Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s tenure started out with almost everything going his way. He had what was often, though misleadingly, described as a "landslide victory" in the 1999 elections (though, in truth, Jewish voters gave him only a slim 3.2 percent majority over Netanyahu – compared to the almost 12 percent margin by which Netanyahu had defeated Peres in the previous elections).
In a period of tremendous political uncertainty following the death of Syrian president Hafez Assad, one element of his political legacy is especially likely to overshadow the peace process in the years ahead: the terms he laid out in his failed Geneva summit with US President Bill Clinton.
For most of the Cold War period, the spread of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction to the Middle East was severely constrained by the existence of a global regime of arms control agreements and export controls that was chiefly supported by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union. But in the last decade this regime has crumbled.
It is possible to discern the impact of the decline of Pax Americana in the Middle East and the end of the post-Gulf War era on the peace process. After all, the Arab world was coming to terms with Israel in the early 1990s because it sought American protection, money, and diplomatic influence in what was set to become a unipolar world.
Three basic conditions prevailed when the Arab-Israeli peace process began in 1991 in Madrid and accelerated in 1993 at Oslo. First, the Soviet Union crumbled and eventually collapsed, removing what had since 1955 been the strategic backbone of the Arab military option against the State of Israel.
Prime Minister Ehud Barak will not get a period of grace or a post-election honeymoon. Immediately upon taking office, he faces a number of pressing issues. Many of these are domestic – including religious-secular relations and economic concerns. However, the most urgent items are in the realm of security and foreign relations.
For the first time in the 73-year history of the modern, secular Turkish Republic, the Turkish Grand National Assembly on July 8, 1996, narrowly approved Necmettin Erbakan, leader of the pro-Islamist Refah Party (RP), as prime minister. (Refah is usually translated as "welfare," but "well-being" or "prosperity" is probably closer to the actual meaning in Turkish. The party’s symbol displays a full stalk of grain.)
The Druze are a minority within a minority in the State of Israel, an Arab-speaking community loyal to the state that has suffered hundreds of casualties in its defense, and whose men serve today in high-ranking and sensitive positions within the Israeli military and security forces.
Certain new strains in the U.S.-Israel relationship are now coming to the fore, stemming in part from different views of the outcome of the Gulf War. After the war, the U.S. came to the conclusion that Israel’s strategic environment had changed radically. Since the U.S. had apparently flattened a major military threat to Israel, Israel now lived with a much lower degree of risk.
[Editor’s Note: After Syria’s appearance at the Madrid Peace Conference, we must remind ourselves with whom Israel must deal. The U.S. needs to be reminded, too; hence, this Special Report.]
