The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Israeli Elections

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. Menahem Begin, the right-wing victor in Tuesday`s Israeli election, started today trying to form a government while everyone else was still trying to figure out what his surprise victory meant. For the first time since Israeli independence in 1948, the moderate- to-left Labor Party will not govern the country. The dominant force will be Begin`s Likud, a bloc of four conservative parties with a hard line on territorial concessions to the Arabs. As a symbol of that, Menahem Begin scheduled a trip today to the West Bank territory captured from Jordan in the Six-Day War to visit the Kaddum settlement, set up in defiance of the Labor government`s wishes. Arab nations say the Likud victory is a setback to peace. In Washington it`s thought to have dimmed the prospects for a Geneva peace conference. And in Israel itself, stunned Labor Party leaders are blaming President Carter for their defeat, charging that he undermined their conciliatory policy towards the Arabs. Tonight, what will the election do to American influence in the Middle East and to continued peace efforts? Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Robin, the Labor Party`s defeat is being called a surprise, but a hindsight look at what`s been going on in Israel reveals that it shouldn`t have been too big a shock. First off, twenty-nine years is a long time for one party to run a government -- any government. That psychological factor was reinforced by many very real problems, double- digit inflation, with its accompanying financial crisis, and scandals within the government itself being the most severe. The scandals involved the Labor government directly: the disclosure in February that a Party official had siphoned off kickback money for the Party; then the suicide of the Housing Minister after a financial investigation was launched; finally, in March, the news that the wife of Prime Minister Rabin had money in a U.S. bank account -- it`s illegal for an Israeli citizen to hold foreign bank accounts. The final straw came when Rabin admitted he had lied about the amount of money in the account. Rabin was already in trouble politically. He was in a caretaker status after his coalition majority in Parliament fell apart. This time he stepped aside. His major opponent within his own party, Defense Minister Shirrnon Peres, took over as acting Prime Minister. All of these and other domestic political troubles finally added up. The result Tuesday was many votes being siphoned from the Labor Party to a new party known as the Democratic Movement for Change. And the beneficiary of all of this turned out to be a man most Americans had never heard of, a man named Begin. Robin?

MacNEIL: First, a closer look at that man -- the man most likely to become Israel`s new Prime Minister. Begin was born in Poland, studied law, and found himself serving with the Polish army in Palestine during World War II. He deserted, became leader. of the Irgun Zvai Leurni, a terrorist organization dedicated to driving the British out. After independence the Irgun evolved into the Herut political party, which merged with three others in 1971 to form the present Likud, meaning "unity." Peter Bergson is a political scientist and former Israeli_ member of Parliament who knew Begin well during the days of the Irgun. Mr. Bergson, what kind of a man is Begin?

PETER BERGSON: I knew him before the days of the Irgun; Mr. Begin only joined the Irgun directly as commander of the Irgun in 1943. I met him in Poland in 1937 when he was an activist Zionist under the party of Zeev Jabotinsky. Mr. Begin is a politician supreme, I would say. lie is first of all always a brilliant politician, and this is his forte and this is his weakness. By the way, `he did not desert from the Polish army; he was released from the Polish army. The relations with the Poles in those days politically of the Zionist movement were pretty good, and the Polish commanders released him from the army, knowing what he was going to do.

MacNEIL: In what way is it a weakness that he is a consummate politician?

BERGSON: Because what Israel needs after twenty-nine years of constant war with no peace in sight is statesmen, and not politicians.

MacNEIL: As a military leader, what was he like? He was said to have been responsible, as the military leader of the Irgun, for the blowing up of the King David Hotel in that incident in which many British soldiers were killed, and held responsible by the Arabs for the deaths of 250 Arabs in the attack on a village, which they term a massacre, historically. What kind of a man was he then?

BERGSON: As the New York Times said today, it`s a little bit odd that the Arabs should be screaming against terrorism. Mr. Begin is a very mild, gentle man. I don`t believe he`s ever shot anything -- certainly not in his days in the Irgun. He was not the military commander of the Irgun.; he was a kind of coordinator of a group of-young people who moved into action.. The Irgun was passive -- the Irgun was founded in 1931 -- it was passive since the war broke out when the Supreme Commander Jabotinsky said that the Jewish people are joining the Allies in the fight against Nazi Germany, against Hitler. The Irgun then split, and another group, called the Fighters of Free North Israel, started fighting the British; the Irgun didn`t. But the bulk of the Irgun disintegrated from inaction. By 1943 the Irgun was a very weak body, and when the news came out -- Rabbi Hertzberg`s predecessor, Rabbi Weiss, announced in November of 1943 that two million Jews have been massacred, we of the political angle here -- I was head of the Hebrew Liberation Movement, as we called it then, which was the political staff of the Irgun in this country, and in the world, for that matter -- we felt the British were accomplices to this mass hideous extermination and decided to fight...

MacNEIL: And that`s when the Irgun-became more militant.

BERGSON:...and that`s when the Irgun was reorganized and a new commander -- the commander then, a Mr. Meridor, was willing to step down -- and a new commander was looked for and somebody suggested Mr. Begin, and the terrible mistake of choosing a man who was not a member of the Irgun was done, and I`m afraid I had a little bit of a hand in it; at least, I could have stopped it; I didn`t choose him, but I didn`t stop him.

MacNEIL: I see. His position has been totally inflexible so far -- at least, as far His I know -- on giving up occupied territory which he calls, in fact, "liberated" territory. Do you believe, politician that he is, he would remain inflexible on that?

BERGSON: Well, I don`t think there is inflexibility, I think that the issue of territory is a misleading issue. There was no peace in Israel in Palestine --and I am as much Palestinian as an Israeli; the whole of Palestine is my fatherland -- there was no peace in Palestine in 1967, before the War. In fact, the War broke out because there was no peace, because there was a war and there were no territories. Why anybody thinks that if these territories were eliminated there would be peace, it`s simplistic..

MacNEIL: Whether it is the issue or non-issue, is it something on which he is likely to remain politically inflexible?

BERGSON: I believe that there is very little difference, really, in the realities of life of a three-and-a-half-million-people nation, a good portion of which was born in war and continues to fight in wars, between the positions that were those of Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, who was supposed to be the candidate, or Menahem Begin, and they are all very much alike; there isn`t that much difference that I know what all the excitement is all about.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Yes, Robin, the main concern in the United States, of course, is what effect an Israeli government led by Mr. Begin would have on its relations with the U.S. and on the chances for a lasting peace in the Middle East. A view on that and other matters now from Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, President of the American Jewish Congress, Professor of Jewish History at Columbia University, and author of the book, The Zionist Idea. First, Rabbi, under Begin do you see the government of Israel undergoing any basic, radical changes?

Rabbi ARTHUR HERTZBERG: Well, first of all, it depends on what kind of government Begin assembles, if indeed he can assemble one. It is possible that he assembles a narrow coalition of the forty-odd - it is in the low forties -- votes that he has in the Israeli parliament, plus fifteen, sixteen or seventeen -- depending on how you put it together -- of the religious, who tend to be hard-line, plus a few fringes, so you count out the morning after the night before, to about sixty-two, which is a narrow, doctrinaire kind of coalition, which in a sense makes him a prisoner of his own rhetoric -- and Mr. Begin does have a rhetorical style of politics. Mr. Begin doesn`t seem to want that. He has asked for a national unity government.

LEHRER: The Labor Party has already turned him down on that.

HERTZBERG: That`s very early in the game. Under Israeli procedure it takes minimally under the law -- no; when the President of. Israel finally calls in a Prime Minister-designate, he has under the law three weeks in which to assemble a government. He can ask for three more weeks, and then he can get extensions. It was presumed on all sides that the assembling of a government, even when we were guessing that Peres would win narrowly, would take a long time. This is going to take longer.

LEHRER: All right. Let me stop you right there for a minute, Rabbi. Let`s take then, the two options that you outlined either a narrow coalition or a unify coalition. If he goes the narrow, way, what could that mean in terms of the way the government in Israel operates?

HERTZBERG: If he goes the narrow way, it`s going to operate with much tougher rhetoric. To use a favorite term of the President of the United States, its symbolism will be harder-lined; we`ve already had that today with Mr. Begin`s visit to the West Bank. But ,I have a suspicion that Mr. Bergson is not entirely wrong, that Begin is not that radically different in actual practice, for two reasons. First of all, Begin`s own party is a coalition. The Likud, which won the forty-one or forty-two seats, is a coalition of the revisionists...

LEHRER: There are four parties, right?

HERTZBERG: Four parties, and there are quite a number of doves or semi- doves, at least in parts of his four parties. There is another consideration, and that is if you count out the election, taking the Democratic Movement for Change for what it is, `as a splinter from the old Mapai, as a splinter from the old Labor coalition, the real swing in foreign policy terms is less than ten percent. That is, the Israeli voters voted their domestic angers, they voted their tiredness, they are a little more defiant, they are a little less eager to be pushed around; and by the way, if we are accustomed to Arab governments which tell us, "Don`t step on us, even though we`re your clients," we`re now acquiring an Israeli government that is likely to say this a little more stridently. But I don`t think that this is quite the earthquake in foreign policy that the morning papers seem to think it is.

LEHRER: Do you think that the Jimmy Carter factor played a part in the Labor Party`s defeat, his comments-and everything that`s been charged today?

HERTZBERG: The analyses that I have seen so far tend to emphasize -- and these are quite precise analyses of election districts; they`re already in -- that the heavy voting for Likud -- and remember, Likud itself only gained two extra seats -- the heavy changes were in the other Israel, the oriental Israel, the deprived Israel where there was some swing. The heavy changes seem to have come on domestic issues. Nonetheless, certainly it is true that the Carter administration didn`t help. Let me say very openly that I saw Rabin in his own office at the end of February about two or three days before he was coming to this country on his semi-state visit to the President, and he was saying, "Tell the President, tell the Americans that no possible government of Israel which will come out .of this election will be any more dovish than myself," and his associates were saying as one walked out of the office quite literally, "This government can fall if it is not given support from the United States." So that they do feel that way, but I`m not persuaded of it.

LEHRER: Thank you, Rabbi. Robin?

MacNEIL: Let`s pursue this angle of Israel`s relations with the United States with Ranan Lurie, an internationally syndicated columnist, and cartoonist for King Features and Newsday. He is pessimistic about the direction of this relationship. First of all, this is how in his cartoons he pictures Likud leader Menahem Begin-and the nature of America` s influence over Israel. . . and what `Tuesday`s election means for Israeli- American relations. A sixth-generation Israeli but now an American citizen, Mr. Lurie also takes a very dim view, I understand, of the prospects for peace. As Jim just mentioned, Mr. Lurie, many Labor leaders in Israel are blaming President Carter for their party`s defeat. What is the logic of hat?

RANAN LURIE: The logic of that is that if Carter, who wanted Peres very much as Prime Minister -- perhaps the lesser evil from the American point of view -- would make his remarks about the Palestinian homeland a few days after May 17 rather than a few days before May 17, I think he would have the cake and eat it. This way he didn`t eat the cake and doesn`t have it.

MacNEIL: So it was the remark about the Palestinian homeland rather than his remarks at the time of the Rabin visit about defensible borders for Israel that is the source of this frustration...

LURIE: Oh, very definitely so. I think the defensible border thing was a plus for. Carter in Israeli eyes. However, Begin in a way predicted that the United States is going to eventually support a Palestinian homeland, and here comes President Carter and perhaps produced one of his first major mistakes internationally; and he supported Begin in a way because Begin could come out -- and he did come out -- and say, "You see? I told you;" and so on. I would like also to differ with my learned friends here. I think that the situation in Israel right now was a real political earthquake and we`re going to find out that the consequences are going to be quite dramatic. By that I mean Begin thirty years ago was the commander of the Israeli PLO, the exact equivalent. When he and the PLO will meet -- and they will meet, verbally, ideologically, and so on -- it will be metal hitting metal. All the grays will be eliminated; it will be black or white. Now, you say I`m pessimistic. I may be very optimistic here, because the same way that DeGaulle was the guy who could create peace with Algeria by leaving Algeria, and Nixon, the extreme conservative, was the guy who opened the gates to China, if Begin comes to a modus vivendi with the Arabs, no one can say, "Ah!" you know...

MacNEIL: "He`s sold us down the river."

LURIE: Exactly, because he has a license to do such a thing.

MacNEIL: Can there be, do you think, a peace settlement with an Israeli government headed by Begin, given that the sort of conventional wisdom in Washington for a long time has been that concessions need to be made to get such a settlement?

LURIE: Yes. I think the odds are against it, but there is a chance. I would even daresay the odds are seventy to thirty percent against it, but you definitely have a thirty percent here, and if these thirty per cent will work they`ll work all the way.

MacNEIL: Can Mr. Begin`s government, should he become the Prime Minister and form a coalition, can it last?

LURIE: I think, first of all, he can form a coalition. My prediction will be that it will be a fairly large coalition, and I think it will last. I do think that the Labor Party eventually is going to come into it, unless the Labor Par( will want to create a real havoc, to teach a lesson to the country that only the Labor Party can really rule, and that they would do through the union -- through the Histradrut, which controls a vast part of the Israeli economy; and they can start, if they so desire, a catastrophe of strikes and this kind of

MacNEIL: I see. Jim?

LEHRER: Yes. Gentlemen, on U.S.-Israeli relations, Mr. Bergson, to you first. You know, Mr. Begin`s statement yesterday that President Carter should not try to impose an external solution in the Middle East and leave it to the parties involved: how do you interpret what-he`s telling President Carter?

BERGSON: First of all, I would like to say I take very strong exception with the notion. I just left Israel a couple of days before the election. I am not engaged in anything else except political science, so I watched it really closely. President Carter had absolutely nothing to do with the result of these elections; this was a domestic election. There was no issue. The New York Times again reported a week before the election that this is an election without an issue. The territories weren`t an issue, foreign policy wasn`t an issue, President Carter was not an issue,; with all due respect and admiration, he didn`t help or hurt anybody. He was just out of the picture.

HERTZBERG: He might have helped.

BERGSON: What happened is a simple Americanism: the public wanted to throw the rascals out, and they did. They didn`t vote Begin in; Begin got two more seats, that`s all. He wasn`t in government; if he was in government he would have been voted out also. Now, the question again is, in practical terms -- I can only talk within my realities, and my realities are that President Carter made a historic step forward towards peace when he started discussing the meaning of peace. And if President Carter is anything in Israel, he`s very popular in Israel, because an Israeli wants peace explained in practical terms and not in terms of declarations, of double- talk, of bargaining positions, of talking about "We can`t save, therefore, Israel`s existence because we are losing a bargaining point." The Israelis resent every time somebody says he is for the survival of Israel; a quiver goes in the heart of everybody: who has the right to say that we have debate as to whether we should exist or not exist? President Carter started talking what peace means in human, practical terms. And whether Mr. Begin is Prime Minister, whether a dove or a hawk -- meaningless titles. There is a consensus of the people of Israel that for peace -- and you Americans don`t know what it is to be born in war. I have an eighteen year-old daughter, she`s a soldier in the Israeli army. She was at war when she was born. She is at war and her son will be at war! This is the issue: Israel`s existence as a normal nation. Nobody dares say he is for the survival of Albania! Nobody dares. And if I may give some advice to the President, he didn`t use this word until last week, when some pressure was brought on him. He never used -- President Carter -the words "survival of Israel." Israel is there to stay, it is going to go down, fifty million more people will go down with it.

LEHRER: All right, sir. Rabbi, a quick question for you. Is it possible to generalize the reaction of the American Jewish community to these election result`s?

HERTZBERG: First of all, the American Jewish community has been accustomed for thirty years or more to dealing with the old management. The familiar signposts were that Golda was super-grandma, and before her was David lion- Gurion, and there were a bunch of youngsters: Rabin, Peres, ecteral -- who were, you know, the kind of people one presumed would be minding the store. This is an overturn, and so there is a bit of stun and there is a bit of, even, dismay. There is also an immediate concern that a Begin government running straight into a. very obvious desire by the new President and a very popular President of the United States to settle the Middle Eastern question, which means not only - I take issue with Mr. Bergson -- to bring peace but at three points in his settlement he wants to bring peace, and he has defined it quite properly. But he also wants pretty well to get the Israelis to move back to something not very far different than the `67 borders, which in the mass mind of Israel is regarded as not terribly defensible. So that the American Jewish community and the other supporters of Israel -- and it`s no secret that Congressmen are concerned and lots of other people in American opinion -- are asking themselves what happens when a Carter administration which is pledged to a soft line confronts an Israeli government which is pledged ideologically to confront it? What happens to the friends of Israel in the middle?

LEHRER: All right, sir. Robin?

MacNEIL: Presumably people in the State Department and in other places in the world are doing this little game that they play when they try to analyze the situation, looking at the worst case, the best case from their point of view, and what`s likely to happen. I don`t know whether we have time to go through them all, but I`d just like very briefly from each of you, what is the worst case that can emerge from the election of Mr. Begin?

BERGSON: There will be stagnation and more of the same as in the previous government.

MacNEIL: Rabbi Hertzberg, what is the worst case?

HERTZBERG: The worst case is of course war.

MacNEIL: And is that made more likely by this election than by the continuation of the Labor. Party in power?

HERTZBERG: I think at least it makes the Arabs a little angrier. You asked me for a worst case; I`ll use Mr. Lurie`s seventy-thirty percentages. I think it`s a five percent possibility, no more, but it`s possible. And since it`s five percent possibility and it`s a little more possible now. Obviously, therefore, one has to state it. I don`t believe that that`s what`s going to happen.

MacNEIL: We`ll come back to that. What do you think is the worst case as a result of this election?

LURIE: The worst case would be war.

MacNEIL: Made even marginally more likely because of this election than it was before?

LURIE: Yes.

HERTZBERG: Marginally is the ward; marginally more likely.

LURIE: The people who will rule the country right now are - you can call them more decisive in their politics, more obvious in their politics. We have to take into consideration another figure. We`re speaking about Mr. Begin all the time; Number Two is Ezer Weizman, who was -- and Mr. Begin suffered a severe heart attack right now and he is not a teenager -- General Weizman is a brilliant general, a gungho type. He planned the Six- Day War very successfully. He was the gentleman who came to Levi Eshkol when he was vacillating...

MacNEIL: The former Prime Minister.

LURIE: Right, and he threw his ranks on the table and he said, wear them only if you`ll give me orders to move."

MacNEIL: Okay. I`d like to pursue that, but I`d just like to go around to you all on what is the best case that can emerge from this election?

BERGSON: If I may say, I want to take strong exception to the fact that this election had anything to do with war. If anything, it will reduce substantially the danger of war.

MacNEIL: Okay. What is the best thing that can emerge -- scenario?

BERGSON: The best thing to happen is a grip with reality, a grip of reality. There was an earthquake, I agree with Ranan Lurie, domestically in Israel. There is a great upheaval in Israel; Israel was asleep for all these years and Israel is waking up and is coming to a grip with reality. When I spoke before of the consensus-for peace, if it becomes a boundary dispute then there is a consensus that boundaries don`t matter; boundaries matter because there is no peace on them.

MacNEIL: We have less than a minute. The best case that can emerge from this?

HERTZBERG: I think that the American government is going to stop imagining that Israel is already in its left back pocket, and I think, quite strangely, that a best case will emerge, which is serious negotiations for peace; not a stampede, but it will work.

MacNEIL: Mr. Lurie?

LURIE: Agreed -- peace.

MacNEIL: Well, thank you all very much. It will be interesting to pursue that further, and we`ll be watching to see what happens over the next few weeks. Thanks very much, Jim; good night. And thank you all for coming. That`s all for tonight. Jim Lehrer and I will be back tomorrow night, when we will look at Namibia: the country up for grabs. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.