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June 20, 2003/Sivan 20 5763, Vol. 55, No. 43
Israelis ask, 'Where's the left?'
MATTHEW GUTMAN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
TEL AVIV, June 16 - Yair Sultan leaned back in a rat-eaten chair at the illegal settlement outpost of Beit El East.
He philosophized on the importance of the soon-to-be-dismantled West Bank en-campment.
"It's the left," Sultan said with disdain after concluding a monologue about how "the left is behind" the outpost evacuations.
With a decidedly right-wing government in place, the conspiracy theories of the settlers, who blame a nebulous "left" for many of their woes, may have proven true in a roundabout way: Many say the policies of the left have won the day when even Prime Minister Ariel Sharon backs the establishment of a Palestinian state, blasts the "occupation" and orders the evacuation of settlements.
But where is the left? That's the question many Israelis are asking.
"In suspended animation," answers Yaron Ezrahi, a senior researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute.
Ezrahi says the left has ceased squabbling over whether former Prime Minster Ehud Barak gave Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat the "ultimate offer" in peace talks in 2000. Instead, it's focusing on how quietly to push Israel into embracing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
To do that, Ezrahi says, leftists concluded they would have to "give the right-wing coalition the opportunity to test its policies and spec-tacularly fail. And I think the left believes that is what happened."
Not that the left had much choice in the matter. The left-wing Meretz party and the center-left Labor suffered humiliating defeats in last January's elections, winning only about 20 percent of the Knesset's seats.
With his overwhelming success at the polls, Sharon knew he had the right wing in his pocket. Now, by veering leftward, he has managed to reach what few Israeli leaders since David Ben-Gurion have achieved: a consensus of the centrist Israeli public.
At the same time, a majority of respondents said they believe Sharon will honor the "road map" peace plan, if only because of American pressure.
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