What Bibi Wants

Israel Admits
Pollard Was Agent

Jerusalem (JTA) — Israel
acknowledged for the first time
that Jonathan Pollard was work-
ing as an Israeli agent when he
spied on the United States.
Pollard, a former U.S. naval
intelligence analyst who has
served 13 years of a life sentence
for spying for Israel, said he is
"relieved, thankful and hon-
ored." Israel had in the past
refused repeated appeals to
acknowledge that he acted with
Israeli authorization.

German Party
Plans Run

Vice President
Al Gore and
Prime Minister
Binyamin
Netanyahu share
a serious
moment during
Gore's recent trip
to Israel.

In the wake of sputtering negotiations,
Israel's leader tries on some personas.

ERIC SILVER

Special to The Jewish News

efore leaving London after
Secretary of State Madeleine
bright's early-May failure
to browbeat Binyamin
Netanyahu into accepting a 13 per
cent West Bank pullback, one of the
Israeli Prime Minister's confidants
bragged in an unguarded moment:
"The Prime Minister's strategic objec-
tive was attained. The Oslo process
has come to a halt."
\
The unnamed senior official
/explained to Ma'ariv's diplomatic cor-
respondent, Ben Caspit: "We have
succeeded in keeping most of the land
in our possession without being per-
ceived as having violated the agree-
ment."
All the maneuvering before, during
and since Israel's Independence Day
demonstrates yet again that

.

Netanyahu wants it both ways. He
will not give up more territory than he
can help. In opposition before his
election two years ago, he denounced
Oslo as a disaster. He has a deep-seat-
ed distrust of the Palestinians and
their leader, Yassir Arafat. He scorns
Shimon Peres's vision of a "New
Middle East" as a dangerously naive
dream. The Arabs still hate the Jews,
he is saying. Even after 50 years, Israel
remains vulnerable.
And, as if he might forget, his own
hard-liners constantly remind him
that a single Knesset defection could
bring down his government. The left
might spread a safety net, as it did
when another Likud leader,
Menachem Begin, brought home the
Camp David agreement with Egypt in
1978. But then it might not.
Yet at the same time Netanyahu
yearns to be seen as a statesman, hon-
oring his nation's commitments, a

dove in hawk's plumage. He promised
his voters "Peace with security." Poll
after poll shows that most of them still
want Oslo to succeed. At the same
time, he knows that there are limits to
how far he can push the United States.
Netanyahu's aggressive posture since
the London non-summit — he
banged the table and bawled out the
hapless American peace envoy, Dennis
Ross, and denounced Hillary Clinton
for daring to suggest that a Palestinian
state might be a good thing — reflects
the Prime Minister's assessment that
the Clinton Administration is a tooth-
less tiger. Washington, Israeli officials
noted, was making no explicit threats.
Israel still benefited from U.S. eco-
nomic, strategic and diplomatic sup-
port.
Vice President Al Gore's jubilee pil-
grimage to Jerusalem confirmed, if
confirmation were needed, that he is
already running for the White House.

Berlin (JTA) — A far-right party
that scored a surprise success in
recent German state elections
announced it plans to run in
another election in September.
The German People's Union,
which won 13 percent of the
vote last month in the eastern
state of Saxony-Anhalt, hopes to
repeat its success in
Mecklenburg-Western
Pomerania, another eastern state
where high unemployment has
fueled anti-foreigner sentiment.

-

5/15
1998

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