Ehud Barak's conduct of the peace process is that of a man aware that his chances of being Prime Minister after 2003 are not good, and he must therefore make haste. More haste than common sense allows.
He is probably right. In the past thirty-five years, only one Labour leader has contrived to win two successive election campaigns (Golda Meir, in 1973, and that was a bygone era, in which Labour and Mapam could still secure 51 seats in Knesset). In the Likud, Menahem Begin alone managed, with great difficulty, to score two successive victories.
Israel is a land that devours its prime ministers, mainly because it quickly becomes accustomed to them, and familiarity, as we know, breeds contempt. Be their ideology what is may, by the time they near the end of their term of office, all they inspire in their voters is disgust. For this we must blame the vociferous vulgarity of the political process, and the disloyalty and lack of discipline on the part of the politicians orbiting around the Prime Minister.
Ehud Barak must therefore proceed on the assumption that time is of the essence. He may have even less time than his predecessors, thanks to all the Trojan horses that have joined his government for the sole purpose of pulling the rug out from under his feet. In such circumstances, the 2003 deadline may be over-optimistic. Barak can rely on maybe two years in power.
The time frame he has established for completing the peace process is thus realistic in its lack of realism. If he means it seriously, and one would be well-advised to suppose that he does, then all else must be subjugated to the goal of realising that time frame: he must not get into any sparring matches with his coalition partners over issues of church and state; he must placate them with budgets and benefits; he must incline his head when their rabbis utter; he must remind his left-wing allies to keep mum and not rock the boat. Please, no Shulamit Aloni stuff.
Only in the peace process can Barak demonstrate his full prowess. In all other issues, he can only afford to behave like the equivalent of a general manager, but not a statesman or a political leader. In the economic, social and educational matters that are the bread and butter of political leaders in western democracies, he must content himself with the role of foreman of the shift.
The Prime Minister assuming that guise will be a sorry sight. A country as divided and as complicated as Israel, plagued as it is with economic and social crises, desperately needs a captain, not just a helmsman. The good news is that, if Barak can keep to his timetable, there may be hope for subsequent normalisation. If he signs final status agreements with the Palestinians and Syria, then the next Prime Minister will, in fact, deal with economic, social and educational matters, as, in a grand denouement, the table is swept clean of the life and death issues of the past fifty years.
Published by Israel's Business Arena September 6, 1999