February 2 ought to have been a triumphant day for Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
The historic summit meeting in Cairo with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Jordan’s King Hussein and Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat gave the stalled peace process a badly needed shot in the arm, but it did little to bolster the premier’s standing.
The Cairo summit marked the first time that the region’s so-called “peace coalition” came together in a demonstrative show of collective commitment.
At the conclusion of the summit, the four leaders issued a joint communique condemning the ongoing terror attacks that have all but crippled the process.
They also called for a prompt move to “conclude the negotiations on the interim agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in all its aspects”.
The summit provided the momentum needed for Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to resume their talks in Cairo on Tuesday.
The talks are aimed at implementing the next phase of the self-rule accord, which includes the holding of Palestinian elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the concurrent withdrawal of Israeli troops from Arab population centers in the West Bank.
The head of the Israeli delegation to the Cairo talks, Yoel Singer, said Tuesday that the negotiations would focus on the easier of the two issues facing the two sides: the timing of Palestinian elections.
Clearly, the second broad issue-the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the West Bank-was something best put off until more progress had been achieved elsewhere.
Singer’s Palestinian counterpart, Saeb Erekat, noted Tuesday that this week’s round of talks would be in preparation for a meeting between Rabin and Arafat scheduled for Thursday.
It was at the Feb. 2 Cairo summit that Rabin and Arafat agreed to hold a meeting this week.
Although it is unlikely that the two will achieve any substantial breakthroughs, their willingness to meet reflects their desire to give substance to another aspect of the joint communique issued last week-to work “to improve the climate and build confidence” in the Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative.
Last week’s summit, particularly the leader’s condemnation of terror and violence, was a significant political success for Rabin, whose domestic standing is in steep decline as a result of repeated terror attacks by Islamic fundamentalist opponents of the peace process.
Yet Feb. 2 ended badly for Rabin.
Despite the successful summitry, engineering by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to reinvigorate the flagging peace process, the day’s final balance boded ill for the prime minister.
At the end of the day, after all the summitry had concluded, domestic political developments intruded.
These development could have dire implications both for Rabin’s prospects of staying in power for the full knesset term, which ends in November 1996, and for his ability to substantively advance the peace process.
Returning to his home at 2 a.m. last Friday, the prime minister was confronted by two Knesset members of the fervently religious Shas Party, Moshe Maya and Raphael Pinhasi, who informed him that their party had decided not to rejoin his coalition.
They handed him a letter from Shas’ spiritual mentor, former Sephardi Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who reiterated his long-standing respect for the prime minister and his long-held religious view that Israel must be ready to make “far-reaching concessions” in order to attain peace and thereby save lives.
“But this peace is not what we had prayed for”, Yosef said in the letter.
“Blood is flowing like water”, he added, referring to the recent terrorist attacks. “The security situation is now insufferable”.
Compounding his disappointment, Rabin later read in the Israeli daily Yediot Achronot alongside huge color photographs of the summit foursome-results of the latest public opinion poll.
The poll showed Rabin trailing Likud opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu by 13 percentage points.
Adding to his misery-and to the whole nation’s sense of distress-was yet another terrorist attack Monday in which an Israeli civilian guard protecting an oil truck was shot dead in Gaza by Palestinian gunmen.
On paper, Rabin continues to command a working majority in the Knesset, even without Shas.
Parliamentarians from Labor and the Meretz bloc-along with two members of Yi’ud who recently joined the coalition-comprise 59 of the 120 Knesset seats. Members of Israeli Arab parties provide another six votes-and thus a reasonable margin of safety for crucial votes, particularly those surrounding the peace process.
But this parliamentary arithmetic is more brittle than it looks. Shas’ defection is bound to infuse Likud and the other opposition parties with new vigor. One can now expect that they will use every parliamentary tactic possible to bring the government down.
Midterm parliamentary arithmetic, moreover, no longer necessarily reflects the actual mood in any democratic nation.
The mood in Israel now is plainly far less enthusiastic over the peace process than it was a year ago. And in a parliamentary democracy, the public mood can seep into the Knesset chamber and ultimately erode the numbers that hold sway there.
In Labor’s own ranks there are Knesset members whose views on the peace process are clearly hardening, and who may not be reliable in a Knesset showdown over further peace moves.
Even if Rabin proves able to navigate the political shoals, his ability to steer his ship of state towards diplomatic breakthroughs may be irredeemably crippled by Shas decision. Progress on the peace front, in the best of circumstances, requires bold decision making, which in turn requires solid public backing.
Rabin will need this public backing when he begins to withdraw Israeli troops from the West Bank in the context of the negotiations with the Palestinians.
And on the Syrian negotiating track-assuming President Hafez Assad is prepared to return to the bargaining table soon-Rabin will require similar backing if he attempts a withdrawal from the Golan in exchange for a full peace with Damascus.
The significance of Rabbi Yosef’s moral and political support for Rabin had extended far beyond the Shas electorate. It is exactly that type of support that Rabin will need to take him through the difficult weeks and months that lie ahead.
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