_______ ____ ______ / |/ / /___/ / /_ // M I D - E A S T R E A L I T I E S / /|_/ / /_/_ / /\\ Making Sense of the Middle East /_/ /_/ /___/ /_/ \\ http://www.MiddleEast.Org News, Information, & Analysis That Governments, Interest Groups, and the Corporate Media Don't Want You To Know! * * * * * * * IF YOU DON'T GET MER, YOU JUST DON'T GET IT! To receive MER regularly email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] DESPERATELY SEEKING A NEW DEAL MID-EAST REALITIES - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 11/27: Ehud Barak and the Labor Party are getting even more desperate to retain power in Israel. This week an effort in the Knesset will be made to bring Barak down after just two convulsive years as Prime Minister. That is why lightning "diplomacy" is underway trying to provide Yasser Arafat a smokescreen behind which he can reenter the Oslo/Camp David framework and even at this late date declare a "Palestinian State" a la Barak's parameters, however deceptive, constrained and controlled that "State" would be. And this is what all the current talk about "international observers" is about and why so many of the most senior people on all sides are desperately running from Jerusalem to Gaza, to Moscow and Cairo, to Amman and New York, and of course in the end to Washington. Much of what is currently being planned and plotted by those at the top is not the kind of thing that subordinates can do, not the kind of thing that can be put down paper. The deals, the "incentives", and the threats need to be made and delivered at the highest levels. The masks need to be tried on face to face. Neither Barak nor Clinton intend to go out quietly. Clinton is dominated by concerns over his legacy, as well as his wife's likely bid for the White House in just a few years. Barak and those around him are desperate not to lose power again to the Likud and not to find their political rivals making historic deals without them, as did Begin at the original Camp David. And Arafat too is more desperate than ever -- he knows how fragile his own hold on power and even legitimacy has become; and he knows how much he has let his own future, and that of his people, be determined by decisions soon to be taken in Jerusalem and Washington. So they all desperately need some kind of a deal now...read on: ISRAEL'S RIGHT WING EYES COMEBACK By Howard Goller JERUSALEM, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Buoyed by a growing public perception that Prime Minister Ehud Barak has failed both at politics and peacemaking, Israel's right wing is hoping for a comeback 18 months after his landslide election victory. Barak's grasp on barely a quarter of the seats in parliament and his dismal standing in opinion polls have improved the electoral chances of leading hawk Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu, the rightist prime minister Barak ousted in May 1999, analysts said. Accused of responding equivocally to two months of Palestinian revolt, perceived as insensitive to large blocs of Israeli society and regarded as a poor administrator, the Labour Party's Barak has boosted the morale of Israel's right. Given the fading prospects for a Palestinian peace treaty that Barak aimed to make the showpiece of his term in office, analysts say the best he can hope for is a ruling partnership with Sharon, who heads the rightist Likud party. With a month-long "safety net" from the ultra-Orthodox Shas party running out and no sign that Barak and Sharon can come to terms for forging a joint coalition, the likeliest alternative is early elections, perhaps between April and June. The first of three readings of a bill to call early elections could take place in parliament on Tuesday, boosting the comeback hopes of the vanquished Netanyahu, the frontrunner in all opinion polls. "I am certain we will go for an early election and my assessment is that we will come to it in April-May because no matter how you look at it, Mr Barak is finished," said Shimon Shiffer, veteran diplomatic correspondent for Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel's largest newspaper. Publicly, Barak's aides appeal to President Yasser Arafat to return to the negotiating table abandoned with the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in late September. But privately they hold out little hope that talks will resume. BARAK NEEDS A DEAL The conventional wisdom is that Barak could beat all comers in the next election if he runs with a conflict-ending peace deal to his credit. Anything short of that will deny him victory, the reasoning goes. "His only chance of survival is to come to an agreement with Arafat, and then he can initiate an early election and go to the public and say, 'Look, you suffered from my way of conducting myself. But here at least you have peace with the Palestinians, an end to the conflict'," Shiffer said. Opinion polls show Netanyahu, the former Likud prime minister, with the best chance of ousting Barak. A survey on Friday showed Netanyahu leading Barak by 48 percent to 27 percent, with 25 percent undecided. While in office, Netanyahu faced some of the same criticism that Barak has. He has yet to announce he is running but his place in the polls makes him the likeliest Likud choice over Sharon. Only time will tell if memories of his past performance, jogged by his candidacy, will swing voters to Barak. After his loss last year, Netanyahu took a self-imposed "time-out" from politics. But having been cleared of a corruption scandal in late September, he has reappeared with growing frequency on Israel's political radar. Fearing a Netanyahu comeback, Barak and Sharon could join forces in a left-right coalition that would ensure them a hold on power while delaying his return. Both pay lip service to national unity but have failed to reconcile differences over how to make peace and fight violence. ALIENATING ISRAEL'S ARABS AND RUSSIANS Meanwhile, Barak has managed to lose the crucial support of Israel's Arabs, who make up nearly a fifth of the population. They accuse him of responding ineptly to the police killing of 13 of their brethren during anti-Israeli demonstrations. He has also lost key support among another fifth of the population, mostly secular immigrants from Russia who accuse him of reneging on promises to reduce the power of ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties and of being soft on the Arabs. Palestinians say they draw little distinction between the peace policies of Netanyahu and Barak even though the latter at the Camp David peace summit in July broke taboos the former is unlikely to have considered breaking. Some Palestinians admit privately to preferring Netanyahu as prime minister because his perceived greater intransigence boosts their cause in the realm of world opinion. Senior Likud activist Yossi Olmert said that, for Israelis, what distinguished Netanyahu's approach to the Oslo peace process with the Palestinians were his demands for reciprocity. "If they give, they get. If they don't give, they don't get," Netanyahu would say, even though Palestinians and left-leaning Israelis called this a formula for deadlock. Olmert said Netanyahu had learned the hard lessons of his three years in office from a domestic standpoint and would not divide left from right, religious from secular -- an assessment others dispute. "He has become much more acceptable to people even from the centre and left and I think this is part and parcel of a more sober approach," Olmert said. "The messianic expectations that Oslo would bring full, final peace failed and people are ready to listen to something else." ISRAELI OPPOSITION APPEALS TO COURT By DINA KRAFT JERUSALEM (AP - Nov 27 ) - Israel's hard-line opposition appealed to the Supreme Court on Monday in a new bid to topple Prime Minister Ehud Barak, while Israeli and Palestinian officials met secretly to try to resume security coordination. The action comes a day after Israel's most serious cross-border retaliatory attack on Lebanon to the north since pulling its troops from an occupied border region in May. During two months of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, Barak repeatedly tried and failed to bring the Likud, the largest opposition party, into his government. Opposition leader Ariel Sharon sought a pledge from Barak that he not resume talks with the Palestinians on the basis of concessions he offered at a Mideast summit last summer at the U.S. presidential retreat of Camp David. Barak has refused to close the door on a resumption of peace talks, and Sharon this week renewed efforts to bring down the government. He asked the Supreme Court to force Barak's Labor party to allow for early elections if a simple majority of those present in parliament ask for it. Three judges hearing the case Monday scheduled another session before an expanded panel of judges Tuesday, the day that a bill for elections was scheduled for the first of three readings. ``It's clear we have to change policies and in order to do that we must change the government. So we must have elections,'' said Limor Livnat, a leading Likud figure. The next elections are scheduled for 2003. However, an early vote appears inevitable. Barak is trailing badly in the polls, especially when running against Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister he trounced in 1999. Observers say Barak's only chance for political survival is to reach agreement with the Palestinians in the coming weeks and turn elections into a referendum on such an accord. A majority of Israelis continue to support a peace agreement that includes territorial concessions to the Palestinians. In recent days, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has signaled that he wants to resume contacts with the Israelis. In a first step, Arafat met briefly with Israeli Tourism Minister Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, a former army chief, over the weekend. Military officials from both sides have held talks since then on resuming security coordination. In a sign that Egypt has not abandoned its role as mediator, it helped arrange a meeting in Cairo on Sunday between top Palestinian and Israeli security officials. Monday, meanwhile, marked the start of Ramadan, the holiest month in the Islamic calendar when Muslims fast from dawn to dusk. It was not immediately clear whether Ramadan, which is widely observed by Palestinians, would dampen or accelerate the unrest. Ramadan is a time of increased religious fervor, but the fast also changes the daily rhythm of life in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with residents getting up later and trying to be home for the main meal at sundown. The contested Jerusalem holy site where the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian fighting began is likely to be a major flashpoint during Ramadan. The walled compound - known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as Haram as-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary - draws hundreds of thousands of Muslim worshippers for Friday noon prayers during Ramadan. However, Israel has been enforcing a tight Israeli blockade of Palestinian communities in the West Bank, barring residents from entering or leaving, and it was not clear whether the restrictions would be eased during the holy month. A visit by Sharon to the compound on Sept. 28 was the trigger for the fighting in which more than 280 people, the vast majority Palestinians, have been killed. In the latest round of deadly confrontation, Israeli soldiers killed five armed Palestinians late Sunday as they set out from the Palestinian West Bank city of Qalqilya into an area under Israeli control, the army said. The Palestinians had opened fire a short time earlier on an Israeli car driving to a nearby Jewish settlement, the army said. The Israeli army also confirmed striking back with gunfire Sunday after a roadside bombing in Chebaa Farms near the Lebanese border killed one soldier. One civilian was slightly injured on the Lebanese side. Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, in comments on state-run television, called the Israeli raids a ``grave precedent that may entail serious repercussions for which Israel is alone responsible.'' MiD-EasT RealitieS - www.MiddleEast.Org Phone: 202 362-5266 Fax: 815 366-0800 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscriibe email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with subject SUBSCRIBE To unsubscribe email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with subject UNSUBSCRIBE
