Israel Sagging Spirits

By Jill Smolowe

This week in millions of households around the world Jews are celebrating the Passover holiday. Following an ancient ritual, after sundown on Monday evening they sit down at the Seder table to retell the story of the Jewish exodus from slavery in Egypt. They recall their ancestors' tears with salt water and bitter herbs and eat a sweet concoction of nuts, apple and wine to commemorate the mortar with which slaves once cemented bricks. The anguish of captivity is recounted in the text of the Haggadah, and the joy of freedom celebrated with song.

This year's Passover in Israel, however, will not be a totally festive occasion, for the country's mood is one of anxiety and uncertainty rather than hope and promise. Israel's national spirit is sagging under the weight of a succession of embarrassing scandals. These include the Shin Bet affair, in which two Arab terrorists were killed while in the custody of Israeli security officials in 1984, and Jerusalem's role in the Iranscam arms deals and the Jonathan Jay Pollard spy case, which involved an American Jew spying on the U.S. for Israel.

Now, on top of all that, comes a bitter and very public dispute between the leaders of the country's national unity government about the next step in Middle East diplomacy. Both Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, head of the Likud bloc, and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, the Labor Party leader, are increasingly worried that Israelis will judge the government's greatest failure to be its inability to achieve a breakthrough in relations with its Arab neighbors. Yet the two men are at loggerheads over a peace strategy. Shamir holds out for direct talks, maintaining that the only way to guarantee enduring peace is to negotiate a separate accord with each country involved. Peres agrees that direct talks are critical but believes that Jordan and other Arab states will negotiate only under the umbrella of an international conference.

Peres spent five days in Spain and Italy last week championing the idea of such a meeting. At a regional session of the Socialist International in Rome, Peres held an unexpected round of talks with two Soviet officials. According to Knesset Member Uzi Baram, a Laborite who traveled with Peres, the Foreign Minister told the Soviets that a restoration of diplomatic relations between Jerusalem and Moscow would help promote an international conference that would include the Soviet Union.

Peres' diplomatic initiative had the blessing of neither the Israeli Cabinet nor the Prime Minister. When Shamir heard about the Peres proposal, he warned, "No salvation, and certainly no peace, can result from this." To reporters he snapped, "I hope he won't succeed." Shamir fears the Soviets' involvement would help the Arabs exact territorial concessions from Israel and give Moscow the power to impose its own terms on the Middle East.

After Shamir's criticism, Peres threatened that any attempt to disrupt his trip would endanger the "existence of the present government." Then, while Peres was on his way home, the Prime Minister stepped up his attacks. An international peace conference would be "national suicide," he said. "The whole idea is crazy and illogical." Again Peres warned of a government breakup. Then, more calmly, he added, "I'm not looking for the end of the government but for the beginning of peace."

The result of all the scandals and the intensifying antagonism between the main players in the coalition has been a pervasive national sense of unease. Although there has been little unrest in the streets beyond a sprinkling of student and Arab protests, the malaise is palpable. Says Hanoch Smith, a leading Israeli public opinion pollster: "The crisis of confidence has been brewing for a long time, and it's slowly getting worse."

The erosion of confidence is reflected in public attitudes toward the government. Last September, with the Lebanon debacle far behind and the inflation rate hovering around 25%, down from an annual high of 800%, Smith's polls showed the coalition enjoying a 63% popularity rating. In January, with fresh details of the Iran arms deal emerging daily and the Pollard affair simmering, the government's rating dropped to 47%.

The plunge seems to reflect in part the public reaction to the leadership change within the coalition government. Last October, under the terms of a power-sharing plan worked out by Labor and Likud after the elections of 1984 resulted in political deadlock, Peres and Shamir swapped jobs. The intellectual Peres tends to fare better in the polls than the scrappy Shamir. In January, Peres' approval rating was 70%, Shamir's 49%. Although the Prime Minister was recently elected leader of the Herut Party, core of the Likud bloc, Smith says that a new poll due out in several weeks will show a decline in both Shamir's and Peres' popularity.

The sniping within the Cabinet unsettled some European officials who found themselves caught in the cross fire. Authorities in Madrid, who were hosts for the first official visit to Spain by an Israeli Foreign Minister, could not figure out who was making Jerusalem's foreign policy. "After hearing Mr. Peres urge a conference, we got two pages of notes from the Prime Minister's office via our embassy in Israel explaining why Israel should not agree to an international peace conference," said Jorge Dezcallal, director-general of the Spanish Foreign Ministry's Middle East department. Israel, he acknowledged, had put Spain "in an uncomfortable position."

Elsewhere in Europe last week, Israeli diplomacy had a smoother ride. Setting another precedent, President Chaim Herzog became the first Israeli head of state to visit West Germany. At the site of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, which he helped liberate in 1945 as an officer in the British army, Herzog said, "I do not bring forgiveness with me, nor forgetfulness. The only ones who can forgive are the dead. The living have no right to forget." Despite the agonizing memories, Herzog hailed West Germany as "one of our closest friends." That was more than mere rhetoric. Today the Federal Republic is Israel's leading European trading partner and is the principal supplier of technology and tourists, after the U.S. Of his trip to Bonn, Herzog said, "Just as we can never forget the past, so we do not dare to ignore the future."

It is the future, in fact, that has Israelis on edge. As they look ahead, many are dissatisfied with their country's leaders. "There's a terrible restlessness developing," warns Pollster Smith. "Israelis have no one to look up to, no credible leader. So they don't know where they're headed." No exciting young politicians have surfaced to challenge the reigning trinity of Peres, Shamir and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin. More distressing, at the moment Israelis see no visionaries, no David Ben-Gurions or Golda Meirs who might lead Israel out of its doldrums.

In the near future little is likely to change for the ruling coalition. Much to the government's distress, the political fallout from the Pollard spy case continues. Last week, with two Israeli probes into the controversy under way, investigators acknowledged that the country's senior leadership is under scrutiny. Said one official: "When the findings are published, it will be determined whether the rascals are guilty."

The political elite is nervous about the investigation. It is widely assumed that the conclusions will paint a grim portrait of the Israeli government. Shamir's associates are bracing for a verdict that will be a broad, stinging indictment of the recent tendency to delegate too much - authority. But they do not anticipate any findings that will contradict Shamir's repeated contention that the Pollard affair was a "rogue" operation. "I don't think it will point a finger at the political leadership, but it will point to a very disorganized system that permitted this operation in the first place," says a Shamir aide. "It will point to a lack of upper- level control."

Ironically, the ruling coalition will probably shield Israel's top politicians from having to shoulder the blame. Much as Shamir, Peres and Rabin have evaded responsibility and protected one another throughout the Shin Bet and Iran-contra scandals, so they are expected to maintain a united front of professed ignorance about the Pollard operation. "If we had one major party in power, you'd find a scapegoat. But here they all hang together because everybody's implicated," charges Shlomo Avineri, a former director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. "You can't scapegoat anyone. That would mean a breakup of the government."

Will the coalition government fall apart? That is a question very much on Israelis' minds, but few are willing to venture an answer. Despite the general discontent, polls show that Israelis do not want to go to the polls before the elections scheduled for November 1988. Surprisingly, for all the differences between the ruling parties, the power-sharing arrangement continues to be popular with Israeli voters. "The public is tired of ideological strife," says a former government official. "They know ideologies are stale and fossilized, so basically they feel there's no reason to change the government."

Another reason no one wants to bring down the coalition is the prospect that new elections will not change anything. Pollsters predict that the next election will result in another deadlock and another unity government. In short, Likud and Labor may be stuck with each other for a long time to come.

With reporting by Robert Slater/Jerusalem