Herbert Zweibon

Israeli politicians are in a rush to claim “the center” in the coming elections. When Prime Minister Sharon left the Likud to establish the Kadima Party, it was because he felt confident he could obtain the support of the “political center.” He seems to have been on to something. As a party based on the popularity of a single individual, Kadima should have collapsed without him, but instead thus far seems to have maintained the lead it had with Sharon at the helm. According to Hebrew University political science professor Reuven Hazan people are tired of left and right and want “something pragmatic in the middle.”
The Likud is being urged by professed well-wishers to “out-center” Kadima. In The Jerusalem Post Aryeh Green, describing himself as “a business consultant active in Israel’s public diplomacy efforts” urges newly crowned Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu to “bring the Likud back to the center.”
Netanyahu needs no urging. He made purging the party of members not fitting the “centrist” image his first “mission” as Likud head. He sought to prevent Moshe Feiglin, who had come in third in the race for party leadership, from even appearing on the party’s list of Knesset candidates. For Netanyahu the problem with Feiglin was that he was clearly not prepared to relinquish Judea and Samaria to Israel’s Arab enemies. (In the end Feiglin voluntarily withdrew his candidacy, saying he preferred to build up his movement of resistance to surrender rather than to serve as another rubberstamp Likud Knesset member.) The National Union Party and the National Religious Party made overtures to the Likud to unite opponents of retreat in an electoral bloc – Netanyahu turned them down, fearful of being “tainted” by the right wing.
Likud “insiders” report that the party will be introducing a new “peace plan” to counter its post-Sharon image as a party of hardliners. As for Labor, its new head Amir Peretz, a hard core leftist on economic issues, promises, if elected, to produce a peace agreement within four years (the identical promise Labor made in 1992 and “fulfilled” by Oslo).
But what does being in the “center” mean? How does one define a “centrist” solution to the problems confronting Israel? What is a centrist response to Iran, on the verge of possessing a nuclear arsenal, with an apocalyptically inspired leadership dedicated to wiping Israel off the map? What is a centrist policy to preserve a “united Jerusalem” (to which Likud and Kadima are supposedly dedicated)? What is a centrist policy on Arab terror? A centrist policy on the across-the-board dedication of Palestinian Arab leaders, Fatah as much as Hamas, to destroy Israel?
Judging from the last decade, a centrist policy is surrender cloaked in euphemisms worthy of the ancient Greeks, who sought to appease the Fates by calling them Eumenides (the kindly ones). In the first post-Oslo decade surrender was called “peace,” which has now morphed into “disengagement.” It is hard to know which is more delusional – the notion that the Arabs are prepared to make peace or the notion that Israel, by unilateral retreat, can cut itself off from its threatening Arab neighborhood. As Steven Plaut has remarked, what does Israel think its Arab neighbors will do on the other side of the barrier it is constructing? Take up knitting? As the aftermath of Israel’s deportation of its citizens from Gush Katif has already made plain, any territory Israel vacates in its self-satisfied pursuit of “the center” will become headquarters for stepped-up terror operations.
Israel’s political leaders should not be pursuing a mythical center but competing to fashion policies that will promote the national security previous policies have so badly eroded. As Israeli columnist Sarah Honig has bluntly observed: “Compromise without honor isn’t necessarily prudent. It merely broadcasts to the world that we have no pride, that we’re sick in the head.”