Ranking Israel's Prime Ministers

As an American centrist who in Israel would be considered a leftist (which shows how far to the Right Israel's democracy is), I will now rank Israel's prime ministers. I rank them primarily on their contributions to Israeli security and to peace with Israel's neighbors, but also on their contributions to Israeli democracy. I will not rank those prime ministers whose term in office was less than two years, as less than half a term is too little to fairly judge a prime minister by.

First, David Ben-Gurion (1948-1954, 1955-63)  Ben-Gurion had the historic understanding of his environment, of what history demanded and of timing to build the framework for a state during the 1930s and 1940s as head of the Jewish Agency. He then managed to divorce the Jewish Yishuv from Britain in 1945, without provoking a fatal reaction. He conducted a victorious war strategy in 1948-49 after having wisely accepted the UN partition plan. Later he built an alliance with France to replace the British connection. I could write a column about all of his faults, but in the largest matters he was correct.

Second, Yitzhak Rabin (1974-77, 1992-95) Rabin conceived the strategy of separating Egypt from its Arab allies and thus preventing the Arabs from going to war against Israel. He materialized this strategy through the September 1975 Sinai Agreement, mediated by Henry Kissinger. In his second term he realized that there was no Palestinian or Jordanian alternative to the PLO with whom to make peace. Not really trusting Arafat for good reasons he did his best with the cards dealt to him. Unfortunately for Israel and peace, the religious Right deprived Israel of him before he could see it through.

Third, Menahem Begin (1977-83) Begin made Israel into a real democracy by forming the Likud, under coercion from Sharon and Weizman in 1973, and then leading it to victory in 1977 (in a campaign managed by Weizman).  He devoted his first two years in office to making peace with Egypt and the peace was as much his initiative as Sadat's. But he gave in to Sharon and involved Israel in an unnecessary war with Lebanon, which is why I'm putting him at number 3 rather than number 2.

Fourth, Levy Eshkol (1963-69) Eshkol like Ben-Gurion served as his own defense minister but then in June 1967 gave way to Moshe Dayan. Eshkol built up the defense forces by providing them with the necessary weapons for victory in 1967. He also strengthened the relationship with the United States and won the first major American arms sale in 1963. Had Eshkol served later he would have probably been open to peace with Israel's Arab neighbors.

Fifth, Shimon Peres (1984-86, 1995-96) Peres oversaw the withdrawal from most of Lebanon following the First Lebanon War and brought hyper inflation under control during his first term in office. His second term when he took over from the assassinated Rabin was too short to really accomplish anything. As foreign minister Peres arranged for the Oslo agreement in 1993. 

Sixth, Golda Meir (1969-74) A sentimental favorite with Americans but a bete noir with the Israeli Left, she missed possible opportunities for peace with Egypt in 1971-72 by spurning Sadat's offer of a Sinai deal. But after wisely presiding over a disastrous war that she helped to bring about, Meir traded territory for stability with Egypt and Syria via Kissinger in order to gain the release of Israeli POWs.

Seventh, Ariel Sharon (2001-2006) Sharon unleashed the IDF on Arafat in response to the Al-Aksa Intifada and reconquered the West Bank in March 2002. He built the barrier inside the West Bank to protect Israel and the settlements from Palestinian terror attacks. And then he disengaged from Gaza, but with no coordination with the PA so that Hamas was able to exploit the withdrawal politically.

Eighth, Benjamin Netanyahu (1996-99, 2009-2012) Netanyahu spent his entire first term and his second term to date attempting to avoid hard decisions that would upset his coalition of the Right. He agreed to a territorial withdrawal at Wye in October 1998 but never carried it out. As leader of the opposition in 1995 he presided over protests that created the political climate for Rabin's assassination.

Ninth, Ehud Olmert (2006-2009) Attempted to negotiate a peace agreement with Mahmoud Abbas in 2008. Until more memoirs and minutes of the negotiations emerge it is impossible to assess the blame for the failure of the talks. Due to his political weakness he responded to provocations by Hamas and Hezbollah by twice going to war and presided over indecisive results that hurt Israel's image and hurt many innocent civilians in Lebanon and Gaza. 

Last, Yitzhak Shamir (1983-84, 1986-92) Shamir treaded war while he steadily settled the West Bank and Gaza. Although this settlement was begun under Begin, the latter had more positive accomplishments that earned him a much higher rating. Until 2009 Shamir presided over the most nationalist government in Israel's history from 1990-92. He was dragged kicking and screaming to the Madrid peace conference in 1991. He also presided over Jonathan Pollock's betrayal of the United States.

If I were on the Right, I would probably rank them as follows: 1) Begin; 2) Shamir; 3) Netanyahu; 4) Ben-Gurion; 5) Meir; 6) Sharon; 7) Olmert; 8) Eshkol; 9) Rabin; 10) Peres. Although some on the Right, especially among the settler Right, will rank Sharon dead last as a traitor to their cause.

Is Sharon (Politically) Dead?

On February 26, 2012 Ariel "Arik" Sharon will be 84, although it is very unlikely that he will celebrate his birthday. This is because he has been in a coma, probably brain dead as well, since January 6, 2006. He will probably die without ever having regained consciousness.

But imagine, for argument's sake, that tomorrow he were successfully revived and like many elderly people who suffer strokes he would be able to recover cognitive function eventually. This would at minimum probably take a year before he could speak without slurring his words and think and function at a high level. And it might be possible--even likely--that while in a coma he had developed some sort of dementia. It is doubtful that voters or party functionaries would trust someone of that age with the premiership. When Sharon suffered his stroke and was subsequently permanently relieved of the premiership he was 77-78, older than any previous occupier of his office. Previously the oldest premier at retirement had been David Ben-Gurion, the first and third prime minister who retired in June 1963 at age 76.5. So no Israeli prime minister has crossed the 80-year-old barrier and none is likely to ever do so--particularly someone who has suffered a severe stroke.  Between Ben-Gurion and Sharon Golda Meir had retired at age 76 in 1974 and Shimon Peres at age 73 in 1996.


Plus he would have to find a party that would let him run as its leader. When he left the Likud in November 2005 he burned his bridges. Among the parties of the Right he is considered to be a traitor or a leftist or both due to his withdrawal from Gaza in August 2005. In Kadima, the third and final party he founded, he would have to compete against both Tzipi Livni and Shaul Mofaz. At age 84 or 85 he would be in no shape to mount a vigorous reelection campaign. In Israel four prime ministers have returned for a second term after a period out of office: Ben-Gurion in 1956 after less than 18 months away; Rabin in 1992 after fifteen years out of office; Peres in 1995 following Rabin's assassination after nine years away and Benjamin Netanyahu in 2009 after a decade away. Rabin, Peres, and Netanyahu remained major figures in their party the whole time they were out of office. Peres returned to the premiership from the defense ministry where he had been minister for 5.5 years and then head of the opposition. Peres served as finance minister and foreign minister between 1986 and 1995.  Netanyahu served as finance minister.  Sharon has been largely out of the news since his stroke.

If not the premiership then perhaps some other ministry? Peres has been the only major party leader in Israel to break the 80-year-old barrier and the only minister I can think of who was over 80 (although it is possible that a leader of one of the religious parties served as a minister in a minor ministry after age 80).  He served as foreign minister under Sharon in a Likud-led coalition from 2001 to 2003. Kadima under Livni has since late 2008 moved far to the left of where it was under Sharon's leadership in late 2005.  If he were to attempt to serve as a minister the press would be full of speculation by doctors about the degree of his mental impairment after the stroke.

So having established that Sharon's political career is over, we are free to examine his legacy. Sharon's legacy as a politician (as distinct from that as a soldier) comes down to four main areas. First, as founder of the Likud in the summer of 1973 he made possible the Right's rise to power in 1977. Thus, he is the equivalent of New Gingrich. Second, as the main political godfather of the settlement movement he made possible under the prime ministries of Begin and Shamir the colonization of the West Bank by religious and secular Jews. Third, as prime minister he brought back assassination after nearly a thirty-year absence as a means of dealing with Palestinian terrorism. He also returned the IDF to Area A (the cities) of the West Bank after an absence since 1995. And he carried out the first removal of settlements within Eretz Israel (Palestine) in August 2005 from Gaza. And finally, by creating Kadima in late 2005 he created a successor party to Labor as a Center-Left party. Next post I will discuss his relative position compared to other Israeli prime ministers.

Israel Labor Party Has New Leader

The Israel Labor Party, America's partner for peace in Israel for three decades from 1969 to 2000, has a new leader--Shelli Yachimovich (pronounced Yakhimovich). She defeated former leader Amir Peretz in a runoff election after the two led a field of four candidates. Yachimovich is a former journalist who joined the party in 1999. She advocates a return to emphasizing social and economic issues rather than the peace process. In other words, she wants to return Labor to its more centrist position on defense and security issues that it held up until Oslo, while taking it slightly to the left on economic matters.

I think this is a very good idea. Politically she has to restore the party's brand among Israeli voters. During and after Oslo it became too identified with Meretz and this led to brand confusion to the detriment of Labor. Labor has lost some four-fifths of its Knesset seats since Rabin was elected prime minister for the second time in 1992 (from 44 to 8). This decline is due to a number of reasons including the fallout from the peace process, the lack of policy development, the failure to develop a successor generation of leaders during the Peres-Rabin rivalry from 1974 to 1994, and the over-reliance on former generals to provide the party with electoral charisma.

And finally there was the split earlier this year when leader Ehud Barak left with a third of the party's MKs. Barak was said to be the protege of Yitzhak Rabin but he behaved more like Moshe Dayan or David Ben-Gurion at the end of their political careers. Ben-Gurion split from Mapai (the main predecessor of Labor) to form Rafi in 1965. When Rafi recombined with Mapai and another socialist party, Ahdut Ha'Avoda, to form Labor in 1968 Ben-Gurion stayed out and eventually his tiny splinter party became part of the Likud when that camp was founded in 1973. Dayan left Labor as an independent in 1977 and joined the new Likud government as foreign minister. He then formed his own private list in 1981 for the election shortly before his death. Barak just wants to be defense minister as Dayan wanted to be foreign minister.

Yachimovich's key challenge will be to find a comfortable working relationship with Kadima without letting her party be swallowed up by the larger party and lose its identity. If Yachimovich can take Kadima to the left on social and economic issues there may be eventually grounds for a merger of the parties. This would be a historic reconciliation between the descendants of the nationalist Revisionists of Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky and the descendants of Mapai.  

Israel's chief interlocutors with the Palestinians Part I

Ariel "Arik" Sharon's first practical introduction to the Palestinian problem came at the age of 24 when he was picked to lead an elite unit of individualist soldiers, many misfits in the IDF, in implementing Israel's strategy of reprisal raids. Sharon had been raised in a Revisionist Party (forerunner of the Likud) family in a Mapai (forerunner of the Labor Party) settlement in the Plain of Sharon, from which he would later take his name. He joined the prestate Hagana militia at age 15 and was badly wounded at the First Battle of Latrun in May 1948. He had quit the army to become a full time student of Middle Eastern History at the Hebrew University shortly before being picked.

Sharon spent the next three years personally leading raids into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. He also was responsible with integrating his commando Unit 101 with a paratroop company to produce Israel's first Paratroop Battalion. On one of the raids in the village of Kibya, Sharon had his men dynamite the homes of the villagers. Although his soldiers called in Arabic for the occupants to come out many remained in hiding out of fear and were killed in the blasts. Some 69 people died and Sharon's reputation was established both within Israel and with the Palestinians.

From May 1948, when the civil war phase of the Israeli War of Independence ended, until June 1967, the Palestinians virtually disappeared as independent actors from international politics. There only collective role was in a series of guerrilla operations from 1953 to 1956 and again from 1965 to 1967. Israel, reacting to a series of Palestinian incursions raided the Gaza Strip in early 1953 and dynamited a police station. The Egyptian government reacted by setting up training camps in Gaza to train Palestinian volunteers in guerrilla warfare. Colonel Nasser used the raids to establish Egypt's position as the leader of the Arab resistance against Israel and within Egypt to outmaneuver General Naguib, the figurehead leader of the Egyptian Revolution. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion used the raids as a middle-finger salute against the international community and to establish a reputation as a protector of Israel's vulnerable immigrant communities and collective settlements that were often the target of the raids.

Sharon, having won the patronage of Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan, the latter first as chief of staff in the 1950s and then as defense minister a decade later, had risen from major to major general. They had kept others from ejecting him from the army for his recklessness, insubordination, and quarrelsome nature. They saw in him both patriotism and military genius. In 1965, like Erwin Rommel, he transferred from the infantry to armor and became a master of the new (for him) form of warfare. After leading a division in the conquest of the Sinai in June 1967 he became the next head of Southern Command. In this role he had his next encounter with the Palestinians in 1971.

Israel's first political interaction with Palestinians since the mandate came as occupiers in 1967. Yasir Arafat returned to the West Bank in 1967 and for several months tried to set up a guerrilla resistance there while managing to stay one step ahead of the IDF. From 1967 to 1970 most of Israel's military interaction with the Palestinians took place along the Jordan River as the Palestinians had set themselves up along the East Bank as a state within a state. Expelled by King Hussein in September 1970 when they defied his authority, they then moved to southern Lebanon, Fatahland. Gaza was a backwater.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) had established a number of cells within the crowded refugee camps in the Gaza Strip. From there they mounted attacks on the small Israeli settlements, populated by Arabic-speaking Jews from North Africa and the Middle East, that surrounded the Strip. Sharon was determined to use whatever methods were necessary to stamp out these attacks. He used rather vigorous interrogation methods and deported the families of those involved in guerrilla activity. Several of his subordinate commanders made their anxieties about his methods known up the chain of command. Gaza was temporarily transferred from the Southern Command to the Central Command. But Sharon had stamped out the insurgency.

In July 1973 Sharon was forced to retire from the IDF after failing to be promoted up the next step. He blamed it on his political sympathies. There is something to this--Ezer Weizman, the former commander of the Israel Air Force, was promoted to deputy chief of staff but was never made chief of staff and quit in frustration. Sharon's failure to win promotion was probably due in equal parts to his personality and politics. In September he had his revenge by forcing four right-of-center parties to combine to form the Likud (union in Hebrew). Sharon joined the Liberal wing of the Likud to avoid competing with Weizman in Herut.

The Israeli Right had foundered for a decade. It consisted mainly of two parties: Herut, successor both to the Revisionist Party of Vladimir "Ze'ev" Jabotinsky and to the Irgun Zvai Leumi underground, representing the nationalist right; and the Liberal Party, successor to Haim Weizmann's General Zionists, representing the small businessmen of the economic right. In 1965 Herut and the Liberals had formed an electoral pact known as Gahal (Herut-Liberal Block in Hebrew).  In 1966 Shmuel Tamir, a former Irgun commander and very successful lawyer was forced out of Herut by Begin for challenging him and formed the Free Center Party. And in 1968 when Rafi combined with Mapai and Ahdut Ha'Avoda on the Left to form the Israel Labor Party, David Ben-Gurion remained outside out of spite and formed the State List. Sharon by combining these four parties made something that was greater than the sum of their parts.