thousands of right-wingers protested
that Barak was preparing to "redivide"
the capital, a charge that drove one of
Barak's predecessors, Shimon Peres,
from office.
munities — Barak will have pulled off
a historic coup.
If, however, the withdrawal blows
up in Israel's face, Barak will be left
without a political leg to stand on.
Crawling Talks
Assad's Role
Meanwhile, peace negotiations
between Israel and the Palestinians
continued at their tortoise's pace.
A final-status accord is scheduled
to be reached by Sept. 13, the seventh
anniversary of the signing of the Oslo
Accord.
But the two sides are so far apart
that they're not even bothering to dis-
cuss the pressing issues — Jerusalem,
settlements, refugees, borders and
water. What's the point, when Barak
is having such a hard time coming to
terms with his right wing on such
miniscule matters as Abu Dis?
On the same day as the
Knesset vote and the big
protest demonstration in
Jerusalem, the Palestinians held
demonstrations of their own,
which had nothing to do with
Abu Dis. All over the West
Bank and Gaza, they threw
rocks and bottles at Israeli sol-
diers, and Palestinian police-
men even opened fire, which
the Israelis returned.
They were enraged over the
freezing of the peace process,
and Israel's refusal to release hundreds
of Palestinian security prisoners.
When the dust cleared, five
Palestinians were dead and some 450
were injured, while about a dozen
Israeli soldiers were injured by bullets
or rocks.
The confrontation was the worst in
nearly four years, but it underlined
one of Barak's accomplishments —
Israelis have been safe from
Palestinian violence during his-tenure,
a continuation of the situation which
be g an under Netanyahu. The follow-
ing day the protests cooled consider-
ably, and it appeared that security
would continue to be a strong point
of Barak's record.
He's gambling with it, though.
He's preparing to pull the Israeli army
out of south Lebanon, where it's been
dug in since 1985, fighting a war of
attrition with the Islamic guerrilla
organization - Hezbollah.
Barak has informed the U.N. and
the U.S. that the army will be out by
July 7. If it goes peacefully — if
Hezbollah does not carry the war
across the border and into the north-
ern Israeli towns and farming com-
The success or failure of the with-
drawal depends on the response from
Syria, which is Lebanon's de facto
ruler.
-
This has been Barak's great disap-
pointment of the last year — the fail-
ure to close a deal with Syrian
President Hafez Assad. The talks
foundered on Assad's demand to
return Syria's border to the northeast-
ern shore of Lake Kinneret, where it
was on the eve of the Six-Day War.
Barak refused, saying that control of
Lake Kinneret — which provides 40
The confrontation
underlined
one of'13arak's
accomplishments.
percent of Israel's water — was a mat-
ter of vital national security.
Although he failed to reach an
agreement, Barak seems to have won
points in domestic and international
public opinion for his handling of the
negotiations. He showed the world
that he was willing to make vast con-
cessions — the entire Golan Heights
— for peace, while showing Israelis
that he had red lines that he would
not cross.
Barak's performance on socioeco-
nomic issues has been his outstanding
failure. He campaigned on a domestic
policy that sounded like something
out of FDR's New Deal, but upon
taking office began implementing a
policy that seemed modeled on the
GOP's Contract With America.
He cut spending, kept the deficit
in check, and held down inflation.
However, he's made no dent at all in
high unemployment, nor in the
income gap between rich and poor,
which is either the widest or second
widest (after the U.S.) in the industri-
alized world.
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