidence of terrorism puts a great deal of pressure on what has become a right wing caretaker government now that the Labor Party has left the national unity government. That government is no longer constrained by Labor's participation as Defense Minister Ben-Eliezer, the leader of the Labor Party and as Foreign Minister Shimon Peres tended to constrain the activities of the previous government.

Now Fouad, the former Defense Minister, has been replaced by Mofaz, the former Chief of Staff, who is the strongest advocate in Israel for Arafat's eviction. And Shimon Peres has been replaced as Foreign Minister by B.B. Netanyahu who is making Arafat's eviction one of the centerpieces of his campaign against Sharon. He is criticizing Sharon for being too soft on terror, bragging that he knew how to stop the terror when he was Prime Minister.

Nevertheless, through the election campaign I believe that Sharon is not likely to stray from his current course of relative restraint, sending the army back into cities like Bethlehem and Hebron which he did in the face of the last terrorist attacks, trying to clean up those areas where the terrorists came from, targeted operations likely to continue in Gaza. But I don't expect that Sharon, despite the change in his cabinet and despite his own preference for the eviction of Arafat, I don't expect that he will actually move on Arafat's compound and I don't expect that there's going to be some kind of all-out offensive on Gaza to clean out Hamas' infrastructure there.

Why? Well, first of all maintaining good relations with the United States is essential to the Prime Minister's campaign…. Sharon knows that bad relations with the United States damaged the Likud incumbents, both Shamir and Netanyahu, and contributed to their defeat in their reelection bids.

He knows that the Israeli electorate values the relationship with the United States even more during this prolonged crisis and they give Sharon great credit for cementing relations with the Bush Administration. That's an electoral advantage to Sharon.

He also knows that he needs U.S. economic backing in the form of loan guarantees to stabilize the Israeli economy. Today his Director of his office, Dubbie Weisglass, and the Director General of the Finance Ministry, are meeting with Condoleezza Rice in an effort to secure some $7 to $10 billion worth of loan guarantees in order to stabilize Israel's credit rating. If they get it, and they probably will, that will boost Sharon's standing in the election campaign.

Secondly, he recognizes that the Bush Administration's campaign against Saddam Hussein, if it results in Saddam Hussein's overthrow, will considerably enhance Israel's security situation both on the strategic level in terms of taking out a potentially dangerous adversary in Saddam Hussein, and in terms of the ongoing confrontation with the Palestinians where he and the Israeli political and military establishment view the toppling of Saddam Hussein as a potential deus ex machina that could finally bring the Palestinian uprising to an end.

So he doesn't want to create any problems for Bush in the run-up to the potential conflict with Iraq. He knows from his last visit here that Bush needs him to do his best to keep his conflict with the Palestinians off the radar screen so that the United States can keep the world focused on Saddam Hussein. He also knows from the last visit that he had with President Bush that the President needs to show the Arab world that he's doing something on the peace process, something to stop the bloodshed and to get the Israeli army at least to begin withdrawing from Palestinian cities and towns. So because it serves his political interests and Israel's strategic interests, I believe Sharon will do his best to accommodate Bush by exercising restraint in the face of extreme terrorist provocation.

So the politics and the strategic calculations I believe lead Sharon to continue to exercise restraint during this campaign period. Of course if there's a mega terrorist attack killing large numbers of Israelis then I would say all bets are off because he will have no choice but to respond with more dramatic action.

Finally, what impact will the elections have on U.S. policy and interests? That depends of course on the outcome. If Mitzna somehow manages to stage the upset of the half century and wins this, then the impact on U.S. policy and interests will I think be positive in the sense that the

Administration will have a partner in Israel that wants to move dramatically on the peace process and that will alleviate some of the tensions that the Administration has had to deal with in the Arab world.

But …, that's not a very likely probability. Instead it's likely to be either a narrow right wing government or a national unity government. If it's a narrow right wing government then I think Prime Minister Sharon will be beholden to the right wing parties to keep his government together. He will only have maybe a five seat majority, perhaps that's the maximum that he will have, and could well be brought down by any one of his coalition partners leaving the government.

That means at a minimum I think more settlement activity to respond to the demands of the right wing parties and perhaps even harsher responses to terror. Arafat's eviction is more likely; a political initiative less likely.

I think that Sharon will do his very best to maintain good relations with the Bush Administration and he will still be constrained by considerations that I've already outlined in terms of the Iraq war if it hasn't happened before the government is formed.

But sooner or later there will either be strains with the United States or strains within his government, most likely both. The right wing parties have a long, distinguished record of bringing down their own governments and therefore I expect that such a government would not complete its four-year term.

Now Sharon knows that and that's why … Sharon will go a very long way to try to put together a national unity government. In those circumstances with Sharon moving into his legacy phase, we could see a very different story.

Sharon is, I believe, capable of what we call a Nixon-to-China move. He talks about painful compromises; he talks about agreeing to a Palestinian state. He has removed settlements before, notably in Sinai for the implementation of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. And if the toppling of Saddam were to open up new opportunities, we should not be surprised if Sharon surprises us.

Now I don't want to go too far in this regard. He's not about to give up all of the West Bank nor for that matter the Golan Heights. But I believe that he is capable of making a significant move that would make an interim agreement possible for a Palestinian state with provisional borders in 52 percent or so of the West Bank and all of Gaza, and also the commencement of final status negotiations.

This might well occur in the wake of his eviction of Yasser Arafat in response to some major terrorist attack rather than with Yasser Arafat still there.

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