Israel A Bitter Divorce

By Jill Smolowe

He naps between appearances, disdains pressing the flesh and finds the business of vote getting "unbearable." But when the normally taciturn Yitzhak Shamir mounts a campaign podium, he plays the crowd's emotions with the precision of an acupuncturist. "I heard about the problems that you are struggling with every day, the stones and the Molotov cocktails," he shouts at 800 Likud loyalists gathered in a shopping mall on the northern outskirts of Jerusalem. As his lips produce the sound, his fists become the fury, chopping the air and pounding the lectern. "Those who are trying to throw us out of Jerusalem will not be able to move us!" he proclaims. "The Likud will end the intifadeh ((uprising))." Shamir grabs two small Israeli flags and waves them in the air. A photo finish.

Some 80 miles to the north, alert security men watch the crowd gathered on a basketball court in the town of Shfaram. Shimon Peres sits motionless through the introductory speeches, hardly understanding a word since they are all in Arabic. Peres knows that while the Arab vote will account for as many as 14 of the Knesset's 120 seats, Labor stands a chance of taking perhaps four of those seats, the rest going to left-wing Arab parties. "If you vote against the Jews, there will be no peace," he bellows into the microphone. "If you are serious, give us your vote, and you will have rights." Among the crowd, Halad Ali Haj, 28, an out-of-work painter, mutters, "I vote for the intifadeh."

The campaign season is upon Israel, and it is politics at its worst: a steady diet of demagoguery, diatribe, distortion and plain dirt. The Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories, now in its eleventh month, has crowded out pocketbook issues and focused Israeli thinking on the far more emotional themes of peace and security. In that sense, the Nov. 1 election is nothing less than a referendum on Israel's policies toward the occupied territories. Likud asserts a territorial imperative that cedes no ground to the Palestinians; Labor is willing to negotiate territorial compromise in exchange for peace. Each side accuses the other of being deceitfully unrealistic.

Bickering is to be expected. This election, after all, is also a divorce proceeding, an attempt to separate two parties forced to plight their troth four years ago after neither won enough votes to form a government. Under that misnamed government of national unity, Shamir and Peres have shared power, each paralyzing the other's attempts to address the urgent issues confronting Israel. With neither party likely to win more than 47 seats, and both averse to forming coalitions with some of the fringe groups on the extreme right and left, the prospect looms of another uncomfortable power-sharing arrangement. So both parties are petitioning the public for a divorce, eagerly pursuing the extra votes that might provide the edge after election day.

Every night, except Friday when the Sabbath begins, as many as 80% of Israel's 4.5 million people tune in to the country's sole television station for glimpses of electronic electioneering. Starting around 9:30 and continuing for 45 min., the parties air slick commercials that hack away at each other with great enthusiasm and little subtlety. The squabble between the leading contenders is broken up by messages from the 25 smaller parties that are also fielding slates. (It was 26 until last week, when the High Court of Justice upheld a recent decision by the election commission that the Kach party of Rabbi Meir Kahane, who gave up his U.S. citizenship last summer so he could qualify for election, was "racist" and "undemocratic" and therefore, under a new law, ineligible to run.)

The advertisements of both major parties pander to many voters' worst nightmare -- the prospect of an Israel overrun by Arabs. Likud taps the fear by suggesting that Labor aims to hand over the West Bank to Yasser Arafat and his Palestine Liberation Organization, leaving Israel far more vulnerable than it is today. One ad shows former Defense Minister Ezer Weizman wearing a kaffiyeh; another declares that "Weizman is ready to go with the Communists. He supports the intifadeh." A particularly irresponsible spot has Peres on the screen, while a dubbed voice, intended to be his, proclaims support for the P.L.O. Lest anybody miss the message, another Likud ad spells it out: "On November 1, we're choosing between a return to the 1967 lines and real security."

Labor answered the charge by bringing Mordechai Gur, a Cabinet minister without portfolio and a former general, before the cameras. Gur, who helped capture East Jerusalem from Jordanian forces in 1967, told viewers, "If we can deal with 10,000 tanks from Syria, Jordan and Iraq, we can certainly deal with a terrorist gang here and there in the West Bank." More low-blow Labor ads talk about the "demographic problem" by insinuating that if Likud tries to annex the occupied lands, the 1.5 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank and Gaza will eventually be enfranchised, enabling them to outvote Israelis. Instead of trying to convince voters that an exchange of land for peace might make Israel a safer place, Labor commercials present the concept as a good way to get rid of troublesome Palestinians. Colorful charts depict the population war between Arabs and Jews, and one ad features interviews with young Arab men eager to populate the West Bank. "If I get married," says one, "I'm going to have 15 kids."

Not all commercials dwell on the security issue. Some rely on personal mudslinging and character assassination. A Likud spot makes a buffoon of Peres by electronically manipulating his arm to make it look as if he is waving at a bikini-clad woman. Responding in kind, a Labor ad asks supposedly typical voters to list Shamir's accomplishments. One man, stopped in a supermarket, stares into the camera and mumbles, "Uh . . . uh"; a woman bursts into giggles.

Such irresponsible ads may titillate and even amuse, but they fail to expose the public to the give-and-take along the campaign trail. That failure is all the more important since Israeli law forbids television and radio news coverage of electioneering in the 30 days before balloting. The legislation has had some strange consequences: in 1981, TV footage of a meeting between Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat could not be aired because the get-together took place three weeks before the election.

While the ban protects voters from the kind of campaign bombardment suffered by American television viewers, it cuts off access to information. As it is, the current campaign will be only two months long, with three of those weeks interrupted by religious holidays, and a weekly 24-hour break for the Sabbath. Given the restrictions on their broadcast brethren, the print media might expect red-carpet treatment, yet candidates make little effort at accommodation. During one Peres outing last week, mixed-up logistics caused several reporters to lose track of the candidate.

Although personal appearances reach a smaller audience and therefore have less impact than the television commercials, the candidates still make five and six speeches a day, crisscrossing the country in caravans of cars. Some of the younger politicians have been particularly effective on the stump. Labor, long dominated by Ashkenazis, or Jews of European descent, has turned to young Sephardic mayors, like Eli Dayan of Ashkelon and Amir Peretz of Sderot, to reach out to Israelis of Oriental descent, who make up nearly 60% of the population.

Likud, which has done a better job of nurturing young talent, features several known entities among its new guard. Benjamin Begin, the son of Menachem, lacks his father's melodramatic flair, but offers name recognition and snappy one-liners. Asked to explain his attitude toward annexation of the West Bank, a move demanded by the right wing, he rejoins, "You don't annex your own land. The French didn't have to annex Paris when they reconquered it."

Another rising star is Benjamin Netanyahu, a former ambassador to the United Nations and brother of Lieut. Colonel Jonathan Netanyahu, who was killed during the 1976 Israeli rescue operation at Entebbe and in death became a national hero. Last week Benjamin Netanyahu asked a group of 200 Jews who live just east of Jerusalem, in the West Bank, "If we leave this area, who will replace us?"

"The Bedouins!" a man answered.

"The P.L.O. will come and take over!" Netanyahu thundered. "Do you want it to happen?"

In hopes of upstaging such antics, Labor orchestrated a peculiar piece of theatrics last week. Jordan's King Hussein had stunned Arabs and Israelis alike when he announced in July that he was severing all connections to the West Bank. Convinced that the King could be wooed back into the peace process, Peres' forces persuaded ABC's Nightline to air separate interviews with Peres and Hussein. Peres pledged that his first action as Prime Minister would be to renew a peace initiative once favored by Jordan and the U.S. Hussein called Peres' proposal a "step forward" and reiterated his previous offer that if the Palestinians "ask us categorically," he would be willing to negotiate jointly with them at an international conference. Asked about the pending election, Hussein said it would be an "absolute disaster" if Shamir retained his post. The next day, as Shamir accused Hussein of meddling in Israeli affairs, observers were left to wonder whether the clumsy gambit would help Labor or trigger a backlash that would benefit Shamir.

As the election season headed into its last days, real carnage cast a pall over the campaign. Eight Israeli soldiers were killed and at least eight wounded when a car bomb exploded in the middle of an army convoy in Israel's self-declared security zone in southern Lebanon. A group identifying itself as the Islamic Resistance Front claimed responsibility and called the attack a "gift to the Palestinian uprising." Israel promptly launched retaliatory air strikes against Palestinian and pro-Iranian guerrilla positions in the region, hitting ammunition dumps and training bases, and killing at least 20 people. In response, the Islamic Jihad, believed to hold two American hostages, Terry Anderson and Thomas Sutherland, threatened that the attack "shall not pass without a punishment" directed at the captives.

As both major parties favor maintenance of the buffer zone, the car bomb is unlikely to send voters scurrying from one party to the other. But in an election season already marred by harsh, inflammatory rhetoric, Israelis can expect to hear even tougher talk on the security issue in the closing week of the campaign.

With reporting by Jon D. Hull/Shfaram and Robert Slater/Jerusalem