Some Israeli Rightists Seek New Leader, Strategy

JERUSALEM — For Binyamin Begin, the right-wing ideologue and minister of science and technology, there was only one thing to do in the face of the Likud government’s deal to hand over most of the West Bank city of Hebron to the Palestinians: resign.

Likud elder statesman Yitzhak Shamir suggested the appropriate response to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “betrayal of the idea of Greater Israel” is to find a new candidate to lead the conservatives.

Nadia Matar, leader of the militant Women in Green, said her answer is to take to the streets against the government she helped elect less than eight months ago. “This government feels like family,” Matar said. “That’s why the slap in the face is even harder.”

This morning’s redeployment of Israeli troops in Hebron and Netanyahu’s agreement with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to keep withdrawing Israeli forces from the occupied West Bank have fractured Israel’s right wing and sent opponents of the peace process scurrying for a new political strategy, much as they had to do after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995.

The problem for Jewish settlers and the Israeli far right is that their post-Rabin strategy was to campaign for Netanyahu--to beat at the ballot box the Oslo peace accords signed by Rabin. Netanyahu won the premiership in May, but with the help of votes from centrists who simply wanted to make peace at a slower pace. And soon he moved his conservative-religious coalition down the path of trading land for peace, an approach begun by his Labor Party predecessors.

Now those who still dream of “Eretz Yisrael”--the biblical Israel, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea--find themselves on the fringe and frustrated again.

“It’s one thing to demonstrate against Rabin and [former Prime Minister Shimon] Peres when you had a right-wing alternative,” said Eve Harow, a councilwoman from the West Bank settlement of Efrat. “We don’t know what the hell to do now. This is the guy we put in office.”

An opinion poll published in the daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot on Thursday indicated that 67% of the respondents were “satisfied” with the signing of the Hebron accord and 25% were not. A majority of 56% said Israel needs to continue withdrawing from the West Bank.

The government’s concern is whether any of those who feel abandoned by Netanyahu and angry over the peace process now will resort to violence to try to stop it, just as Rabin’s assassin and a handful of other zealots have done.

Avraham Diskin, a Hebrew University political science professor, said that while he “wouldn’t rule out the possibility of violence,” only a handful of those who oppose the Hebron accord might regard this as a political option. Further, he does not see the kind of fury in the far right against Netanyahu that once was directed at Rabin and Peres.

“Sure you are going to have reactions. The train is going on, and many people are not ready to accept that,” Diskin said. “But you don’t have a climate of violence . . . and Netanyahu is not as isolated as Rabin was.”

In the months before his assassination, Rabin and the settlers had many verbal and political clashes. The settlers, for example, occupied West Bank hilltops; Rabin sent in the army to haul them off. They hated him for signing the Oslo peace accords in 1993 and were appalled by his statement that his job was to represent 97% of Israeli society and not the 3% living in the West Bank. Posters soon appeared on walls around Jerusalem and at political rallies showing Rabin wearing a kaffiyeh (an Arab headdress) and calling him a “traitor” and “murderer.”

A few such posters have appeared recently with Netanyahu’s name and face. But, so far, most settlers and conservatives seem to regard Netanyahu not as an enemy but as one of their own gone astray.

They are reeling from his moves and searching for a response.

“I try to analyze how we wound up in this situation,” said Nissan Slomiansky, a member of Yesha--the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. “When I speak with Bibi [Netanyahu’s nickname], I feel he thinks like I do, that he is still one of us. But when it comes to actions, he does the exact opposite.”

Slomiansky--who is supposed to figure out the settlers’ next moves--said that Netanyahu “is under intense pressure from all directions: the left in Israel, the Arab countries, the Americans, the Europeans, everyone. So, then, we must apply pressure, strong enough to move him but not enough to bring him down.”

Matar, of the Women in Green, said there is a split on the right and that many settler leaders are unwilling to fight Netanyahu for fear of ending up with something worse--a unity government that includes Labor.

Slomiansky, however, is among the Yesha members who agree with Matar’s planned activism. He said they must demonstrate again and occupy West Bank hilltops as they did under Rabin, while at the same time cultivating an “alternative candidate” for prime minister.

Some on the Israeli right see the newly resigned Begin as a natural candidate for a reconstructed right-wing party. They hail the 53-year-old geologist’s refusal to compromise his beliefs. Begin, son of the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin, told Israel Radio on Thursday that he had quit the Netanyahu government because “it is impossible on my part to be a partner to handing over parts of our land.”

But the next scheduled election for prime minister is still more than three years away. Final talks with the Palestinians over such tough issues as West Bank settlements and control over East Jerusalem could be completed by then. Settlers said they must act soon if they are to “save” the West Bank for Jews.

During parliamentary debate on the accord, several right-wing members said that Netanyahu may have given up Hebron, but they had not given up their dream. “Where there is no withdrawal of the heart, there is no withdrawal in reality,” said Hanan Porat of the National Religious Party. “We will arise and we will build Hebron and the Land of Israel. . . . You will not defeat us so quickly.”