LABOR'S CRITICAL ROLE: DEVELOPING AN EXIT STRATEGY

One of the most twisted elements of the international campaign against Israel was its decrying of an occupation that didn't exist. Before Arafat's War, as part of their obligations under Oslo, Israel had withdrawn from all of the major Palestinian population centers. For the most part, what the IDF was occupying in October 1999 was the sparsely inhabited parts of the West Bank. In the twenty months of the Palestinian terror campaign, Israel has attempted every military option short of re-occupation - establishing check-points between Palestinian towns, surgical strikes against terror leaders, short incursions into towns and cities, and finally Operation Defensive Shield - a three week rolling incursion into Area A. While these activities have wrecked havoc on the Palestinian economy, none of these techniques have been effective at stemming the terror assaults.

In responding with this phased escalation, Israel made a drastic miscalculation about how the Palestinian leadership would respond - assuming that Arafat and his cronies would respond to their people's economic misery and respond by cutting off their offensive. It is now clear (as it should have been two years ago) that the only thing that mattered for the Palestinian leadership is amount of land under their control. Thus, the only the retaliatory response Israel could make that would have a true impact would be reoccupation of Area A. Finally, after exhausting the rest of their policy options, the Sharon government has adopted this strategy, directly pricing Palestinian terror with a loss of Palestinian sovreignity.

Considering the howls of protest over Israeli occupation when they weren't even occupying the Palestinian populated areas, there is no doubt that this policy will meet with storms of protests from the usual suspects - the Arab regimes, Europe and the State Department. Just as dangerous for Israel will be the attempt from their hard right to enlist the reoccupation in the cause of Greater Israel and the settlement movement, delinking it from its core counter-terror purpose. There is a critical need, therefore, for Israel to develop a clear exit strategy - one that gives encouragement to any Palestinian initiatives to abandon the terror campaign, and uses the reoccupation to redraw the map in a way that makes an eventual seperation feasible.

This task naturally falls to the Labor party. So far, Labor has wandered through its post-Barak phase rudderless, divided between unreconstructed champions of Oslo (Yossi Beillin and to some extent Peres), supporters of unilateral withdrawal (such as Haim Ramon), and those that support moderated versions of Sharon's policies (nominal party leader Ben-Eliezer and to some extent Peres). It is inevitable that at some point Labor will leave the government in an effort to develop an opposing party platform and regain power. This is not mere partisan politics - Labor and Likud's positions on the isolated settlements are unbridgeable. The temptation for Labor's would-be leaders (such as Beillin & Ramon) will be to use re-occupation as an exit issue. This however, will severely undercut Israel's ability to employ the tactic as a deterrent against Palestinian terror. Rather, what Labor needs to do now is provide a loyal opposition within the government - supporting the re-occupation, but affirming its interim status. They can do that by supporting an expedited time-table for building the security fence, and by clearly laying which settlements are to be evacuated upon the fence's completion. If Labor can develop such a policy, not only will it have a real chance to recover its status as Israel's leading party, it will be leading Israel in the right direction.