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The Middle East Peace Process: Steady as She Goes
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20628 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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10 / 1992 |
3,736 Words |
| Author
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Ted Smith is a professor of journalism at Virginia
Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. |
THE WORLD & I: How will the change in governments in Israel affect the Medical East and the peace process?
Robert Neumann: Quite considerably. It's clear now that former Prime Minister Shamir never intended to have a peace proves. The whole thing was designed primarily to delay and in the meantime to push forward the settlements of Israelis in the occupied territories.
Now with Prime Minister Rabin and the Labor coalition, the unwillingness of the Israeli government to accommodate any form of territorial change has disappeared; there is now a readiness to accommodate. The question is whether an interim autonomy can be achieved and be made sufficiently meaningful to the Palestinian people.
Leon Hadar: I agree that you have now a government in Israel that, as Dr. Neumann suggested, is committed to a peace and security for land formula, as opposed to the previous government, which was committed to or supported a very messianic, religious, nationalistic agenda. There is also a major difference in terms of the short-term and long-term goals of those two governments.
Even more important is what this election reflects as far as the Israeli public is concerned. The Israeli public gave a mandate both to Robin and to this new government to move toward peace. It is clear that the Israeli electorate rejected the greater Israel agenda of the Likud government, and with the majority that he enjoys in the Knesset, Rabin should feel very comfortable now to move forward and implement a more moderate agenda.
Clearly this is the most dovish government in Israel's history. You have together with the Meretz members, 30 and even more coalition members who support not only land for peace, but actually support negotiations with the PLO and the establishment of a Palestinian state. This is clearly a major development.
You should had a major defeat for the greater Israel agenda. This was symbolized by the total defeat of the Trieth Party, which in many ways reflected the coalition between the religious right and the secular nationalist right.
Rabin should feel very comfortable now moving toward peace, making major concessions. I think you have even more than that. You have an interesting demographic coalition of Russian Jews, Ashkenazi, liberal Jews, young people., and even some of the
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