by Rev. William E. Currie
July 1996
In this issue:
Was the recent razor-thin victory of Binyamin Netanyahu (pronounced Ne-tan-YAH-hoo) and the Likud party a speed bump in the peace negotiations or a concrete barrier? Opinions vary widely. One statement is certain: Israel will never be the same. This was a landmark election.
Politics in Israel
To understand why, it's helpful to look more closely at the Israeli political system.
Israel is a democratic republic with a parliamentary system of government. The cabinet, selected by the prime minister (in the past the head of the party in power) is the main policy-determining body. Selection to key portfolios (cabinet positions) is a politically sensitive process subject to both political pressure within the main controlling party (Labor or Likud) and minority parties needed to form a governing coalition in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
In the history of the state, no one party has gained enough seats to have a clear majority of the 120-seat Knesset. The party in power has been, to date, a coalition rather than a popularly elected major party. This has been a key feature of the Israeli political system.
The new factor introduced in the recent election between Labor's Shimon Peres and Likud's Netanyahu was the direct election of the prime minister by Israeli voters, much as we elect our president in the U.S. The assassinated former prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, used his immense popularity to push this change through the Knesset. In this election Likud did not gain more elected seats in the new Knesset than the Labor party (Likud garnered 32 seats to Labors 34.) But as elected head of Likud, Netanyahu selects the all-important cabinet that determines future Israeli policy toward the peace process.
Minority party power
Even with the new direct election of the prime minister, minority parties played a major role in the outcome, and will be an influential part of the new government. Netanyahu was elected by a slim majority of less than one percent of the voters. Key to his election was the unanimous vote of the ultra-orthodox religious Jews, who were the real gainers in this election. Instead of 16 Knesset seats, they now hold 23 - a sizable minority that must be taken into account. Adherents to these often fractious groups voted, as they were told to by their rabbis, for Netanyahu. They were even transported to the polls to vote.
The Orthodox want to maintain their hold on Hebron and the West Bank as biblical territory promised by God to the Jewish people. (Most of the secular Jewish majority don't care to hold on to it.) The ultra-orthodox do, however, want security along with every Israeli citizen.
A party that didn't even exist before the election is the Yisrael B'Aliya party, representing Israel's 650,000 Russian immigrants. Led by former Russian prisoner of conscience, Natan Sharansky, this new party now holds seven Knesset seats, a force with which to be reckoned. Russian immigrants were also transported to the polls even though some had moved a distance from their polling place. Getting out a heavy immigrant vote was a high priority to the Russians, a group tired of hearing promises by the former Labor coalition for housing and jobs that never materialized.
The ultra-orthodox and the Russian immigrants have demanded and received recognition and important portfolios in the cabinet. The two groups total almost as many votes as the Likud party that will rule in the coalition. Yet both groups have divergent and often contradictory demands that will be hard for the new government to reconcile.
Which promises will he keep?
In his public speeches prior to the election, Netanyahu made it clear he was not in favor of the peace process as carded on by the former Rabin and Peres Labor governments. This, of course, was noted by world leaders, including Arafat and leaders of Arab nations.
Voters were not voting against peace, but against the lack of security. Israelis are often afraid to leave their homes, not knowing where a terrorist might strike. Even bus rides are a threat to the Israeli population; they have not forgotten the recent bus bombings that took so many lives.
Netanyahu promised a continuation of efforts to achieve peace, but only with security. For instance, he said he will not give up the Golan Heights but will enlarge the Israeli presence there. Already $3 million frozen by the former government has been freed to build 1,000 new Israeli housing units in the Golan. Netanyahu has also promised hot pursuit of terrorists, even into the Gaza Strip. However, there are now more than 20,000 armed Arabs in Gaza. That means there will be war, said Haaretz, a leading Israeli newspaper, in a recent editorial on the possibilities facing Israel if Netanyahu carries out all his pre-election promises.
Voters know that statements made before an election are often changed or even dropped once the politician is elected to office. Thus, the opening question of this issue of Heartbeat. What does Netanyahu's election mean to the peace process and to the future of Israel and her Arab neighbors?
It will be impossible for Netanyahu to fulfill every promise he made in running for office. However, he is now on a very hot seat. Some of his promises included slowing or stopping the return of Hebron to the Palestinian Authority. He also stated he would renew the program of enlarging and building new settlements on the West Bank.
If Netanyahu goes back on the promise of Peres and the peace accords to redeploy the Israeli troops out of Hebron, keeping them there to protect the religious Jews who live in its environs, he will risk increased terrorism in the whole state, if not a renewed war with the Arab nations. Leaders of those nations have already declared their backing for Arafat and for the demands that Israeli troops leave Hebron. If Netanyahu does pull the troops out and keeps the accords, he will infuriate the rabbis and the religious element who helped to put him in office. It was a young religious Jew, Yigal Amir, who freely confessed to assassinating Yitzhak Rabin for giving up land on the West Bank to gain peace. There is no easy solution to this dilemma for the prime minister.
Netanyahu categorically has rejected Jerusalem as a capital of a future Palestinian state. Many Israelis feared Peres would in the future negotiate a part of Jerusalem as a capital for a future Palestinian state. Israelis hold tenaciously to a united Jewish Jerusalem. Peres lost the election over the possibility of its division, along with the belief of many Israelis that he could not or would not put sufficient security measures in place against terrorism. Yet the Palestinians are equally passionate about having the eastern part of the city as their capital. As difficult as the question of Hebron is, it is not Netanyahu's only problem, just his first.
We need to pray that in the midst of such great uncertainty, the gospel can still go forth in the Land, and that Israeli believers and their congregations will continue to be able to reach out to their friends arid neighbors with the only hope for peace in individual hearts.
The peace process did not stop terrorism in Israel, and neither did the recent election. On the very day Netanyahu was declared the winner there was a Hezbollah attack in South Lebanon that killed four Israeli soldiers. Since then there have been additional Hezbollah attacks in spite of the accords signed following the recent Grapes of Wrath bombardment of south Lebanon by the Israelis.
Why is there this deep-seated hostility between the Arabs and the Jewish people? It is not universal. Even now Jewish and Arab believers meet in combined services to fellowship together. All Arabs do not hate all Jews, and vice versa. The issue is driven by fundamentalist Islam as well as disenchanted Arabs who are closed out of the wealth and property they once enjoyed. Hatred is endemic and not always logical. Playing on the hatred, the Islamic fundamentalists will not give up territory conquered in the name of Allah for Islam.
The mission of Middle Eastern terrorists
Hezbollah, an umbrella organization of various radical Shi'ite groups, was formed following the 1982 Peace for Galilee War conducted under Ariel Sharon to force the PLO, a terrorist organization, from Lebanon. The war succeeded only in part. On lsrael's departure from Lebanon (under foreign pressure), they maintained, at the request of the south Lebanese, a buffer zone south of the Litani River in Lebanon to protect the panhandle of Israel and the civilian population living there. That buffer zone is still patrolled by the Israeli army and the South Lebanese forces, loyal to Israel. Roadside bombs and other attacks are conducted against the Israeli and South Lebanese forces in this zone.
Hezbollah is supported and funded by Iran, which wants to see all of Lebanon under the control of radical fundamentalist Islamic law. The bombardment by Israeli forces has garnered greater civilian support from the Lebanese Muslim people for the terrorists. Their fervor is irrational, but so is the ideology behind it. Iran hates the West, particularly the U.S. Israel is allied to that great satan - the United States. Thus, Israel must be defeated and the land returned entirely to Islamic law.
Hezbollah carries on its activities from outside the borders of Israel. Hamas, a sister terrorist group that is organizationally unrelated, works from within Israel. Hamas was founded in 1987 as an outgrowth of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and is the principal political rival Arafat's Fatah (PLO) organization. it has tens of thousands of Palestinian supporters and sympathizers, but its number of hard-core terrorists is unknown. They were guilty of the 60-Plus deaths in bus bombings in March and continue to murder innocent Jewish civilians.
A worldwide threat
Terrorism is not unique to the Middle East. The entire world is under threat.
Terrorism, torture and the murder of unnumbered thousands in places like Bosnia, Chechnya, Rwanda and other places defy description. Terrorism has also reached the U.S. with the bombing of public buildings here and military installations abroad (such as the recent tragedy in Saudi Arabia), letter bombs, defacing and burning of churches and synagogues, and senseless killings on the streets of cities and towns.
The full impact of man's rebellion and search for peace will not be resolved until lsrael's Messiah reigns on His throne in Jerusalem in a redeemed world. Until then, we are called to minister to jew and Gentile alike with the good news of Messiah's love and forgiveness. Political ideology, whether left or right, offers no lasting answer to the Middle East's dilemma. Change is only possible in individual hearts and minds as they confront the truth of their Messiah and bend the knee before Him.
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