Israel is not abandoning the peace process, but its new government will give higher priority to absorbing the tens of thousands of immigrants pouring into the country.
That was how Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir put it when he introduced his new right-wing coalition government Monday to the Knesset, which gave it a 62-57 vote of approval.
Shamir’s carefully crafted speech sought to allay Arab and Western concerns over Israel’s future policies on those issues. But he also was careful to avoid offending the three far right-wing parties to whom he now owes allegiance.
Shamir’s priorities could put Israel on a collision course with the United States and Western Europe.
A linkage has taken hold in international diplomacy between Middle East peace and the settlement of Israel’s rapidly increasing immigrant population.
While the United States does not subscribe to the linkage theory, it has reiterated its strong opposition to the settlement of immigrants in the disputed areas which, the Bush administration has intimated, include East Jerusalem.
Israel relies on the United States to help finance its absorption of immigrants, but has refused to guarantee where they will not be settled. The policy is to neither encourage nor dissuade immigrants from settling in the territories.
Shamir told the Knesset on Monday that Israel wants “to work hand-in-hand with the United States to strengthen our alliance.”
But the new government is ideologically opposed to constraints on settlement.
SHARON COULD PROVOKE CONFLICT
The appointment of the outspoken Ariel Sharon as minister of construction and housing with special authority for the absorption of Soviet immigrants is considered a potential source of conflict. It has been widely interpreted abroad as a signal that the settlement drive will be accelerated and that greater numbers of immigrants will be housed in the territories.
Just hours after the new Cabinet was announced, Sharon angrily refused to give Israel Radio an explicit statement that new immigrants will not be settled in the West Bank.
“Why do you keep harping on this?” he demanded. “I don’t believe Israel need give assurances. The United States and the Soviet Union know perfectly well where the olim are settling,” Sharon said.
Reciting the now familiar refrain that “Israel is a democratic society and everyone can live where they wish,” he then observed cryptically, “Now is the time for deeds, not declarations.”
Shamir’s speech also focused on immigration.
“The phenomenon of tens of thousands of Jews returning to their land has caused our enemies to rise up,” he said.
But he reiterated that there is “no policy of directing immigrants specifically to these areas,” meaning the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The prime minister made a point of referring to the 1978 Camp David accords as the basis of Israel’s peace proposals.
He also referred to the peace proposals advanced by his unity government in May 1989, omitting to say they were passionately opposed at the time by key members of Likud and by the right-wing factions that are now Likud’s partners.
PEACE PLAN HAS BEEN ‘CASTRATED’
Shamir sought to reconcile those differences by claiming that his peace proposals had been “castrated and misrepresented” by focusing solely on the proposed Palestinian elections in the territories.
The elections were the showpiece of Shamir’s plan that attracted the support of the United States. The plan’s later stages — a period of autonomy for the Palestinians and discussions with Israel over the final status of the territories — would have flowed directly from the election of Palestinian negotiators.
Many of Shamir’s critics contended at the time that the entire plan was a sham aimed at stalling the peace process. Labor Party leader Shimon Peres implied that Monday in his rebuttal to Shamir in the Knesset.
He said Shamir, in effect, has made peace talks with the Palestinians contingent on peace with all of the Arab states and vice versa, a “Catch-22” situation that effectively stamped the peace process dead.
Veteran diplomats and observers say that in the short term, Arab extremists have played into Israel’s hands and helped Shamir fend off a confrontation with the United States.
The thwarted terrorist attack on Israeli beaches May 30 by a rejections faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization made it politically difficult for Washington to maintain its dialogue with the mainstream factions of the PLO.
Similarly, Iraq’s threats to use non-conventional weapons against Israel have lent credence to complaints by Israeli diplomats around the world that their country faces a relentless enemy out to destroy it.
But in the longer term, many analysts fear that hard-line pronouncements by members of Shamir’s new government could “play into the hands of anti-Israel forces.”
A more vigorous suppression of the Palestinian uprising in the territories, vowed by some members of the new government, could create severe “image” problems for Israel abroad.
ELECTORAL REFORM A LOW PRIORITY
President Chaim Herzog welcomed Shamir and his 18 new ministers at the presidential residence Tuesday. He posed with them for the official photograph that has become a tradition whenever a new government is installed.
Herzog urged the new regime not to miss the opportunities presented by the wave of immigration and also to turn its attention to the problems of the Arab minority in Israel.
The president also put in a strong plea for reform of Israel’s electoral system. He noted the groundswell of public opinion in favor of electoral changes and expressed hope that the new Cabinet would act, lest the public lose the last vestige of respect for the democratic process.
But electoral reform is apparently not high on Shamir’s agenda. In fact, he has warned against hasty action.
He told reporters at the presidential residence Tuesday that while his new government has a much narrower base than the one that preceded it, its ideological unity and common purpose would more than compensate for its slim majority.
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