A new leader in Israel
VOTERS IN Israel's Labor Party demonstrated one of the virtues of democracy this week when they elected Amir Peretz, head of the Histadrut trade union confederation, as chairman of their party, replacing 82-year-old Shimon Peres, a brilliant statesman who has been an inveterate loser in domestic politics. With this sudden unknotting of Israeli politics, Peretz has engendered welcome new prospects for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Peretz made his ascension felt immediately. He declared his intention to pull Labor out of the current coalition government headed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, an action that will compel Sharon to call early elections for next March or April. Although it is hard to foresee exactly what will come out of those elections, there are already signs that they may drastically reconfigure Israeli politics.
Such a reconfiguration is a necessary precondition for a peace agreement with the Palestinians. There are at least two ways that the emergence of Peretz may prepare the ground for a peace accord. The least problematic would be for a rejuvenated Labor Party to come out of next spring's elections with a mandate to lead a government committed to seeking security through negotiations. Another possibility is that Sharon quits Likud to form a new center-right grouping, leaving far-right politicians in the remnants of Likud. In either scenario, the great majority of Israelis who tell pollsters they favor a negotiated two-state peace agreement with the Palestinians would have a chance to see their wishes fulfilled by a moderate government.
Peretz, a Moroccan-born immigrant to Israel with great appeal to Sephardic Jews who have voted for Likud in recent years, has been admirably frank about the approach he would take to the Palestinians. Speaking at a commemorative ceremony this week near the gravesite of Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated 10 years ago by a right-wing fanatic, Peretz vowed to continue on Rabin's path, saying: ''We will not rest until we reach a permanent agreement" with the Palestinians ''that would secure a safe future for our children and that would provide us with renewed hope to live in a region where people lead a life of cooperation and not, God forbid, where blood is shed from time to time."
As a would-be prime minister, Peretz has let it be known that he would want to invite the Palestinian Authority chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, for direct negotiations on a final-status agreement, bypassing the detours of the US-backed road map and abjuring the kind of unilateral actions that Sharon has practiced. Labor's new leader is the fresh face his party and country need, and his are the challenging ideas that a democracy churns up from time to time.
