Netanyahu Opens Knesset Campaign by Taking a Hard-line Stand

Benjamin Netanyahu, who resigned Wednesday night as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations in order to run for the Knesset, began his election campaign as a militant Likud-Herut hard-liner only minutes after tendering his resignation to Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.

Dropping his role as diplomat, he launched blistering attacks on the United Nations, where he had served since 1984; on the American administration, which he accused of “active engagement in direct negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization”, on Secretary of State George Shultz’s Middle East peace plan; and on his erstwhile colleague, Yossi Beilin, the political director general of the Foreign Ministry.

Foreign Ministry officials, who are aligned with Peres and his Labor Party, sharply criticized Netanyahu. “He only waited a few minutes before changing from the coat of a diplomat to one of a political hack,” a former colleague said.

He was denounced for his attacks on former colleagues and the “surprise and haste” with which he quit his U.N. post at a time when Israel has been under constant attack by the Arab bloc and their allies for its policies in the administered territories.

Netanyahu is considered close to Premier Yitzhak Shamir and is very popular among conservative thinkers, particularly those in the Shamir-Moshe Arens camp. Arens, a former defense minister and former ambassador to the United States, is, like Shamir, a Herut hard-liner.

RESENTMENT AMONG OLD-TIMERS

While Netanyahu’s entry into the political arena was greeted enthusiastically by Likud Knesset members, some Herut old-timers appeared to resent his “instant leadership within the party without having to go through the lengthy term of work in the local (party) branches.”

Netanyahu is likely to get a spot among the first 10 names on the Likud election lists, which virtually assures him of a seat in the next Knesset. Some observers suggested Thursday that the haste of his resignation might indicate a Likud decision to call for early elections.

Netanyahu, who said when he announced his resignation that he hoped for a place on the Likud list in the Knesset elections scheduled for next November, charged that Shultz had been “influenced by all sorts of Arabist officials in the State Department.”

He said that the secretary, who is due in Israel Sunday to resume shuttle diplomacy in the region, had “crossed the Rubicon” with his “very dangerous” peace plan and his meeting last Saturday with two members of the Palestine National Council which Israel, unlike the United States, does not differentiate from the PLO.

Netanyahu accused Beilin, a close associate of Peres, of drumming up support for the international conference idea which is part of the Shultz plan and is favored by the Labor Party.

He had good words only for former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who he said had warned Beilin that acceptance of an international conference meant shoving Israel back to its pre-1967 borders. According to Netanyahu, Beilin’s response to Kissinger was “So what?”

Beilin promptly denied the charge. He said he told Kissinger last summer that even the Reagan plan, enunciated by President Reagan in 1981 and subsequently shelved because of Israeli objections, did not call for such drastic concessions by Israel. Therefore, he saw no danger that an international conference would compel Israel to withdraw to the old boundaries.

Netanyahu had intended to resign this year but was not expected to do so until summer.

Asher Ben-Natan, a former Israeli ambassador to West Germany and France, is reported to be front-runner for Netanyahu’s replacement as Israel’s permanent representative to the United Nations, if both Shamir and Peres agree.