Black Monday Barak's bad luck is bad news for peace and his government. DAVID LANDAU Jewish Telegraphic Agency Jerusalem was Black Monday for Prime • Minister Ehud Barak. His peace policy was reeling following Syrian President Hafez al-Assad's rejection the day before of Barak's peace proposals, which were advanced by no less an advocate than President Bill Clinton. And his coalition was tottering, too, after the attorney general decided to launch a criminal investigation of the spiritual leader of the fervently Orthodox Shas Party, which has been locked in an ongoing battle with anoth- er major partner in Barak's governing coalition, the secular Meretz Party. The attorney general ordered the investigation after Rabbi Ovadia Yosef called last week on his followers to lay a curse on Education Minister Yossi Sarkl, the head of Meretz. As far as both Syria and the crimi- nal probe were concerned, voices were assuring one another, and seeking to assure the prime minister, that all was not as black as it looked. The "grave is not yet sealed" was how some officials described the all but moribund Syrian peace process. t I Stop in and see the All New 2000 Deville TH E POWER OF 8c THE FUSION OF DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY 7100 Orchard Lake Road (at 14 1/2 Mile) ■ West Bloomfield Mon. & Thurs. till 9 pm Tues., Wed., Fri., till 6 pm 248.851.7200 NEED HELP WITH YOUR PHONE SERVICE? WOULD YOU LIKE TO SAVE MONEY ON YOUR PHONE BILL$? Call: URI SEGAL g Price Of Withdrawal MIND ANIENNIIMENI OWNIMIN) far AMINOW OW= IMP =IMMO COMMUNICATIONS, INC (SINCE 1982) for FREE Consultation 1 8 0 0 8 3 1 OR 9 emailiaaajusegal@aol.com Buz Holzman Photography WNW 3/31 2000 34 -Children and Family Portraits -Restoration of Old Photos -Digital Party Souvenir Photos -Fine Wedding Photography (248) 9324780 29655 W. Fourteen Mile Rd. Farmington Hills, M148334 Fax- 248-932-1797 E-mail - buzholzman@aol.com 9 6 The head of the Israel Defense Force, Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz, was among those taking this tack, suggesting in a Knesset briefing that there might yet be life after. death on the Syrian track — despite the slap in the face that Assad had effectively delivered to Clinton, with the whole world watch- ing, when they failed Sunday in Geneva to find a basis for resuming Israeli-Syrian negotiations. Observers attribute Mofaz's opti- mism to the army's reluctance to embark on a withdrawal from Lebanon without an accompanying agreement involving Damascus. Mofaz and his fellow officers are warning that a unilateral withdrawal could go awry if attacks by Hezbollah or other terrorists against Israeli border settlements continue after the pullback, and if the IDF replies with massive force against Lebanon's infrastructure. The Syrian army could quickly get sucked in, they warn, and full-scale warfare could erupt. Similarly on the domestic front, Barak was assured by members of his Labor Party, and indeed by ministers in Shas, that it is not a foregone conclu- sion that Shas would withdraw from the coalition because of the criminal investigation, which party members see as a" grave insult to their revered leader. Shas ministers were still negotiating behind the scenes with their Labor counterparts over the substance of the crisis that triggered Rabbi Yosef's out- burst against Sarid: the minister's han- dling of Shas' financially troubled reli- gious school system, which provides the party with its main pillar of politi- cal support. Sarid has been insisting that the deputy education minister, a member of Shas, have no role in running the Shas school system. He has threatened to pull Meretz out of the government if Barak overrules him on this. Despite the diehard optimists, how- ever, many here feel that even if the Syrian negotiations continue through some back channel, a breakthrough before Barak's July deadline for a uni- lateral withdrawal from Lebanon is unlikely. Some of these observers pre- dict, in fact, that Barak will now speed up the pullout to May or June. The Clinton administration has not given up the fight, scheduling talks last week with Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in hopes that he could find a way to advance the process. Dangling Feet The talks in Geneva are understood to have stalled over a tiny, but symboli- cally significant sliver of land: the east- ern coastline of the Sea of Galilee. Barak has vowed that Syrian soldiers will not "dangle their feet" in the Galilee, Israel's chief source of water. His pledge has become a mantra. There would be scant support in a ref- erendum on a final peace deal with Syria if Barak were to abandon it. For Assad, on the other hand, the memory of Syrian soldiers doing pre- cisely that before the 1967 Six-Day