Soccer Dad

Deacon on Barak

Deacon of Powerline writes about news that Ehud Barak is considering a comeback

I think this is good news. Barak was an enormous disappointment the last time around when, under pressure from President Clinton, he was willing to make shocking concessions to Arafat at Camp David. However, Barak states that he has learned from his mistakes and, if the interviews I've seen in the past few years are indicative, that seems to be the case. The bottom line is that someone has to be the leader of Israel's Labor Party. If Barak has learned anything at all, he is plainly preferable to those who have led the party since he left the scene of the crime at the end of 2000.

I cannot say that I've read many interviews, but earlier, I wrote about Barak's Q & A at Ha'aretz. He denied Deborah Sontag's charge that Arafat had begged him not to allow then opposition leader Sharon to visit the Temple Mount. That was good. However when asked about the withdrawal from Lebanon his answer was

That's nonsense. I can understand why the Palestinians adopted this story - or even why the frustrated Hezbollah, which found itself paralyzed from acting against Israel by the presence of the invisible wall of international legitimacy, did so - but I cannot see why Israelis should fall into this trap. Can anyone seriously think that if we were still in Lebanon, bleeding continuously, the Palestinians would never have raised their heads and would have accepted being under Israeli occupation forever? The opposite is true. When the inevitable eruption of violence would have taken place, we would have been paralyzed by the need to deal with two fronts simultaneously, and it would be much more complicated to execute operations like Defensive Shield without risking an immediate deterioration into a regional war.

The whole argument about more terror resulting from leaving Lebanon is ridiculous. We are talking as if there were no Palestinians terror when we were in Lebanon, which is not true. I decided to end a tragedy that lasted 18 years and cost the lives of 1,000 Israelis, and I was proud of being able to do it against the judgement of so many.

The case with Gaza is different, because in Lebanon we could withdraw to an international border backed by a UN Security Council resolution and expect the government of Lebanon to take care of the rest.

Perhaps he's right that the withdrawal did not encourage the intifada.
But
1) Hezbollah is now reported to be active in Yehuda, Shomron and Azza. If it is it is because it no longer has to defend its home turf. While it is terrible to lose soldiers, Hezbollah, might now be responsible for the murder of civilians.
2) International legitimacy means nothing. Hezbollah has persisted in crossborder attacks that have killed between 10 - 20 in the past 4 years, including civilians. This has not been met by a single condemnation, formal or informal, by the international community. Additionally, Hezbollah still persists in the fiction that Shebaa Farms belongs to Lebanon and is thus still legitimately opposing Israeli occupation.

Barak also says that Oslo was necessary, from an Israeli perspective. Maybe he means it as Daniel Pipes alleged in an off-beat column that Barak was acloset right winger showing that peace was impossible with the Arabs.

Is Ehud Barak really the ultra-left-winger he appears to be, the prime minister who offers more concessions than any of his predecessors to the Arabs? Or might he be a shrewd nationalist who is just going through the motions of diplomacy?

The second idea sounds crazy, but give it a hearing. According to well-informed analysts, on taking office in mid-1999 Barak heard from intelligence that unless he gave Syria's Hafez Assad and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat everything they demanded, they would reject his diplomatic overtures.

Assad insisted on regaining Syria's pre-1967 borders; the Palestinians demanded full sovereignty over their holy places in Jerusalem. Offered as much as 95 percent of their demands, they would say no to the whole package. According to these analysts, Barak understood that he could offer almost everything to his Arab interlocutors, knowing that they would turn him down.

He saw this as a painless opportunity to offer vast concessions, thereby winning a reputation for magnanimity without ever having to deliver. He had to do two things however: stop short of offering enough for the Arabs to say "yes," and convince the world of his sincerity by some great acting.

I don't think that Pipes really believed that. An in any case Barak's responses in the Q & A showed him, perhaps, a bit sobered, but still quite left wing. While it's true that he might be better than most in Labor, I'm not sure that's really high praise.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Posted by SoccerDad at October 3, 2004 7:41 AM