Democratic Palestine : 38 (ص 14)
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- Democratic Palestine : 38 (ص 14)
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of
threatened Israel’s existence, but he helped bring down the government.
a departure from official US policy.
In reality, it was neither the Bush-
Baker statements, nor the imagined
US pressure that actually brought
down the government. Peres had put
an ultimatum the last week in Feb-
ruary that the government must take
steps vis-a-vis the peace process, or
else Labor might withdraw. This was
as Foreign Minister Arens was in
Washington D.C., excusing the Shamir
government from making even minor
concessions on the composition of a
Palestinian delegation, on the grounds
of the current political situation.(By
this, Arens was mainly referring to the
internal problems in the Likud after
Sharon challenged Shamir’s leadership.
Soon afterwards, Economy Minister
Modai and four other MK’s, all former
Liberals, moved to reconstitute them-
selves as a separate faction, breaking
their merger with the Likud and form-
ing the Movement for the Zionist
Ideal.)
It is hard to imagine that the Bush
Administration intended to provoke
the downfall of the Israeli government,
but it did hope that Shamir would go
along with Baker’s efforts to promote
the Israeli prime minister’s own plan.
The Labor Party, for its part, had been
ready to cooperate with Baker’s tactic
of implementing the Shamir plan in a
14
way that would allow Egypt to lure the
PLO into authorizing Palestinians from
the occupied territories to meet an
Israeli delegation.
However, Likud balked on the
details, claiming that agreeing to
include one or two expelled Palesti-
nians in the delegation was tantamount
to talking to the PLO, and would open
the way for the right of return for
three million Palestinian refugees.
Similarly, for Likud, agreeing to meet
a Jerusalem resident was seen as tan-
tamount to conceding the city itself. In
fact, these were just the most refined
of Mr. Baker’s tricks to lure the PLO
into negating its own role in the peace
process and, last but not least, under-
mine the intifada politically.
The irony of the matter is that
Likud and Labor disagree not at all on
Jerusalem being the «united and eter-
nal capital of Israel.» If one can
imagine a scenario in the future where
the US would press for negotiations on
the city’s final status, the two major
Israeli blocs would certainly stand
united in defending this principle. In
fact, the Likud and Labor positions on
the 1967 occupied territories as such
are not so different as often intimated.
They concur on the necessity of retain-
ing the Syrian Golan Heights. While
Likud refuses withdrawal from one
inch of the occupied West Bank and
Gaza Strip, the Labor Party position
for eventual withdrawal actually envi-
sions retaining major parts of the West
Bank.
New immigration
The situation is somewhat the
same regarding the new wave of
immigration to Israel of Soviet as well
as Ethiopian Jews. Both Likud and
Labor are acutely aware that this pre-
sents Israel with an historic opportun-
ity to bolster its hold on occupied
Palestine, and resolve the demographic
balance in favor of Zionism. Almost
10,000 Soviet Jews came to Israel in
the first two months of 1990, after
which the government slapped military
censorship on press reports about
immigration. By late March, the Ethio-
pian government had confirmed that
hundreds of Ethiopian Jews had settled
in Israel in recent months. Based on
estimates of the size of the Jewish
community remaining in the Soviet
Union and Ethiopia, 1.8 million(in
1979) and 9,000 respectively, the
Zionist state has the chance of increas-
ing its Jewish population by one-third
if the immigration continues.
Both Likud and Labor are well
aware that the US played a crucial role
in facilitating the Soviet Jewish immig-
ration, and that its financial aid is
pivotal in efforts to absorb the new
immigrants. Yet statements by Likud
leaders seemed almost designed to pro-
voke an international reaction. Follow-
ing on his statements about the need
for «Greater Israel» to absorb the new
immigrants, Shamir also publicly
insisted that the government will direct
Soviet Jews to settle in Jerusalem,
including the eastern part of the city.
On March 9th, Housing Minister Levy
announced the start of construction of
3,000 apartments for new immigrants
in East Jerusalem, declaring that «this
decision was meant as defiance» of US
President Bush(International Herald
Tribune, March 15th). In contrast, the
Labor Party has not been prone to
flashy statements about the new
immigration, though it is working
equally dilligently to exploit this new
opportunity to the maximum. The
Labor policy seems based on the pre-
mise that if Israel cooperates in the
Democratic Palestine, March-April 1990 - هو جزء من
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