srao
In Peres' Rose Garden
A post-assassination campaign had a different air about it.
LARRY DERFNER ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT
A
large photograph of Yitzhak Rabin hung be-
hind the podium where Shimon Peres spoke.
Some 1,000 supporters who came to hear
him at the Sharon Hotel had to pass through
metal detectors to get into the hall. Security
men surrounding the prime minister were
jumpy, especially when people came up to
Mr. Peres to hug him.
In many ways, Mr. Peres' last public appearance, two
nights before the election, reflected his campaign. He
was in a controlled environment — no walking through
outdoor fruit-and-vegetable markets to exchange hand-
shakes and backslaps with anyone who might approach.
This was the post-assassination campaign — it was
too dangerous for him to spend too much time out in the
open, and besides, it would have hurt the image he was
trying to create.
Mr. Peres's strategy had been an Israeli version of
Nixon's "Rose Garden Strategy" of 1972 — he attended
to affairs of state and acted "prime ministerial," letting
his opponent be the "politician" grubbing for votes on the
campaign trail.
Mr. Peres hitched himself to the memory of Mr. Ra-
bin's assassination. "Yitzhak Rabin was murdered in
front of my eyes. I truly hoped that he could have been
here instead of me," the prime minister told his "Labor
Youth" cheering section.
About 100 of these adolescents were in the hall. Even
though they were too young to vote, they symbolized the
over-18, first-time voters, those who had sung and held
candles for days after the assassination,.whom Peres was
trying to capture.
Demographically, the crowd was pure Labor. It was
extremely difficult to find a non-Ashkenazi face among
them. Many were in their 60s. They appeared well-off.
One Peres supporter, Daniella Oren, described herself
as "a travel agent and chairwoman of a charity organi-
zation, and I'm very involved in the social activities of
Herzliya." Oren had met Peres previously at a "salon
meeting," she said, adding, "I'm missing a very impor-
tant event tonight because I feel I have to be here."
There was obvious irony to Mr. Peres' wrapping up his
campaign in Herzliya. Yigal Amir came from Herzliya.
The worst violence of the campaign, in which Amir Ka-
doshim, a Likud employee, shot and wounded a Labor
employee over "turf rights" to paste up campaign posters,
had taken place in Herzliya.
But the crowd represented a much different Herzliya
than Yigal Amir's and Amir Kadoshim's. Mr. Peres played
on one of his favorite campaign themes — Israel's gal-
loping prosperity over the last three years. "Nearly every
industrialist has openly taken my side," he said.
This was Mr. Peres' fifth campaign for prime minis-
ter since 1977. His record going in was 0 wins, 3 losses
and 1 tie (in 1984, when he "rotated" the prime minis-
tership in the ensuing term with Likud's Yitzhak Shamir).
But this was the first time he ever ran as the incum-
bent. And it was the first time he wasn't hated by a large
portion of the public.
'Wherever I've gone, I haven't heard one shout of abuse.
I feel insulted," Mr. Peres said in a newspaper interview.
Most of the really bad abuse Peres had received in ear-
lier campaigns had come from poor, angry Sephardim,
who saw him as a symbol of the patronizing Ashkenazi
leftist intellectuals. But many of those Sephardim are
no longer poor or angry, and Mr. Peres' land-for-peace
politics are no longer leftist, but consensus.
Finally, the Rabin assassination changed the mood.
A resident of Beit Shemesh, where people threw toma-
toes at Mr. Peres during the 1984 campaign, said in a
television interview, "Ever since Rabin's murder, the ha-
tred is gone."
Before a "home" crowd in Herzliya, Mr. Peres was able
to do something he never dared do in his campaign to the
general public: Defend Yassir Arafat and the Palestin-
ian Authority as a fit partner for peace. "This is the first
time Palestinians are fighting
against Palestinian terror, and
they've foiled many attacks," he
said.
*With the Likud playing con-
stantly on Israeli antipathy to
Mr. Arafat, Mr. Peres and La-
bor kept the Palestinian entirely
out of their campaign. In his
televised ads, Mr. Peres was
shown standing next to Rabin
as they accepted the Nobel
Peace Prize. Mr. Arafat was
edited out of the picture, his
name never mentioned.
In Herzliya, Mr. Peres re-
minded his audience of one oth-
er man he had tried to make the
public-at-large forget: Bibi Ne-
tanyahu.
During the campaign, Mr.
Peres refused to be interviewed
on TV before, during or after in-
terviews with Mr. Netanyahu.
That would have given his op-
ponent the appearance of equal
stature. In their televised de-
bate the previous night, Mr. Ne-
tanyahu made direct challenges
to "Mr. Peres"; Mr. Peres ad-
dressed his remarks to the mod-
erator.
But in the Sharon Hotel, Mr.
Peres recognized Mr. Ne-
tanyahu's existence, and
ridiculed him to the approving
crowd. Recounting Mr. Ne-
tanyahu's and the Likud's
promise to make peace with
the Palestinians and Syria by
offering them essentially noth-
ing, Mr. Peres said, "They're
treating the public like fools!
This is how they speak to
adults? Their ignorance as-
tounds me."
He accused the Likud of
"brainwashing" the public with
"lying propaganda" that he
Posters of Peres on a Jerusalem
street: "Israel is strong with Peres."
planned to redivide Jerusalem, and of making "politi-
cal capital" out of the bus bombings. Referring to Mr.
Netanyahu's relentless use of the "fear" motif in their
debate, Mr. Peres thundered, "Netanyahu must stop
frightening the people!" and the audience applauded
loudly.
Only before his loyalists did Mr. Peres feel free enough
to hammer back. He had bet on the Rose Garden Strat-
egy. He might have done better if he'd stepped out of
the garden and gotten down in the dirt to fight, like he
did in Herzliya. But it didn't matter anymore; time was
up. ❑
cr)
0)
co
>- .cz
so