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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Reaction of Israeli Left to Bush's Speech |
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by Haaretz via gehrig
(No verified email address) |
26 Jun 2002
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Speaker of the Knesset: "They were happy in the Prime Minister's Office. Great. But now what? We're left with the same sad reality after the speech that we were in before it. The speech didn't pull us out of the mud. Bush won't be coming to the next funeral." |
Focus / Left laments Bush's vision lacks a practical program
By Yossi Verter
On Friday, after the cabinet decided to send the IDF back into the West Bank's towns and cities, one of the ministers closest to Foreign Minister Shimon Peres turned to him and said, "That's it, it's time to quit. We'll never find better timing or a better excuse to leave the coalition."
But Peres said no. "I'm waiting for the Bush speech." Perhaps Peres expected Clinton Plan II, or maybe a reiteration of James Baker's famous five questions to the Shamir government, the last time Peres was foreign minister in a Likud government. In other words, something for a good fight with the Likud to get some color back into Labor's cheeks.
But then came the speech, which sounded like a medley of Effi Eitam statements. Peres, and the rest of the leaders of the peace camp, were dumbstruck - though not for long. Yesterday, along the seam line, with the fence he dislikes so much behind him, Peres squirmed in front of the microphones, finally emitting, "it was an important speech ... a clear statement ... very sharply worded on the matter of terror."
But the blow that struck the left was so powerful and painful, that its most articulate spokesmen, who hoped for something else, seemed to stammer. Former minister Yossi Beilin, perhaps the last of those ready to try negotiations with the Palestinian leader Bush ruled worse than irrelevant this week, issued a statement expressing "appreciation for the vision in President Bush's speech," alongside a warning that Israel cannot wait "until the president's preconditions are met."
Meretz leader MK Yossi Sarid, in a statement far less acerbic than his usual rhetoric, delicately complained that the president's speech "was more appropriate for Washington than blood-soaked Ramallah and Jerusalem." Sarid didn't forget his manners, noting that the president's "goals are proper and correct, but the president apparently does not have any idea how to achieve them." Perhaps the reason for the confusion that struck Sarid is that on Friday, he told Ma'ariv that he thinks any further talks with Arafat are "a waste of time."
Over the years, the left has enjoyed the wind at its back from American policymakers. There was Bill Clinton, who for eight years worked with every Israeli prime minister on peace plans. The president Bush who preceded Clinton toppled Yitzhak Shamir by denying the Likud government U.S. loan guarantees to help pay for the new immigrants, making clear Washington's disapproval of Shamir's settlement policies. Before that Bush, there was Ronald Reagan and George Schultz, Jimmy Carter, and Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger.
In short, the left had few complaints about the Americans, except perhaps that Washington wasn't forceful enough in pressing home its anti-settlement position. Until Monday night. Beilin, who recently established Shahar as a new social democratic peace movement meant to unify the left, admits that if the chairman of the Labor Party, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, were to have delivered the same speech as Bush, Beilin would have lashed out at him. Indeed, Beilin is convinced that Bush will soon have to "fine tune" his speech. "I have no problem with Bush's vision. I have a problem with its implementation." Beilin's conclusion, as always, fits his political agenda - "unification of the left to work against the right."
Sarid, on the day after, also appeared to correct his initial reaction. "Cheney and Rumsfeld may have won, but Israel and the region lost. Where was the Saudi initiative, the Clinton plan, the regional conference? He wants to replace Arafat? Fine, I don't care. But who does he want to do it? Does he expect the Palestinian people to rise up on their own and throw them out?" Sarid, in short, like Beilin, believes Bush will yet have to come up with a new speech, "something more practical," as the Meretz leader said.
Ben-Eliezer, the putative leader of the peace camp by virtue of being Labor's chairman - but only if he were to quit the government - was nowhere to be found among the Bush critics. "Already a year ago I said Arafat finished his historic role. Now Bush has lowered the ax ... The left does have the best answers for a political solution. But there's a problem. No partner on the other side."
Haim Ramon, Ben-Eliezer's challenger for the party leadership, meanwhile lassoed the Bush speech into the Ramon campaign against Ben-Eliezer. "I never thought the U.S. would impose a solution on the sides," he said yesterday. "We can only count on ourselves, and take unilateral action. Either we reoccupy the areas like the government is doing, or pull out to the lines we choose, as I'm suggesting. I came to those conclusions before the Bush speech. So I'm not disappointed or confused." But it was Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg, of the Labor Party, who perhaps best summed up the left's overall view of the Bush speech. "They were happy in the Prime Minister's Office. Great. But now what? We're left with the same sad reality after the speech that we were in before it. The speech didn't pull us out of the mud. Bush won't be coming to the next funeral."
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See also:
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=180128
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