Israel:
The
elections
Bush won
THE surprise victory of the Zionist Labor Party of Yitzhak Rabin in the June 23 Israeli elections was George Bush's first triumph in a long time. This victory was very important for Bush, as much for domestic political reasons as for foreign policy considerations. SALEH JABER - June 25, 1992
T HE domestic political problems
of the US president in the run-up to the November presidential elections are well-known. Incapable of advancing convincing arguments and programs on the social or economic plane, the Bush administration has, since the Gulf War, rested on its laurels in international politics. However, these have been tarnished somewhat since the beginning of the year as the limitations of the American empire have become clear.
The Middle East is one of the areas where the limits of US power appear in sharpest relief. On the one hand, in the Gulf itself, Saddam Hussein is still boasting and the US have no alternative to push forward. On the other, the US is confronwith the Israeli-Arab conflict. Washington thought it could pull its chestnuts out of the Iraqi fire by convening the Israeli-Arab "Peace Conference" in Madrid on October 30, 1991. It gambled on moving towards a regional Pax Americana by confronting the intransigence of Yitzhak Shamir's Likud government with financial pressure.
It knew that the state of Israel desperately needed a ten billion dollar loan and that it had asked the US government to guarantee it. Without this money, the Zionist plan of absorbing a million Jewish immigrants from the ex-Soviet Union - more or less pushed in the direction of Israel since they could not go to the US — would be a dead letter. It was in order to obtain these funds, and for this reason alone, that the Shamir government agreed to go to Madrid. It was for precisely these same reasons that this conference got bogged down.!
Given the stakes involved, one could count upon the Bush administration using its financial leverage. This is exactly what happened: not being dupes, the men in Washington refused to approve the loan guarantee until tangible concessions were made on the Israeli side. Shamir thought the goose was in the bag but instead he found himself empty-handed. The battle was joined, with mutually acrimonious charges leveled on both sides as each protagonist sought to influence the other's electoral campaign.
The Bush administration's efforts to achieve its goals led to an unprecedented deterioration of American-Israeli relations. The message of their Zionist Labor Party allies was that Likud intransigence was leading Israel down the road of bankruptcy and disaster. For its part, the Likud, with help from its friends in the US Democratic party, plied US public opinion with startling revelations about the Republican administration's Iraqi policy.
### Washington wins
In this test of strength it was Washington who won. Of course, domestic political and socioeconomic factors played a role in Rabin's victory, and we will return to these in our next issue. But, they are all tied in one way or another to the American factor. It is likewise not surprising at all that on June 24 Rabin publicly called for the Bush administration to reverse its decision to deny the Israelis the guarantees for their ten billion dollar loan. In all likelihood,
In all this, the shortsightedness, nay dumbness, of the Palestinian right, especially Arafat, who rejoiced in Rabin's victory, are clear for all to see. Rabin will carry out policies little different from Shamir's (including on the "autonomy" conceded to the Palestinians), as he has already on more than one occasion demonstrated - though in a more flexible and subtle form in order to reap the fruit of Washington's favors and to regain the sympathy of the European governments. Once again, the common sense of the masses turns out to be more perceptive than that of some leaders who take their desires for reality. Many Palestinians who were interviewed by reporters on the streets of Jerusalem said that Rabin and Shamir were essentially the same for their people or even that the former was more dangerous than the latter because he was more crafty and enjoyed the support of the US. * 1. See /V 216, November 11, 1991 2. See /V 206, Mav 13. 1991.