A Powerful Voice From the Center

WASHINGTON —  Yosef (Tommy) Lapid caused an uproar last week in Israel when he said that an elderly Palestinian woman photographed combing through the ruins of her home, which had been destroyed by the Israeli army, reminded him of his grandmother, a Holocaust victim turned out of her home by the Nazis. But the flap that followed his remarks didn’t make Lapid back down.

Instead, he elaborated. He told Israeli radio that the home demolitions in the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza made Israelis “look like monsters in the eyes of the world.” Israel’s actions, he continued, would turn the nation into a pariah: “At the end of the day, they’ll kick us out of the United Nations, try those responsible in the international court in The Hague, and no one will want to speak with us,” he said. He wants Israel out of Gaza, the sooner the better.

Lapid’s remarks were strong but far from unusual in a country where virulent political rhetoric is common. Their significance comes from their source: Lapid is Israel’s minister of justice, and he first made the comments in a Cabinet meeting. The party he heads, Shinui (which means change), is the third-largest party (after Likud and Labor) in the Knesset and is the second-largest party (after Likud) in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s governing coalition.

Shinui is neither left-wing nor dovish. Founded in 1974 to champion privatization of the economy, it has evolved in recent years to become the party favored by Israeli voters tired of the stranglehold that ultra-religious Jews have over many aspects of Israeli life.

Lapid, a 73-year-old former journalist, did not enter politics until 1999 when he became head of Shinui. That year, the party had its best showing ever, capturing six seats in the Knesset. His stewardship has continued to win the party votes: In 2003, it claimed 15 seats. But the party’s rise has been driven, until now, by religion, not foreign policy.

All of which makes it highly significant that Lapid is now flexing his considerable political muscle on issues of war and peace. What he says matters, in part because Sharon needs Lapid and his party, both to win Cabinet approval for his Gaza withdrawal plan and to preserve the coalition that keeps him in office. Without Shinui, Sharon’s government would no longer have a majority and new elections would be needed.

That is unlikely to happen. Lapid is a strong supporter of Sharon’s plan, which, despite being voted down in a nonbinding Likud canvass, remains very much alive. Most Israelis support the pullout, and today Sharon is presenting a new, scaled-down version of the plan to the Cabinet. He is counting on Lapid’s support, and he will have it, although Lapid would go much further than the prime minister.

In a recent article for the Israeli daily, Ma’ariv, Lapid made clear that he views Sharon’s Gaza withdrawal as only a first step toward the resumption of negotiations with the Palestinians along the lines of the Middle East “road map” embraced (if not always actively promoted) by President Bush. Lapid wrote that Israel must “renew negotiations with Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Korei (Abu Ala) while waiving the condition that the Palestinian Authority first put an end to terror.” He writes that waiting for the violence to cease in advance of negotiations is “not practical.”

Lapid believes that Israel’s insistence on Palestinian action as a precondition (rather than as an action taken in the context of negotiations, which is the road map’s approach) thwarts any hope for negotiations. “The Palestinian Authority is not willing to enter into a civil war with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, either out of weakness or due to Arafat’s belief that we understand only the language of terror. The Palestinian Authority will not serve as Israel’s contractor for destroying terror,” he wrote.

Lapid noted that Israel cannot, at this point, count on the Palestinians to combat the violence. “We are the only ones who can do this job,” he wrote. “Therefore we must adopt the slogan that Yitzhak Rabin used, i.e., that we will conduct negotiations as though there were no terror, and fight terror as though there were no negotiations.” Lapid’s policy of road map implementation without preconditions would start with the Gaza withdrawal and the dismantling of some settlements in the West Bank. Thus, the Sharon “Gaza First” plan would serve as the foundation of a road map process leading toward security for Israel and the establishment of a Palestinian state. In contrast with the original Sharon plan, Gaza withdrawal under the Shinui plan would be neither unilateral nor free-standing. It would be part and parcel of a revived peace process.

The Shinui plan, Lapid writes, is necessary because the Israeli public “will not tolerate the losses caused by political stalemate. They do not want to live from one terror attack to the next, with no hope for a solution. Shinui will not sit for long in a government that does not do a thing to renew the peace process.” That sounds like a threat, but more likely it refers to a scenario the Israeli media have been speculating about lately. If the Cabinet rejects Gaza withdrawal, or if its approval by the Cabinet triggers a walkout by right-wing elements in the Likud and other coalition parties, Sharon, Lapid and Labor leader Shimon Peres could conceivably establish a new centrist party that would run in the next election on a platform of full withdrawal from Gaza and significant withdrawal from the West Bank. Pundits in Israel believe that a party running under that standard would win.

Lapid would play a key role in any such arrangement. But with or without party realignment, Tommy Lapid is now a force to be reckoned with not only on matters of state and religion but on the most fundamental issue facing Israelis: the future of the occupation. The Israeli center at last has a voice.