Tzipi Livni: The Latest Great Western Hope

Tzipi Livni was best friends forever with Secretary of State Condi Rice during the second Bush term and appeared on many lists of influential women. Tzipi Livni, the former leader of Kadima, was the latest but not the last of a string of Great Western Hopes in Israel who are more loved in America and Europe than in their own country. They are polyglot and erudite men and woman known for their reasonableness and learning. They explain Israel to the world and attempt to explain the world to Israel. All have been foreign ministers at one time or another and two have been prime ministers and a third--Livni--nearly became prime minister.

The first Great Western Hope was Moshe Sharett (ne Shertok) who served as foreign minister under David Ben-Gurion and was himself prime minister for about eighteen months while Ben-Gurion was recharging his batteries at Kibbutz Sde Boker.  Ben-Gurion returned to become Sharett's defense minister in 1955 and soon had outmaneuvered him to become prime minister again so that he could go to war against Egypt.  Sharett was the dovish alternative to Ben-Gurion, but he was a false alternative. This is because he was much more comfortable as an apologist for policies formulated by others than as a decision maker making tough decisions. He was unwilling to fight Ben-Gurion over his activist policies in the conflict. He was foreign minister at a time when the West was not yet enough engaged in the Arab-Israeli conflict--or at least not in a diplomatic mediatory mode--to need a Great Western Hope.

The next was Abba Eban, who like Sharett was a professional diplomat. Eban was fluent in about seven languages. He majored in Oriental (Middle Eastern) languages at Cambridge. After serving as ambassador to the United Nations he became the foreign minister under Golda Meir. He talked about the 1967 borders as Auschwitz borders but secretly was willing to return to them in exchange for peace. He like Sharett was more loved in the United States than in Israel, where he was considered to be too much of a compromiser. In 1971 Sadat offered an interim agreement to Golda Meir but against Eban's advice she turned down even exploratory negotiations. In December 1973 he represented Israel at the peace conference in Geneva that served as a cover for Henry Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy. In early 1974 he represented Israel in the early Kissinger shuttle diplomacy where Kissinger negotiated a separation-of-forces agreement along the canal after Israel had suffered nearly 3,000 dead in the Yom Kippur War. But in June 1974 he lost his position after seven years to Yigal Allon and retired to a life of writing his memoirs, histories of Israel and the Jews and making TV programs.

The next Great Western Hope was Shimon Peres, but only after he ceased to be a hawk and became a dove as opposition leader. He converted as a result of Sadat's journey to Jerusalem and the influence of his younger advisors like Yossi Beilin who later became leader of Meretz. Peres was ambitious but politically inept and lost more elections for prime minister than any other leader in Israeli politics. He was the Henry Clay--Lincoln's model as statesman--of Israeli politics. He was a bitter rival of Yitzhak Rabin for two decades until the two declared an uneasy truce in order to make peace together with the Palestinians. He served as prime minister from mid-1984 to October 1986 and again from November 1995 to June 1996 following Rabin's murder. He lost the election to Netanyahu but twice returned to serve temporarily as head of the Labor Party before he finally bolted to join Sharon in Kadima. Active in Israeli politics for sixty years he began his career as the protege of Ben-Gurion at the defense ministry. His peak was from 1984 to 1996 when he twice served as prime minister, then as foreign minister and then finance minister under Shamir before serving as Rabin's foreign minister. Neither Rabin nor Shamir completely trusted him. He was defeated for president in July 2000 but was elected as a replacement for a disgraced Likud president in 2006.

Peres earned his reputation as the Great Western Hope by several moves. In the summer of 1978 he met Anwar Sadat in Vienna in support of a peace agreement when the peace process seemed to be lagging. In March 1979 he and the Labor Party voted in favor of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty when several influential Likud hawks like future Foreign and Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir  and future Foreign and Defense Minister Moshe Arens abstained in the vote. Then as prime minister in 1984 he withdrew Israeli troops from central and most of southern Lebanon. He also put hyper-inflation under control. In 1986 after becoming foreign minister he negotiated a secret deal with King Hussein of Jordan to convene an international peace conference. But because Shamir opposed the conference Secretary of State George Schultz refused to back up the idea and it was stillborn. In 1994 he and his aide Yossi Beilin were the architects of the Oslo Process. In 1995 he negotiated most of the details of the Oslo II agreement that had the IDF pull out of the towns of the West Bank. And in the winter of 1996 he negotiated with President Hafiz al-Assad about a return of the Golan to Syria.

Livni became the latest Great Western Hope in 2006 when she became Ehud Olmert's foreign minister. The daughter of a former Etzel (Irgun) leader in Jerusalem, she served in the Mossad as an attorney after graduating from law school. The least prominent of the group of Likud "princes"--the children of prominent figures from Herut and the Likud that included Benny Begin, Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, Dan Meridor, Ehud Olmert, and Tzahi Hanegbi--she only attained prominence under Sharon. With Ehud Olmert weakened in the Second Lebanon War Livni emerged as the leading figure in the party. But when Olmert resigned as party leader in late 2008 over legal problems stemming from corruption charges, Livni was unable to form a coalition government because she refused to give in to Shas's blackmail. She was too principled for Israeli politics. In December 2008 she defended Israel's invasion of Gaza. Livni then refused to join Netanyahu's coalition  after  she emerged as the leader of the largest party (by a single seat) but was again unable to form a coalition. Not very dynamic as a leader of a deeply-divided party she managed to hold Kadima together longer than any Center party in Israeli history. She will probably now retire from politics.

What these four politicians have in common is that they are considered at home to be squishy visionaries who are soft on the Arab question. They are more at home in international gatherings than in the rough and tumble world of Israeli politics. They to a large extent were responsible for Israel's good reputation in the West.

So far the Likud has failed to produce its Great Western Hope. The closest to that function was Moshe Dayan who served as Begin's foreign minister in his first government from 1977 to 1980. But Dayan never joined the Likud. Weizman also served in that function but he left the Likud in 1981 after resigning as defense minister. The closest thing among the current generation in the Likud is Dan Meridor, who has never served as foreign minister. Barak is serving as Netanyahu's Dayan equivalent, but he too has yet to join the party.

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.  

Israeli Interlocutor with the Palestinians Part III

In February 1983 the Kahan Commission, appointed by Begin under pressure by the Israeli peace movement and Labor following the massacres, held Sharon unfit to serve as defense minister and Eitan to serve as chief of staff. Sharon became minister without portfolio and spent the next fourteen and a half years in internal "exile" filling minor posts in Likud governments. Begin went into a deep depression and retired from politics in September 1983.

His successor was Yitzhak Shamir, a former leader of the Lehi underground movement and foreign minister under Begin. Shamir spent the next nine years making sure that settlement continued without stop on the West Bank--he met little resistance from Labor--and that no peace plan got anywhere. In 1992 after losing an election Shamir retired from politics and his designated successor, Moshe Arens, suprised everyone by retiring as well.

Shamir's successor then became an Arens protege, a scion, of a distinguished Revisionist and Israeli family, Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu. Sharon would spend the remaining fourteen years of his political life attempting to outflank Netanyahu from the right or the left. He joined Netanyahu in attacking the Oslo peace process. Netanyahu appointed him foreign minister in October 1998 on the eve of the Wye Plantation Summit to fortify his own right flank. Bibi signed a deal but upon returning to Israel lacked the clout to sell it to his coalition. His government collapsed and Sharon emerged as leader of the Likud, a prize he had sought since founding it a quarter century before.

In July 2000 the Camp David Summit ended with no agreement and Clinton failed to produce bridging proposals. Arafat prepared the Palestinians for a major uprising by stocking up on medical and food supplies, something that the Palestinian leadership had not done in 1936 or in 1948. Netanyahu, who had resigned his Knesset seat, looked to be preparing a comeback. The Likud voted in the Knesset for a law that would allow Netanyahu to become prime minister without being a deputy. Sharon needed to act quickly. He sought and won permission from Prime Minister Ehud Barak to visit the Temple Mount with a police escort at the end of September 2000. The visit lasted about an hour and provoked some minor clashes with Palestinian worshippers on the Mount. Arafat quickly exploited this to touch off the Al-Aksa (named for one of the two mosques on the Mount) Intifada. Barak called an election for prime minister for February 2001. Sharon handily won and then had to clean up the mess that he had helped to make.

The Al-Aksa Intifada quickly devolved into a contest between the Islamists of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Fatah Al-Aksa Brigades to see who could mount the bloodiest terrorist incidents. Unlike the mid-1990s, the Islamists no longer needed to fear any temporary jailing by Arafat. Arafat quickly returned to his true metier as leader of the "armed struggle." Attempts by Washington and Cairo to intervene got nowhere because Arafat was determined to improve his bargaining leverage and his popularity, seriously eroded due to the nature of his regime, and Jerusalem was determined to not allow Arafat to gain any advantage.

Sharon gradually adopted two main tactics. The first was "targeted killings" a euphemism for assassination of Palestinian terrorist and political leaders. The other was invasion of the areas of the West Bank from which the IDF had withdrawn in the mid-1990s under Oslo. After a major terrorist bombing in Netanya on March 27, 1992, Sharon sent the IDF back into the cities of the West Bank to destroy the terrorist infrastructure. Unlike in 1982, this time he had the complete sympathy of the American president who despised Arafat. After reestablishing control Sharon adopted the separation strategy proposed by Labor, but changed the boundaries. The separation barrier, a combination of electrified fence and high brick walls, ran along the Palestinian side of the green line or border and occasionally deep into the West Bank to include settlements like Ariel.

Sharon, who believed that a Palestinian state should consist of less than half the territory of the West Bank, began using the language of the Israeli Center-Left. He spoke of occupation and the suffering of the Palestinians. And he prepared a redeployment of the Israeli military to politically more defensible lines--he would withdraw from Gaza, abandoning the settlers who had lived there for a quarter century. And he abandoned four settlements in northern Samaria. The Likud bulked at this plan and Sharon had to turn to Labor for the Knesset votes necessary to win approval. The IDF carried out the redeployment in August 2005. Sharon then withdrew from the party, which he had founded thirty years before, two months later. Two months after that he suffered a massive stroke and his political career was over.

Sharon, except for the length of his political career, is typical of many of Israel's military politicians. He in many ways serves as a role model for military politicians in the Likud and Kadima such as Shlomo Mofaz and Moshe "Boogie" Ya’alon. Dayan had his first encounters with Palestinians fifteen years before Sharon in 1938-39 as did Yigal Allon. Ehud Barak had his about fifteen years after Sharon's in the late 1960s. His role in the assassination of Palestinian terrorist leaders in Beirut in 1973 helped to make his military career and establish him as Israel's most decorated soldier.

Except during Oslo in the 1990s and in 2008, most Israeli leaders have only dealt with Palestinians, either directly or indirectly, on the battlefield. In this they resemble Andrew Jackson who dealt with American Indians from 1788 until 1837, mostly on the battlefield or in one-sided peace negotiations. Jackson, like Sharon, also exceeded his orders in invading foreign territory in Florida in 1817. But unlike with Sharon, it helped his career. Maybe we can count Sharon's fourteen years in minor posts as a major advancement. Jackson, unlike Sharon, was able to carry out his dream of removing the natives. Sharon could only plan for this when he was a staff officer in Northern Command in the late 1950s.

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.