JERUSALEM — As the latest Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire teetered this week on the brink of collapse, tensions rose to new heights within Israel’s unity coalition and defense establishment.
Shimon Peres, the foreign minister and the senior Labor Party figure in the government, has been at the center of these tensions, and he may soon have to face growing calls from fellow ministers for him to leave the government.
Peres was quoted as faulting the army for the steep rise in Palestinian fatalities that followed his Sept. 26 meeting with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat at the Gaza airport, where the two sides formally proclaimed the new cease-fire.
While Peres has denied the quotes attributed to him, there is little doubt that he and his followers are bitterly critical of what they see as the army’s trigger-happiness at this crucial juncture in the conflict.
While death toll figures alone cannot tell the whole story, the fact is that Palestinian fatalities rose markedly after the Sept. 11 terror attacks against the United States and have continued to rise since the Peres-Arafat meeting.
Indeed, a 16-year-old Palestinian youth was killed during a firefight between the army and Palestinian gunmen that took place within earshot of the Peres-Arafat meeting.
Some in the Peres camp are criticizing the Israel Defense Force for not giving the cease-fire a chance.
Others are blaming the hawks in the government. They charge that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has not given Peres’ cease-fire effort any convincing personal and political backing.
Sharon has not, they say, acted to create an overall atmosphere congenial to reducing the intensity of the armed conflict and resuming the diplomatic process.
The prime minister is said to be torn between pressures from his own hard-liners in the government and pressures from Washington, where the overriding consideration is to put the Israeli-Palestinian violence on a back burner pending the successful construction of an international anti-terror coalition that includes Arab and Islamic nations.
“No wonder the soldier at the road block is torn and confused,” one seasoned observer mused, “if the prime minister is, too.”
The deep division in the government was dramatically underscored Monday, when a car bomb exploded in the Talpiot neighborhood of Jerusalem but caused no injuries.
Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility, and Peres was quick to condemn Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah as “the bin Laden of the Middle East.”
But the hawkish minister of public security, Uzi Landau, took a far different tack. Noting that the government’s latest extension of the cease-fire was scheduled to end in 24 hours, he said Israel would wait before acting to give the terrorists no respite.
It was clear that as far as Landau was concerned, “the terrorists” included not only the three organizations that Peres had focused on, but also the Palestinian Authority itself.
Landau and other hawkish ministers are now openly talking of forming a Cabinet caucus whose purpose would be to bring about the removal of Peres from the government.
They believe — and they may well be right — that they can detach Peres from his party and force him to leave while the other Labor ministers stay on, thereby preserving the unity framework that is so important to Sharon at home and abroad.
For his part, Arafat has discerned the fissures on the Israeli side and is pointing them out in all his diplomatic conversations.
During their meeting last week, Peres handed Arafat a list of 108 individuals that Israel says are actively engaged in terrorism. No one has since been arrested or incarcerated by the Palestinian Authority.
If the cease-fire collapses — as it surely would have if Monday’s bomb in Jerusalem had claimed lives — some observers predict an aggressive Israeli response.
On the political plane, this scenario could well spell the end of the unity government, at least in its present form.
And even if only Peres leaves while other Labor ministers remain, the departure of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate could leave the government’s image, both at home and abroad, seriously compromised.