BeAt whkes loic a
hcif,12y, health,'

(New Wear

Twat wishes for a
ka•ipy, health,'
(New Wear

ANNE & SAM SUKENIC

MILLICENT ALLEN &
GERTRUDE SHAW

LOUIS & ESTHER STYBEL

Set lailleA kr a
happy, health,"

()least (Year

Ii.:fit wishes ler a
happy, health,'
(New- Wear

party-political configuration too:
Shas, by now the largest Ortho-
dox party, entered his coalition
alongside the secular Meretz Par-
ty.
But this marriage of conve-
nience did not last, and in 1996
Benjamin Netanyahu, the head
of Likud, regained power for his
party and reconstituted the
Likud-Orthodox alliance. The
Oslo process, which Netanyahu
reluctantly embraced, barely
flickered under his stewardship.
But it was not extinguished.
Does Ehud Barak's impres-
sive electoral victory in May,
and his creation of a broad gov-
ernment encompassing the left
and all the Orthodox parries, in-
dicate a further irrevocable surge
toward peace and reconciliation
between Israel and the Arabs?
And does it mean a historic
return to the traditional alliance
between Israel's leftist and Or-
thodox parties, which Begin
smashed and which Yitzhak Ra-
bin failed to re-create in a lasting
way?
Netanyahu calls Barak's 12
percent margin of victory in the
direct election for prime minis-
ter a result of moral fatigue, but
leftist writers and thinkers are
welcoming the less chauvinistic,
less militaristic mood that has
swept much of secular, Ashke-
nazi Israeli society and begun to
make inroads among the tradi-
tional and the Sephardi sectors,
too.
Barak's supporters make the
point that, unlike Rabin, the
present premier rules with a sol-
id "Jewish" majority in the
Knesset, and the hard-liners,
still fighting against Palestinian
statehood, are reduced to less
than one-quarter of the Parlia-
ment.
The prime minister's appar-
ent readiness to cede all of the
Golan Heights for peace seems
likely to win wide support in
the referendum he has promised
— if and when Syria accedes to
his demands on security and
normalization.
If, as Barak has publicly and
repeatedly pledged, the next 15
months see historic break-
throughs toward peace both on
the Syrian-Lebanese and the
Palestinian tracks, then 5759's
change of government will turn

out to have been a real water-
shed in Israel's century of con-
flict with its Arab neighbors.
Barak says his aim is to end
that conflict once and for all.
The method of partial, incre-
mental steps forward seems to
him too risky, too slow and too
unstable. His most oft-repeated
statement in his early sallies in
international diplomacy — in
the Middle East, in Washington
and Moscow, and in key Euro-
pean capitals: "I am not Ne-
tanyahu. I seriously intend to
),
make peace.
If he can translate his inten-
tions into concrete results,
moreover, the authoritative and
domineering way he put togeth-
er his governing coalition will be
forgiven, even by those within
his own party most deeply hurt
and offended by his brushing
them aside.
If his peacemaking succeeds,
his deliberate deferral of press-
ing domestic issues, especially
religious pluralism, will be ac-
cepted, in the light of hindsight,
as an act of wisdom and politi-
cal perspicacity. Indeed, the de-
ferral — while ideological foes
like Shas and Meretz cooperate
with Barak to bring the peace
treaties — may well turn out to
be the most salutary approach
to these intractable state-religion
dilemmas that will to a large ex-
tent determine the shape of so-
ciety in the Jewish state into the
next century.
The partnership between
ideological opposites over peace
will, with luck and leadership,
blunt their animosity over the
issues that divide them.
The Orthodox parties —
Shas, United Torah Judaism and
NRP — sitting in coalition
with the left, may develop a new
sense of respect, or at least of
tolerance, for the "secularists."
And vice-versa.
The perniciously rigid right-
against-left, religious-against-
secular parallelogram that
furnished the parameters of Is-
raeli politics for a whole genera-
tion will have been permanently
erased, leaving a more mature
and less dogmatic political com-
munity, better able to grapple
with the state-and-religion dis-
putes that lie ahead.

STEWART & BEVERLY ERLICH
& FAMILY

lann nalz Mr?

to all
(mat Men&
and relatioct.

MARLENE, BERNARD,
MIKE, KEN & ALYSSA TOFT

1111D11 113111 Mtn

to all
our Pim&
and relatioet.

BELLE & ISIDOR
EISENBERG & FAMILY

1311DT1 rialz

to all
our friendi
and mlatiocu.

LEO & ZITA WEBER

ficippy

New

year

yeav be filled
with health and
happiness fort
all OlitIA family
and fviends.

May the coming
sy eat, . be filled
with health and
'happiness fov
(all 014V family
and friends.

JACK & JANE SWEET

PHYLLIS ZUSMAN & FAMILY

May the cowling

:

re

ei ti Vo:

r
rig 111

la • 12

nYtzP

isn

1

s2

A Very Happy and Healthy
New Year to All Our
Friends and Family.

ROBERT A., ROSALYN & JOEL SCHWARTZ
MICHEL & MATTHEW BERTMAN

i4-11

1ervaetfie.1 ai,td"Fu:as.d.

lamin nave Mtn

all
our Men&
and relatioct.

ROB, JODI, DAVID, SARA
& ILANA WEINFELD

acoi dt, /0t

veat

eat. itappeoz.1,

Azicativowl

1.4 p etetat

NORMAN & KATHY STRICOF

'Happy
New

Yeas*

May the coin/tine
yeav be filled
with health and
happiness fov
all OIAN family
and fiends.

MELANIE & AARON WALLIS

JOHN, CHERYL, ERIC & JENNIFER SLAIM

Detroit Jewish News