(Continued from p.5)
a vulgar buffoon, but he rallied the Israeli secularist rednecks, and Shinui seized the "Center" away from the Third Way and to a large extent stole the constituents away from Mordechai and his Center Party. The same anti-racism laws used to disqualify the followers of Meir Kahane will not be used, we can be sure, to disqualify the Shinui Grand Wizard nor the Arab neo-Nazis in the Knesset. Among the latter, the Stalinists of Hadash lost ground to the more openly anti-Semitic "United Arab List," and Ahmed Tibi, the Rudolph Hess of the PLO, will have a Knesset seat.The religious party bloc of Shas, the National Religious Party and Yahadut Hatora has 27 votes, almost a quarter of the Knesset. Much of the debate in the next Knesset will be between Lapid and these parties, throwing sandbox toys at each other.
Meretz retained its 10 Knesset seats, while the assorted Green Parties never even got close. And then there is the remarkable near-election of the "party" of the airhead Pnina Rosenblum. Israeli feminists have never managed to get anyone into the Knesset on "women's lists," although they have some weight within Meretz. No feminist party ever made it past the goal posts. Then along comes Rosenblum with her platform of cosmetic correctness and comes within an eyelash brush of taking two Knesset seats.
In Barak's victory speech, he promised a rapid unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon. Moments later, the Hizbollah sent a barrage of Katyusha rockets crashing into northern Israel, sending the population scrambling into shelters. The Hizbollah was celebrating its victory and taking advantage of the interregnum confusion. Barak had the Jews packing their bags and Hizbollah wanted to make their stampede faster. Doe-eyed Labor supporters appeared on TV expressing their anguish in near tears: Barak has just promised a withdrawal from Lebanon, they cried, so why is the Hizbollah shooting rockets at us? It's wonderful when Israeli Leftists answer their own questions.
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We sometimes forget how broad were the dimensions of consensus over folly in the past thoughout history. We lose sight of the proportions because history later comes to correct folly. The British public in the late 1930s was overwhelmingly in favor of Munich, with Churchill's a tiny lonely dissenting voice, a Kol Koreh Bamidbar--"a quiet voice calling from the wilderness." We forget the near wall-to-wall consensus in France in favor of Vichy and collaboration with the Germans. The partisans, while inflated retroactively to a mass movement, were the tiniest proportion of the French public and were actively denounced by most French because they would get the Germans angry.
Other political folly has enjoyed similar near universal support, such as socializing medicine, the public school monopoly, and affirmative action. For centuries, the belief in astrology was near-universal. For decades, the belief in Keynesianism was also. And so on.
Israel has now reached wall-to-wall consensus in favor of Oslo. In the long term, this will be proved folly, and all those out in Rabin Square celebrating Barak's victory and all those even on the Israeli Right insisting that there was never any alternative, that a Palestinian state was unavoidable, will be proved wrong and will be insisting in retrospect, like the French after the war, that they had opposed the government's policy all along.
It is much easier to predict what the future will bring than the timing. It is much easier to see what will happen than when it will. It could be as soon as a year from now. Two to three years is more likely, but it could take longer still.
The PLO will declare its state within a year and probably by the end of the summer. It will be immediately recognized by 150 nations, given embassy space everywhere, and a UN seat. Labor will send Peres or Beilin to the Independence celebrations, and Beilin could be ambassador if he does not get the Foreign Ministry. For at least a year and probably two or longer, the euphoria will continue. The Tel Aviv stock exchange will soar. Arafat and his henchmen will meet weekly with Labor officials. As long as the process of withdrawal continues, there will be peace and quiet, with the Hamas and Islamic Jihad held in check. The new American President will come through the two states, as will the pope. Pilgrims of peace will be flocking in from all countries.
It will take at least a year, possibly four years, for Israel to withdraw to the 1949 Green Line. And then things will change.
As soon as Arafat or his heir have nothing to gain from continuing the tranquility, that is, as soon as Israel thinks it has given up everything it has to give, the dam will open. Teams of terrorists and bombers and suicide bombers will infiltrate. The Hizbollah, in coordination with the PLO, having moved its katyusha trucks up to the international border, will be shelling everything in northern Israel. Katyushas and mortars will be fired into rump Israel from the suburbs of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Israel will complain and threaten. The Americans and European Union will demand that Israel
(Continued on p.12)
Outpost - 6 - June 1999