Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s bombshell announcement late Monday that he would hold a national referendum before agreeing to a withdrawal from the Golan Heights came as a surprise even to the members of his own Cabinet.
But political observers here are united in their praise for the move, which they describe as a deft and resourceful tactic likely to shore up Rabin’s political strength and reinforce his narrowly based coalition government.
Some observers believe that the referendum will never take place, but that Rabin will prefer to hold general elections further into the present parliamentary term as a means of sidestepping a referendum, a step unprecedented in the Israeli system.
The announcement of a referendum in the meantime serves Rabin’s interests in several ways.
It relieves him of political pressure and enables him to negotiate with the Syrians with greater freedom, since whatever is achieved in talks with Damascus can always be put to the people to decide.
Second, a referendum enhances Rabin’s credibility with the Golan settlers, as well as with the settlers in the West Bank.
Third, the move ensures the support of the fervently religious Shas party, which Rabin has been trying to woo back to his coalition. The Labor Party leader had pledged a referendum on the Golan when he made his coalition agreement with Shas in 1992.
Rabin said Tuesday that there was no need to make special constitutional or legislative preparations for a referendum at this stage, that the time for these steps would come if and when a referendum became a more immediate prospect.
The prime minister said he wanted to give Israeli citizens the opportunity to participate in the making of an important security decision if the price required for peace with Syria were to prove “higher that what the citizens had expected.”
During the 1992 election campaign, and in numerous public statements thereafter, Rabin said his government would offer Syria an Israeli withdrawal on the Golan, but not necessarily from the Golan. This wording was meant to indicate that he was not considering a full withdrawal from what many consider a strategically important site.
The announcement of the referendum was made by Deputy Defense Minister Mordechai Gur during a debate in the Knesset. The announcement was made on the explicit instructions of Rabin himself.
Labor Party insiders say that even Foreign Minister Shimon Peres was not informed about the announcement in advance – and Peres’ lukewarm reaction Tuesday seemed to bear this out.
Other Cabinet ministers, among them Environment Minister Yossi Sarid, were also reserved about the idea of a referendum. Tourism Minister Uzi Baram complained that the Cabinet had been kept in the dark until the announcement was made.
Among the opposition parties, opinion was divided, with some Likud politicians demanding elections rather than a referendum.
But the Golan settlers greeted Rabin’s decision with jubilation, presumably anticipating that a majority of the country would vote against a large-scale pullback from the Golan.
In a cable to Gur, the leaders of the Golan settlers wrote, “Your announcement is a great victory for the majority in Israel, which has expressed and demonstrated over this past year its support for (remaining in) the Golan.”
But the optimism of the Golan settlers is not shared by independent observers, who think that a majority of the Israeli public will support full withdrawal from the Golan if it can be demonstrated that the move would result in the full normalization of relations with Syria.
The referendum announcement, not surprisingly, was criticized by Syrian officials, with Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa saying Tuesday that Israel “had no right to talk about Syrian territory” in a referendum, which he further charged was “against international law and the U.N. charter.”
Rabin, meanwhile, gave his reserved support to the outcome of Sunday’s meeting between President Clinton and Hafez Assad.
In public comments Tuesday, he said he had “expected more” from the talks, but said he was prepared to “make do with what was said and what was not said.” He added that the meeting “opens the possibility for more concrete and practical negotiations.”
Rabin made the comments after extensive briefings by the U.S. State Department’s Middle East peace talks coordinator, Dennis Ross, who had been sent here from Geneva immediately after the Clinton-Assad meeting.
Israeli-Syrian negotiations, which had been suspended for the past four months at the insistence of Syrians, are scheduled to resume next week in Washington.
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