IF THERE is a God, he surely has a sense of humor. Thecareer of Shimon Peres, who is about to finish his term asPresident of Israel, is clear evidence.
Here is a life-long politician, who has never won anelection. Here is the world-renowned Man of Peace, who hasstarted several wars and never done anything for peace.Here is the most popular political figure in Israel who formost of his life was hated and despised.
Once, several decades ago, I wrote an article about himwith the title “Mr. Sisyphus”. Sisyphus, it will beremembered, was condemned for all eternity to roll a heavyrock to the top of a hill, and each time when he wasnearing his goal the stone slipped from his hands androlled down again.
That has been the story of Peres’ life – until now. God, orwhoever, has obviously decided: enough is enough.
IT STARTED when he was a boy in a small Polish town. Manytimes he complained to his mother that the other pupils inthe (Jewish) school were beating him up for no reason. Hisyounger brother, Gigi, had to defend him.
He arrived in Palestine in 1934, a year after me, as a boyof 11 (he is five weeks older than I). His father sent himto the agricultural school in Ben Shemen, a children’svillage that was a Zionist indoctrination center. There thePolish Persky became the Hebrew Peres and joined the NoarOved (“working youth”) , the main youth organization of theruling Mapai party. As was usual then, he was sent to akibbutz.
That’s where his political career started. Mapai split intotwo, and so did its youth movement. The young and activejoined “Faction 2”, the left-wing section. Peres, by now aninstructor, was among the few who wisely remained withMapai, and thus attracted the attention of the partyleaders.
The reward came soon. The 1948 war broke out. Everybody inour age group hastened to join the fighting forces in whatappeared to be literally a fight for life or death. Pereswas sent abroad by Ben-Gurion to buy arms. An importanttask, no doubt, but one that could have been done by a 70-year old.
The fact that Peres did not serve in the army at thisfateful juncture was not forgotten and earned him thecontempt of our generation for decades.
I MET him for the first time when we were 30 – he wasalready the Director General of the Ministry of Defense andthe darling of Ben-Gurion, I was the editor in chief of apopular opposition magazine. It was not a case of love atfirst sight.
In his powerful position, young Peres was a determined war-monger. During the early 50s, his ministry ordered anunending chain of “retaliation actions” whose aim was tokeep the country on a war footing. Arab refugees whoreturned at night to their villages were killed, Jews werekilled in return, and unofficial units of the army crossedthe armistice lines to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip tokill civilians and soldiers in turn.
When the atmosphere was ripe, Ben Gurion and Peres startedthe 1956 Suez war. The Algerian people rose up againsttheir French colonial masters. Unable to admit that theywere facing a genuine war of liberation, the French blamedthe young Egyptian leader, Gamal Abd-al-Nasser. Incollusion with another declining colonial power, GreatBritain, the French conspired with Israel to attack Nasser.It ended in a mess, but Peres and Chief of Staff MosheDayan were celebrated in Israel as heroes, the men of thefuture.
The French showed their gratitude. For his services, Peresreceived a military atomic reactor in Dimona. Peres stillboasts of being the father of Israel’s nuclear armament.
HIS CAREER was clearly heading for the top. Ben-Gurionappointed him Deputy Minister, and he was destined tobecome Minister of Defense, the second most powerfulposition in Israel, when disaster struck. The querulous OldMan quarreled with his party and was thrown out. Peresfollowed. The rock rolled down to the bottom.
Ben-Gurion insisted on founding a new party, and dragged anunwilling Peres after him. With indefatigable energy, Peres”plowed” the country, went from village to village and fromtown to town, and the “Rafi” party took shape. Yet with allits array of celebrities, it won only ten Knesset seats.(The peace party I founded at the same time got a seventhof their number of votes.)
As a member of a small opposition party, Peres wasvegetating. The future seemed dark, when Nasser came to therescue. He sent his army into Sinai, war fever reached afrenzied pitch and the public decided that Ben-Gurion’ssuccessor, Levy Eshkol, must give up his position asMinister of Defense. Several names were mentioned. High onthe list was Peres.
And then it happened again. Moshe Dayan snatched the prizeand became the Defense Minister, victor of the 1967 war anda world-wide hero. Peres remained a gray politician, aminor minister. The rock was down again.
For six glorious years, Dayan was the captain of the Shipof Fools, until the disaster of the Yom Kippur war. He andGolda Meir were wiped from the table and the country neededa new Prime Minister. Peres was the obvious candidate. Butat the very last moment, practically out of nowhere,Yitzhak Rabin appeared and walked off with the prize. Pereshad to satisfy himself with the Ministry of Defense.
He didn’t. For the next three years, he devoted days andnights to an unceasing effort to undermine Rabin. The fightbecame notorious, and Rabin invented a title which stuck toPeres for many years: “tireless intriguer”.
However, the effort bore fruit. Near the end of his term,Rabin faced a scandal: it appeared that after leavingoffice as ambassador to the USA, he had left open a bankaccount in Washington DC, contrary to Israeli law. Heresigned in the middle of the 1977 election campaign, Perestook over. At long last, the way was open.
And then the incredible happened. After 44 consecutiveyears in power, before and after the founding of Israel,the Labor Party lost the election. Menachem Begin came topower. Responsibility fell on the party leader, ShimonPeres. Nobody blamed Rabin.
ON THE eve of the 1982 Lebanon war, Peres and Rabin went tosee Prime Minister Begin and urged him to attack. This didnot prevent Peres, two months later, appearing as the mainspeaker at the giant protest demonstration after the Sabraand Shatila massacre.
Begin abdicated and Yitzhak Shamir took his place. In thefollowing election Peres at least achieved a draw. Shamirbecame prime minister again for two years, to be followedby Peres. During his two years as Prime Minister, he didnothing for peace. His main act was to persuade PresidentChaim Herzog to amnesty the chief of the Security Serviceand a group of his men who admitted to having murdered withtheir bare hands two young Arab prisoners who had hijackeda bus.
In 1992 it was Rabin again who led their party to power. Heappointed Peres to the Foreign Ministry, presumably becausehe could not harm him there. However, things took anotherdirection.
Yasser Arafat, with whom I had been in contact since 1974and whom I met in besieged Beirut in 1982, decided to makepeace with Israel. Behind the scenes, contact wasestablished in Oslo. The result was the historic Osloagreement.
Between Peres, his assistant Yossi Beilin and Rabin acompetition for the credit started. Peres tried toappropriate all of it for himself. Beilin angrily resisted.But it was, of course, Rabin who took the fateful decisionand paid the price.
First there was the Battle for the Nobel. The Oslocommittee decided of course to bestow it on Arafat andRabin (as it had done before to Sadat and Begin). Peresfuriously demanded a share and mobilized half the politicalworld. But if Peres got it, why not Mahmoud Abbas, who hadsigned together with him, and who had worked for years forPalestinian-Israeli peace?
Nothing doing. The price can go only to three people atmost. Peres got it, Abbas did not.
THE OSLO agreement opened a new road for Israel. Peresstarted to talk (endlessly) about the New Middle East, andadopted it as his personal trade mark. He and Rabin hadpatched things up between them. And then disaster struckagain.
A few minutes after standing next to Peres and singing apeace song at a mass demonstration in Tel Aviv, Rabin wasassassinated. Peres himself had passed the murderer withhis cocked pistol, who would not flatter him with a bullet.
That was the dramatic high point of Peres, and of Israel.The entire country was seething with anger. If Peres, thesole successor, had proclaimed immediate elections, hewould have won by a landslide. The future of Israel wouldhave been different.
But Peres did not want to win as the heir to Rabin. Hedesired to win on his own merits. So he postponed theelections, started another war in Lebanon which ended indisaster, caused another deadly terror campaign by orderingthe assassination of a beloved Hamas leader – and lost theelections.
In a variation of Murphy’s law: “If an election can belost, Peres will lose it. If an election cannot be lost,Peres will lose it anyhow.”
On a memorable occasion, Peres addressed a party meetingand loudly posed the rhetorical question: “Am I a looser?”The entire audience roared in return: “Yes!”
THAT SHOULD have been the end of Sisyphus’ troubles. Newpeople took over the Labor Party. Peres was pushed aside.Or so it seemed.
Ariel Sharon, the extreme right-wing Likud leader, came topower. Throughout the world he was considered a warcriminal, the author of several atrocities, blamed by anIsraeli commission as “indirectly responsible” for theSabra and Shatila massacre, the man behind the fatefulsettlement project. He needed someone to make himacceptable. And who did? Shimon Peres, the internationallyrenowned Man of Peace. Later, he did the same forNetanyahu.
But his rock rolled down a final time. The Knesset had toelect a President of Israel. Peres was the obviouscandidate, opposed only by a political nobody, MosheKatzav. Yet the impossible happened: Peres lost, althoughhe had undergone an operation that changed his lifelonghangdog expression into something more likeable.
Even people who didn’t like Peres agreed that this was justtoo much. Katzav was accused of rape and sent to prison.Peres finally, finally, won an election.
SINCE THEN, tragedy has turned into farce. The man who hadbeen abused all his life suddenly became the most popularperson in Israel. As President he could talk every day,letting loose with an endless stream of utter banalities.The public just lapped it up.
Throughout the world, Peres became one of the Grand OldMen, one of the Wise Elders, the Man of Peace, the symbolof all that is fine and good in Israel.
His successor has already been elected. A very nice personof the very extreme Right.
In a few weeks, Peres will finally step down.
Finally? Why, he is only 90!