July 1998 
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   WE MUST DO SOMETHING OR FACE A BLOWUP!   WEIZMAN SHOUTS HIS OWN "NO CONFIDENCE" AT BIBI 

"We are approaching a situation where elections are needed in Israel, a reshuffling... Logic tells me -- and also I am not in a fabulous mood -- logic tells me the two sides, the Palestinians and us...are approaching a moment where we will have no choice but to do something. Otherwise there will truly be a blowup.    What sort of blowup I am not willing to say."    

EZER WEIZMAN, President of Israel  - 7/26/98  

  
MER - Washington - 7/29:   

Ezer Weizman has never been in the forefront of caring about the Palestinians, or justice, or things of that kind. Rather, Weizman spent much of his life as a military man and has always been a leader in protecting Israeli interests. More importantly, at this juncture however, Weizman has always been more flexible and less ideological, more crafty and more pragmatic, then the Likud party stalwarts he has spent the last few decades of his political life among.  

In 1967 Weizman commanded the Israeli Air Force in its blitzkrieg surprise attack against Arab forces that resulted in Israel's take-over of Jerusalem and expansion into Gaza and the West Bank.  

A decade later Weizman managed the campaign of Menachem Begin bringing the Likud to power for the first time. And it was Weizman who immediately recognized the importance of a separate peace with Egypt when Anwar Sadat journeyed to Jerusalem, leading to the capitulation at Camp David and setting the region on the twisting and destructive course of the past two decades -- otherwise known as "the peace process".  

Overall Israel's Labor party wants to assuage the Palestinians into accepting subservient status, allowing them various face-saving means while essentially bottling them up on autonomous reservations -- even to the point of letting them call these arrangements "Statehood" -- under the firm repressive grip of a sponsored regime.  

Likud has other ideological concerns, including championing all of the settlements in the occupied territories, rather than just those Labor instigated. Though the two branches of Zionist politics usually end up pretty much at the same point in how they actually deal with the Palestinians on the ground, their public presentations of their positions often considerably differ.  

And so the Israelis too are nervous and anxious these days. Labor wants to make a comeback and complete the Oslo process as the best way to actually undermine the Palestinians -- a false "Statehood" that is actually "autonomy", for the reality is that the "peace process" had resulted in far worse conditions for the Palestinians then was their plight before the Intifada. In the Likud everyone is today competing for position, including Ariel Sharon who has now publicly declared his "availability" to become Prime Minister looking ahead to the day of Israeli-Palestinian confrontation.  

Weizman never made it to the PM position, though he dearly coveted it. His disregard (and maybe jealousy) for Netanyahu, a rather brash personality not unlike Weizman in her earlier days (there is an age gap of some 30 years), has been obvious for some time. But most of all Weizman knows this is Israel's moment, it has to find a way to at least defuse, if not actually settle, the Palestinian issue or face a future of ongoing internal tensions and a region beginning to arm with missiles and weapons of mass destruction.  

The Likud sees this future as likely, maybe inevitable, anyway. Labor wants to attempt to integrate Israel into the region trading off of the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the Arab "client regimes", especially in Amman and Riyadh. Weizman, who essentially bridges the two parties these days, sees the growing dangers ahead and wants to at least try to keep the political dikes from spilling over, with all the problems likely to ensue. And so, the same man who not that long ago pushed to make it illegal to even talk with anyone in the PLO, now embraces its defeated remnants in the guise of the Arafat regime which Israel now funds and arms.