The likely return to power of Ariel Sharon's Likud Party in Israel's elections today promises a continuation of deadlock in the Palestinian-Israeli confrontation, writes David Horovitz, in Jerusalem
Last Friday, I sat in the car at the traffic lights near south Jerusalem's Malkha Shopping Centre, and watched a slightly pudgy, bespectacled youth distribute election stickers for the Labour Party. Or, rather, try to. Three lanes of traffic were backed up perhaps 20 cars deep at the lights, and the youngster walked increasingly disconsolately from car to car, holding up the stickers to the captive motorists who, without exception, waved him away.
The unwanted pieces of election propaganda bore a photograph of Labour's bearded would-be prime minister, retired general Amram Mitzna, next to the slogan: "We believe in you Mitzna." They were being rejected, and Labour is heading for electoral meltdown, not because Israeli voters doubt Mr Mitzna's sincerity, however, but precisely because they "believe" he'd do what he promises he'd do as prime minister: Mr Mitzna is a conviction politician, and his convictions are anathema to his countryfolk.
Mr Mitzna's campaign platform for today's elections has been fashioned around a readiness to re-engage with the Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat at the peace negotiation table, and a fall-back plan, should such negotiations prove unproductive, of unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank. Those positions are unpalatable to the vast majority of Israelis.
In essence, the elections are a re-run of those held solely for the premiership (not for parliament) two years ago, in which Ehud Barak, the Labour prime minister who had sought to reach a permanent peace accord with Mr Arafat at the July 2000 Camp David summit, was ousted by the man seeking re-election today, Likud leader Ariel Sharon. And now, as then - indeed, as in all the elections Israel has held this past decade - the determining factor is the electorate's attitude to Mr Arafat. In 1992, Israelis elected Yitzhak Rabin because they felt Mr Arafat's professed desire for peaceful coexistence was worth exploring.
In 1996, they swung to the right, and chose the Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu, because a series of suicide bombings had persuaded them that Mr Arafat was betraying his pledge to try and thwart terrorism. In 1999, they elected Mr Barak because the bombers had largely been quieted and Mr Arafat was looking more like a peace partner again. And two years ago, they brought in Mr Sharon because they saw the failure of the Camp David summit - at which most Israelis believe Mr Barak offered as much as, or more than, Israel can ever offer in the search for peace - as definitive proof that Mr Arafat was still subtly bent on Israel's destruction.
That summit and the repercussions of its collapse remain paramount in the Israeli psyche. Most Israelis have been telling the pollsters that they endorse Palestinian statehood and support the necessary territorial compromise. The logical consequence of such attitudes would be overwhelming backing at the ballot box for the ready-to-compromise Mr Mitzna.
But that's where Camp David and Mr Arafat come in again. By demanding a "right of return" for four million Palestinian refugees, not to the promised new Palestine, but to Israel, Mr Arafat, in Israeli eyes, was calling for the demographic overwhelming of the Jewish state, with its five million Jews and 1.2 million Arabs.
In the Israeli narrative, moreover, Mr Arafat did not merely betray the peace process at Camp David, he also then went home and lied to his people about what he had rejected in their name, telling them that Israel had refused to end the occupation and was opposed to their independence, and using his media to whip up his people into a frenzy of anti-Israeli hostility that guaranteed the eruption of the still-raging "second Intifada".
SO while the voters have told the pollsters they strongly favour a resumption of serious peace efforts, they won't vote for Mr Mitzna, the candidate who advocates such a resumption, because Mr Arafat is still calling the shots - literally, most Israelis believe. Were the PA President to be succeeded by a leader who convinced Israelis of his or her genuine commitment to reconciliation - by revolutionising the education curriculum, curbing the relentless anti-Israeli incitement in the media, changing the personal leadership tone and strategy that see Mr Arafat consistently urging his people to "martyrdom" and channeling funds to known terrorists, the Israeli electoral map would look very different.
The first bitter irony of all this is that, in re-electing Mr Sharon, Israelis are almost guaranteeing that there will be no such dramatic change on the Palestinian side for the foreseeable future. For Mr Sharon, refuses to offer the slightest encouragement to those Palestinian moderates who oppose Mr Arafat's leadership.
He speaks in the vaguest terms of being prepared to make "painful compromises" for peace, but at the same time indicates an unwillingness to dismantle so much as a single settlement, and hints that his grudging endorsement of Palestinian statehood would be conditional on such a state taking shape on no more than 50 per cent of the West Bank.
The second bitter irony is that Mr Mitzna, the apparent political dove, provides no encouragement to Palestinian moderates either. By promising unilateral withdrawal if his proposed new talks don't pan out, he, too, cuts the ground away from beneath their feet. How can Al-Quds University chief Mr Nusseibeh plausibly urge ordinary Palestinians publicly to shun their murderous extremists, and argue that the bombings and shootings are both inhumane and detrimental to the Palestinian cause? With Mr Mitzna counselling unilateral withdrawal, the bombers and their supporters can retort that the strategy is working. The Israelis are ready to capitulate. Terrorism is prevailing.
The process by which the Likud selected its Knesset candidates has attracted allegations of corruption that have already seen three activists indicted and a deputy minister sacked. Mr Sharon has been dogged by accusations of past campaign finance misdeeds. It is a measure of the abiding Israeli antipathy to Mr Arafat that, despite those allegations, the Likud leader will sail to re-election today.
Plainly, Mr Sharon's impending victory presages no change on the moribund diplomatic front. And while it is possible that a Bush Administration re-energised by a clear-cut success in ousting Saddam Hussein might then try to intervene and break the deadlock here, it is far more likely that Mr Sharon might seize a perceived opportunity to kill or exile Mr Arafat at the height of American preoccupation with Saddam - a move that would undoubtedly spell a further escalation of hostilities.
Two years after he was first elected, Ariel Sharon has done nothing to quell the relentless toll of conflict. The Israeli economy has collapsed. Unemployment is rising. Immigration levels are falling. Yet Mr Sharon has worked within the Israeli consensus in his use of the army to counter the bombers. He has built a firm alliance with the Bush White House. And he won't talk to Mr Arafat.
For most Israelis, in the polling booths today, that makes him the least worst choice.