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ell past the two-year
mark of his adminis-
tration, Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin is suf-
fering from a bad case of Midterm
plues. He seems determined to
lose political ground both himself
and his party. The latest embar-
rassment is new information on
Mr. Rabin's role in the West
Bank land dispute over a hill next
to the Jewish settlement of Efrat
and a neighboring
Palestinian village.
The word is out
that — unbeknownst
to his ministers —
Mr. Rabin himself
had both authorized
the new construction
(albeit, he thought, on
a different hill) and
agreed to lease the
land at a substantial
discount. Political
confusion abounded.
Is the Israeli govern-
ment and its prime
minister committed
to a settlement freeze
or not? And if Mr. Ra-
bin intends to contin-
ue construction in
"Greater Jerusalem,"
just how far does that
area extend?
The fallout of the
affair was serious.
Mr. Rabin's coalition
partners, the Meretz
ministers, felt com-
promised. His negoti-
ating partners, the
Palestinians, felt be-
trayed. But the major
victim may have been
Mr. Rabin himself, or,
to be more precise,
the famed straightness and cred-
ibility that were his greatest as-
sets in the last election.
The negative comments re-
garding Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin began soon after the No-
bel Prize ceremony and have
grown from a trickle to a flood.
"Exhausted," "wilting," "worn
out" and the old epithets of "hes-
itant" and "indecisive" have been
joined by the latest buzzword: the
master of "zigzag."
"Rabin is very, very tired,"
columnist Yoel Marcus wrote in
Ha'aretz recently, adding the clar-
ification that he's suffering from
"mental, not physical, fatigue."
He "moves from crisis to crisis
short-winded and flagging,"
added political analyst Uzi Ben-
ziman. "In the next term, under
Bibi's [Likud leader Benyamin
Netanyahu's] regime," quipped
Yediot Aharonot commentator

Nahum Barnea, "everyone will
long for Rabin. The swift already
are starting to long for him now."
Indeed, from the pinnacle of
the Nobel rostrum, the Israeli
prime minister has been bruis-
ing himself on flip-flops, slip-ups
and scandals. A medley of the
outstanding incidents includes:
Mr. Rabin's hint, dropped
while on a trip to Asia, that upon
his return he might reconsider a

capital gains tax on stock market
profits, which he earlier had
pledged not to create. Rescinding
the unpopular tax would have
been a "bone" to a public turned
grumpy by inflation, the steep
cost of housing, and fears of a
mounting tax burden.
His indecisiveness before re-
taining the tax was widely
dubbed the "zigzag effect." Not
only was he left with a disap-
pointed public but he lost points
for "reliability."
Next came the embarrassing
rebellion by Labor's own coalition
chairman, Eli Dayan, over the de-
cision not to extend Israel's short
school day due to budgetary con-
straints. A leader of the Knesset's
"social lobby," Mr. Dayan was
concerned that the decision would
harm his standing in the devel-
opment towns. Mr. Rabin, who is
RABIN page 102