 national leader who exploits external threats to stifle debate. An opposition party suffering from timidity and advanced identity loss. The false call of “bipartisanship” eroding democracy. An economic meltdown ignored.
Yes, Israel seems to have imported the worst of what American politics has to offer. Since Ariel Sharon was elected prime minister, Israel’s Labor Party has made the same kind of mistakes that led to the Democrats’ defeat last week - except that it has made them more determinedly. Now, with a snap election less than three months away, Labor could learn from the Democrats the cost of failing to take a stand.
The question is whether Israel’s center-left party has waited too long to present an alternative path to that of Ariel Sharon - and whether even now Labor is capable of finding the courage it needs to reassert Yitzhak Rabin-style pragmatism. Hanging in the balance is not only Labor's future but the chance of peace
The Israeli version of bipartisanship is called “national unity.” In his campaign two winters ago, Sharon used the call for national unity to divert attention from his hard-line views. Labor fell into Sharon’s trap.
After losing the election, its leaders agreed to join Sharon’s government as junior partners, forfeiting the chance to criticize Sharon’s direction in parliament. One reason for that mistake translates easily into American English: With the country buffeted by terror, with the relative security of the 1990s gone up in smoke, Labor’s reigning leaders thought a scared citizenry couldn’t bear the additional insecurity of internal disagreements and would regard dissent as disloyalty.
Another reason was peculiar to Israel: Laborites had convinced themselves that ex-Prime Minister Ehud Barak was Israel’s political savior. When peace talks with the Palestinians broke down in 2000, party activists were reluctant to question Barak’s negotiating abilities or his handling of the violence that followed. But, if Barak had done the best possible job, peace was out of reach and Labor’s own platform was bankrupt. The party lost its voice.
The result: New Labor leader Benjamin Ben-Eliezer and elder statesman Shimon Peres spent their time carrying out Sharon’s policies. As defense minister, Ben-Eliezer implemented Sharon’s reoccupation of the West Bank. Neither Ben-Eliezer nor Peres demanded that the government match its military crackdown on terror with a realistic peace offer.
Ironically, there has been every reason for dissent. Sharon came to power promising security, peace and an economic revival. He has failed on all fronts. Despite his muscular policies, Palestinian terror has escalated on his watch. Sharon has rejected any effort to negotiate peace. As the economy shrinks, he has continued to pour national resources into the lost cause of settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
A further irony: Polls show that the Israeli public supports policies more moderate than those Sharon evinces. One respected survey found that 61 percent of Israel’s Jewish public supports establishment of a Palestinian state as part of a peace agreement. An even larger number, 64 percent, back evacuation of most settlements - a step Sharon insists he’ll never take. While Labor trails badly in the polls, the ideas it should have continued proclaiming are popular.
More important, the kind of pragmatism once promoted by murdered Labor leader Yitzhak Rabin remains the only way out of Israel’s crisis. Rabin combined military toughness with acknowledgment that Israel’s own interests require ending its rule of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Today that kind of policy would strengthen the hand of Palestinian moderates in their internal debates. It would also provide the rationale for slashing Israel’s useless outlays on settlements.
Labor’s rank and file has realized this, which is why Ben-Eliezer pulled out of Sharon's government in advance of the Nov. 19 party primary. But after a year and a half as Sharon’s stooge, Ben-Eliezer has little chance of regaining credibility before the national vote. Labor's only chance - and it's slim - depends on picking a fresh leader who can speak of Sharon's failures without blushing and who can present a new vision.
U.S. pollster Stanley Greenberg says the lesson of the Democrats’ recent debacle is that, “It’s Democrats above all who need big ideas, who need to create an election that is about something.” I hope Israel’s Labor party is eavesdropping.
Gershom Gorenberg, an associate editor of the Jerusalem Report, is author of “The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount.“
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