The Middle East: A Turning Point?: Begin's Rhetoric and Sharon's Tactics

If one looks long enough at recent events in Lebanon, one can see emerging the new face of Israel's Begin government, a face markedly different from the first government of Menachem Begin. That first Begin government, which toppled a decaying and increasingly ineffectual Labor Party, had its moderate and restraining elements whose crowning achievement was the Camp David Accords. The then Defense Minister Ezer Weizman, along with Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan, were the reins on Begin's often frightening rhetoric, steering Begin away from the effects of his worst instincts.

Weizman is no longer in the public eye and Dayan is buried. What has taken their place is a Cabinet dominated by a brash, recalcitrant, and pugnacious government whose chief symbol is Defense Minister Ariel (Arik) Sharon, Begin's sword and man of action. Sharon has taken Begin's rhetoric, his aspirations and his dreams for his own, and brought them to a place that closely resembles a political quagmire where not many Israelis, perhaps not even Begin, had expected to wind up.

Begin, a fanatic and firm believer in the concept of "Eretz Yisrael" (or Complete Israel), a stolid and implacable opponent of any sort of Palestinian national movement, has found the perfect instrument to carry out in vivid action what lies at the core of his rhetoric. Whereas the likes of Weizman and Dayan restrained, modified, and manipulated Begin's instincts, Sharon frees them and carries them to their logical conclusion.

As a result of the war in Lebanon, the Palestine Liberation Organization has been deprived of its independent military operations base. Thus it can no longer realistically avail itself of the military option. Politically, the PLO may have reaped some public relations rewards from its long stay in West Beirut, but, realistically, its role as a political symbol for the Palestinian cause has been considerably weakened. Nor will any host Arab country allow the PLO to establish itself as a military force in its land. As a political force, the PLO may find different homes in different Arab countries; but this, of course, is not the purpose of the PLO, which was established as an autonomous movement, independent of the Arab states and their politics.