About as radical as the Reaganites

by Douglas J. Feith
The Washington Times, June 18, 1996

Not since Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter in 1980 has
an election triggered such consternation from
commentators anxious about peace. Benjamin Netanyahu,
Israel’s prime minister-elect, is being depicted as a
radical right-winger, planter of settlements and opponent
of peace. In fact, his Likud party is in general about as
radical as our Republican Party. Mr. Netanyahu favors
diplomatic, defense and economic policies for Israel
similar in principle to the kind of policies that
Reaganites favored (and favor) for the United States.

Though Mr. Reagan rejected his predecessor’s
“arms control process,” symbolized by the hug
Mr. Carter gave Leonid Brezhnev when they signed SALT II,
Mr. Reagan did not reject diplomacy. He approached the
negotiating table, however, with a frame of mind
different from that of Mr. Carter. Mr. Netanyahu,too,
inevitably, will continue diplomacy, but not the
particular approach to the “peace process”
symbolized by Shimon Peres’ embracing Yasser Arafat and
declaring, as Mr. Carter did with Mr. Brezhnev, that the
two men actually share a vision of peace.

Mr. Netanyahu has made clear that, like Mr. Reagan,
he understands that negotiations with non-democratic
adversaries require cautious realism. One cannot sensibly
assume the other side’s good faith. Democratic states can
have peace only if they are strong and morally confident.
Prudence requires anticipating treaty violations by the
other side, so verifiability and compliance are of the
essence (remember Mr. Reagan’s “Trust – but
verify”). These are still the themes of the
conservative Republican mainstream. In congratulating Mr.
Netanyahu on his victory, Sen. Bob Dole said, “I
well understand Likud’s emphasis on peace through
strength.” Such themes have been roundly ridiculed
by journalists, but they helped the United States win the
Cold War and Israelis evidently believe they can maximize
Israel’s chances of peace with security.

Likud’s position on settlements reflects the
peace-through-strength principle. The diplomacy of
Israel’s outgoing Labor Party government confirmed a
lesson with long roots in Zionist history: Israel is
unlikely over time to retain control over pieces of
territory unless its people actually live there.
Supporters of settlements reason: If Israelis do not
settle an area in the territories, Israel will eventually
be forced to relinquish it. If it relinquishes the
territories generally, its security will be undermined
and peace will therefore not be possible.

The Israeli left disagrees. The nature of the
disagreement is similar to the main security controversy
in the United States during the Cold War: Conservatives
favored building up U.S. defense resources as the key to
peace. Liberals argued that the build-up prevented peace
by stimulating Soviet fear and hostility.

Mr. Netanyahu sounds Reaganite themes also when he
talks of economics. He came to political maturity when he
served in his first government post as No. 2 man in the
Israeli Embassy in Washington during the early days of
the “Reagan Revolution.” He became a close
friend and student of leading free-market exponents,
especially in the neo-conservative movement.

Past leaders of Israel’s secular right, Menachem
Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, while not socialists, were not
active anti-socialists. They were tough on security
issues, but paid scant attention to economics and did
little to dismantle the institutions of Israeli
socialism. Mr. Netanyahu, in contrast, ascribes high
importance to liberalizing the Israeli economy.

In this job, he will be getting powerful
encouragement from his close personal friend Natan
Sharansky, who will likely sit with him in the Cabinet.
Mr. Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident, created a new
political party, which won a large bloc of Knesset seats
by arguing that only through free-market reform can
Israel improve the situation of new immigrants and
attract large numbers of additional immigrants.

Mr. Netanyahu’s victory may actually bring about a
substantial improvement in U.S.-Israeli relations. It
would not be surprising if, on his first visit to
Washington, he lays the groundwork for several departures
that could prove popular here. He knows Israel can now
begin to wean itself from U.S. economic aid, especially
if it is serious about liberalizing the economy. He may
propose a gradual phasing out of such aid. Also, he can
announce, in contrast to his predecessors Messrs. Peres
and Rabin that Israel now has no interest whatever in
having U.S. troops stationed as peacekeepers on the Golan
Heights and no interest in U.S. taxpayers “financing
peace” with Syria’s regime of Hafez Assad.

Also, Mr. Netanyahu can highlight Israel’s interest
in America’s development of missile defenses. Mr. Peres
and President Clinton gave lip service to cooperation in
this field, but they focused narrowly on specific joint
programs. Israel has an important stake not only in those
programs, but in certain U.S. programs, like the one that
would create a sea-based, wide-area defense system that
would allow the United States, by stationing a single
naval cruiser in the Eastern Mediterranean in a crisis,
to add a valuable layer to Israel’s missile defenses. Mr.
Netanyahu knows that if he encourages Israel’s friends in
Congress to support such programs, he will create much
good will with the broad-based forces in the United
States, led by the top Republicans in Congress, that deem
missile defense the gravest U.S. military deficiency.

The point is that there is more to the U.S.-Israeli
relationship than whether Israel is going to relinquish
territory to Syria or the Palestine Liberation
Organization. Not every American is fixated on pressing
Israel to make further withdrawals. Mr. Netanyahu may be
able to alter the agenda of the relationship, giving
Americans comfort that his policies are not only
familiarly conservative, but more beneficial to U.S.
interests than those of the Labor government.