■

Chemistry of Sharon
and Peres, old friends
and rivals, will be key
to government longevity.

DAVID LANDAU

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

A

Jerusalem

riel Sharon's national
unity government, which
was sworn in Wednesday,
vvill rely on two key fac-
tors for stability and longevity.
One is a close and harmonious rela-
tionship between Likud Prime
Minister Sharon and Foreign Minister
Shimon Peres, the senior Labor Party
minister in the cabinet.
The other is the continued absence
of realistic prospects for negotiations
with the Palestinians toward a final
peace agreement.
Less tangibly, the unity government
will need a great deal of luck, that
unpredictable commodity that outgo-
ing Prime Minister Ehud Barak so
lacked during his stormy 21 months
in office.
To say that Sharon, 73, and Peres,
77, have a long history together is an

22

Cabinet Within

Interim Accords

Sharon's unity government, with
almost 30 ministers and another half-
dozen deputy ministers, will be
unwieldy at best, unworkable at worst.
The Labor component, moreover, is
beset by internal conflict. Several of
the defeated and dispirited party's
leaders — Yossi Beilin, Avraham Burg
and Shlomo Ben-Ami — oppose unity
under Sharon and have opted to stay
out of the cabinet. As the party's lead-
ership battle unfolds in the coming
months, the ideological and personal
fissures between pro- and anti-unity
groups likely will widen.
For both of those reasons, the per-
ception of Peres' role will be critical.
Any sense in Labor that Peres is
being sidestepped or marginalized will
-exacerbate internal
party tensions and
strengthen the hands
of those calling for
Labor to leave the
alliance.
Most analysts sug-
_ gest that the govern-
ment's survival will
best be served by
Sharon's sustaining
the understanding
that he and Peres
together comprise an
informal inner cabi-
net where key deci-
sions are thrashed
our. That was the
recipe for the success
of the unity govern-
ments that ruled
Israel from 1984 to
1990 under prime
ministers Peres and
Yitzhak Shamir.
In those cabinets,
an inner "prime min-
isters' club" made up
of Peres, Shamir and

The same logic may govern Israel's
present political constellation.
Under Barak, Labor lost the election
chiefly because of the collapse of peace
negotiations with Palestinian
Authority President Yasser Arafat and
the eruption of Palestinian violence.
The alliance-of-convenience with
the Likud is predicated, in effect, on
the impossibility of reviving those
talks. Laborites roundly blame Arafat
for that; many have come to believe
that as long as he is power there will
be no further thrust toward peace.
In practical terms, that means
Israel's two major parties can work
side by side to reduce the current level
of violence and to aspire to limited or
interim accords with the Palestinian
Authority.
In any case, Sharon believes interim
accords over a long period are the best
approach. Labor believes they are a
poor substitute for full-fledged peace
talks, but acknowledges that the ideal
is not feasible at this time.
If that reality changes, it's difficult
to see how the Likud-Labor coalition
could survive. The pressures inside
Labor would become too powerful- for
Peres to stay put, even if he wanted to,
which he probably would not.
Presumably, Beilin and friends will
try, through unofficial channels, to
revive the negotiating option with the
Palestinian leadership.
Meanwhile, Peres and the Labor
defense minister, Benjamin Ben-
Eliezer, will seek to ensure that the "no
peace" situation also remains one of
no war, trying to steer Sharon clear of
the more militarist strains in his own
personality and past, and in his pres-
ent political camp.
For instance, one Sharon ally —
Rehavarn Ze'evi of the National
Union Party, who will be Sharon's
tourism minister — urged this week

meats

understatement. Both have been there
since the creation of the State of Israel
53 years ago.
The young Peres was an aide to
founding father and first Prime
Minister David Ben-Gurion and
quickly rose in the 1950s to become
director general of the Defense
Ministry. There, Peres — the stan-
dard-bearer of today's peace camp
was intimately involved in developing
Israel's nuclear potential.
Sharon, a dashing infantry officer,
served in Israel's 1948 War of
Independence. In the 1950s, he
gained fame and notoriety as the
founder of Unit 101, an elite com-
mando crew that carried out aggressive
and controversial anti-terror reprisal
raids across the Jordanian border dur-
ing the precarious first decade of the
state's existence.
In those days, Menachem Begin's
Herut Parry — which later became the
core of the center-right Likud bloc — .
was a powerless opposition. Politics

Terror And Tears

3/9
2001

were dominated by Ben-Gurion's Mapai
Parry, forerunner of today's Labor.
Rising stars like Peres and Sharon nat-
urally saw themselves as proteges of the
"Old Man," as Ben-Gurion was called.

Yitzhak Rabin took the main deci-
sions, far from the debating-club
atmosphere of the full cabinet.
That inner sanctum never leaked.
Though political rivals, its members
set aside their differences in the shared
interest of conducting the nation's
business and preserving the viabilin-
of their awkward coalition.
Ultimately, the longevity of the
1980s coalitions rested on an absence
of progress in the peace process. A
near-fatal crisis erupted when Peres,
behind Shamir's back, tried in 1987 to
negotiate an agreement with King
Hussein of Jordan.

Left, police o wers investigate the remains of a covered body after a
Palestinian militant detonated a bomb in Netanya on Sunday. Right,
mourners weep during the funeral of Shlomit Ziv, who died in the blast.

Related editorial: page 31