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In-Depth Information
session to urge change. A resolution was passed that seemed to fulfi ll the request, but the PNC
merely appointed a committee to decide how to handle the issue. In practice, no action was
taken, and another of the purported confi dence-building measures served instead to reduce
Israel's confi dence that the PLO and the PA were changing course. This factor and others, in-
cluding lax security efforts by the PA, led Netanyahu to announce that Israel would not imple-
ment the second phase of troop deployment from the West Bank, scheduled for December 18,
1998. Two days later, the Knesset voted to suspend implementation of the Wye River Accord
altogether.
Netanyahu, skeptical of the PA's record of fulfi lling commitments, its efforts to create a
stable regime, and its moves toward stopping terrorism and attacks against Israel, was walking
a political tightrope. His party's own right wing and smaller coalition parties opposed even his
policy of limited concessions.
One of the key forces he had to court to stay in power was the Shas Party. In January 1997 he
had appointed Roni Bar-On as attorney general. Three months later, allegations surfaced that
Netanyahu had brought in Bar-On to facilitate a plea bargain for Aryeh Deri, the Shas leader
facing corruption charges, in order to gain Shas's support for Israeli withdrawal from Hebron.
Bar-On resigned; Deri was indicted for obstruction of justice; and Elyakim Rubenstein, Bar-
On's successor, ruled that because of lack of evidence, no charges would be brought against
Netanyahu. The affair showed how strenuously Netanyahu had to work to hold his coalition
together.
By December 1998, Netanyahu was facing a great deal of opposition from within his own
Likud Party and the governing coalition over the concessions he had made in implement-
ing the Wye River Accord. Right-wing members walked out, and it was clear that Netanyahu
could not continue as prime minister. An opposition motion to call new elections passed, and
elections were set for May 17, 1999.
THE BARAK PRIME MINISTERSHIP
The elections in 1999 were the second elections in which Israelis were able to vote directly
for prime minister, with a straight choice between Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, the former
military chief of staff who had been Rabin's protégé. Barak won by 56 percent, compared with
only 44 percent for Netanyahu — a wide margin. In the Knesset elections, Barak's One Israel
bloc took twenty-six seats and Likud held on to nineteen, a sharp decline from the thirty-two
it had held in the previous Knesset. The other major winner was the Sephardic religious party
Shas, which won seventeen seats, up from ten despite the corruption charges against some of
its leaders. Netanyahu resigned as head of his party and from the Knesset. Ariel Sharon became
the new Likud Party chair.
Negotiations with Syria
Just as Rabin's election in 1992 was the basis for starting the Israel-PLO and Israel-Syria peace
processes, Barak's 1999 election set the stage for trying to conclude them successfully. In the
election campaign, Barak had vowed to do everything possible to reach agreements with the
PLO and Syria. After six years of effort, and well beyond the original deadline for reaching a
