Almost half a year into his administration and with the Hebron redeployment apparently now imminent, debate is swirling anew around Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Is he a pragmatist or an ideologue?
Many leaders, diplomats and political observers here and abroad are undecided about where the 46-year-old premier will head next, given his actions on Hebron and recent statements on the course of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Nonetheless, they all would agree on the importance of better understanding Netanyahu, whose meteoric rise to power has left his own country as well as the rest of the world wondering about his long-term strategy.
That Netanyahu, the Likud Party leader, has kept everyone guessing at this point in his term is no small achievement, some would add.
Others, less sympathetic to Netanyahu, argue that perhaps he does not know where he is headed. They point to examples of fumbled decision-making as evidence of the young leader’s irresoluteness.
The pragmatist-ideologue debate first occurred immediately after Netanyahu’s May 29 election victory, but it subsequently died down.
The controversy has resurfaced, however, with the current talks on the implementation of the Israeli redeployment from most of Hebron.
The planned pullback from the West Bank town is a dramatic event, which makes it natural to re-examine the ideological makeup of the leader who has to implement the redeployment while trying not to isolate the hard-line members of his coalition.
At the same time, Netanyahu may soon face a Clinton administration that is still deeply committed to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process that it has promoted during the past three years. And for the most part, the administration in its second term will be freed of domestic political constraints in its dealings with Middle East peacemaking.
Predicting the course of U.S.-Israel relations during the next four years also has resulted in Middle East analysts making another attempt to pin down the political composition of the Israeli leader.
In and of itself, the Hebron redeployment does not necessarily provide firm evidence of whether Netanyahu is a pragmatist or an ideologue.
For instance, regardless of whether Netanyahu remains a dyed-in-the-wool ideologue, he still could not have turned his back on the explicit Israeli commitment to turn over most of Hebron to the Palestinian Authority.
The governments of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres agreed that Israel would take this step, the last of seven redeployments of Israeli forces — which effectively turn over the main urban centers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to Palestinian control.
Originally scheduled for March, the Hebron redeployment was postponed by then- Prime Minister Peres after a series of suicide bombings in Israel by Islamic militants.
The debate about Netanyahu’s character also has resurfaced as the international community ponders what his next move will be.
Under the terms of the Interim Agreement, Israel is to carry out three additional redeployments in the next year — from rural areas of the West Bank still under direct Israel Defense Force control.
The agreement excludes two types of areas: Israeli settlements, whose future is to be determined in the permanent-status negotiations, and “specified security locations,” which Israel deems necessary for its defense.
Netanyahu has indicated clearly and repeatedly that he does not intend to pull out of the entire West Bank, leaving Israel effectively denuded of the territories when the permanent-status talks reach their climax.
The final-status talks, which are scheduled to end by May 1999, will determine the status of Jerusalem, Israeli settlements and the Palestinian self-rule areas.
Netanyahu says his interpretation of “security locations” is broad and flexible.
And he has proposed several times in recent weeks that the two sides forgo the “further redeployment” phase altogether and move directly to the permanent- status talks.
Netanyahu has cited the U.S. commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the tiny nation of Andorra, tucked between France and Spain, as two examples of limited sovereignty that might serve as useful examples for fashioning a Palestinian entity.
Those who believe that Netanyahu is a pragmatist characterize these ideas as moderate.
But the ideologue school, which is more cynical, claims that Netanyahu’s proposal to go to the final-status talks now is bound — even designed — to throw the entire peace process into a deadlock. The upshot, these observers, say, is that the Palestinians will get no more land and will remain in scattered urban enclaves while the IDF continues to control the surrounding rural areas.
A third view now evolving here is that Netanyahu is himself evolving.
Regardless of whether he began as a rigid pragmatist, he has already softened his own hard-line positions during his months in office.
Some of these observers see these changes in the premier’s thinking as being paralleled in the opposition Labor Party.
Ehud Barak, the ex-foreign minister and former chief of staff, is clearly the leading contender to succeed party leader Peres when Labor holds its internal elections in the summer.
Barak, more than anything else, is a man of the center. Indeed, Barak’s critics are already saying that his core problem in challenging Netanyahu for the premiership in the year 2000 will be how to persuade the public that his political message is substantially different.
Barak, both as chief of staff and later as a Cabinet minister, made clear his reservations about the “further redeployment” plan. He would be hard put now to lead an attack against Netanyahu for not implementing it.
Netanyahu and Barak both claim to speak for the centrist Israeli who supports the peace process and is prepared to make concessions, but insists on a measured process that preserves the security of the nation as well as the Israeli citizens living in the West Bank.
Once Netanyahu has undergone the politically and psychologically complex experience of surrendering land in Hebron to the Palestinian Authority, he may, as he moves to capture the center ground, both develop his Puerto Rico-Andorra themes in greater detail and negotiate the future of the West Bank in earnest.
But he will do so while Israel still holds a substantial part of the disputed territory.
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