Daniel Ben-Simon, a senior writer for the newspaper Ha’aretz, went a step further.
“I tell you…If he screws up this peace process, he will go back and live in America. He won’t have any place in Israel.”
Ben-Simon, who is also a political commentator on Israeli television and radio as well as on French TV, lectured throughout the Bay Area over the past week.
Regardless of the outcome of the Wye summit — which was unclear at the time of his Bulletin interview Tuesday –the journalist expressed ire at Netanyahu’s attempt to suspend the negotiations following Monday’s grenade attack in Beersheva.
“It drives me mad,” he said. “We’ve been living 50 years with these scenes. The peace process is here to put an end to this. Suddenly, it’s being used as an excuse to put an end to the peace process.”
The Jerusalem-based Ben-Simon, who was brought here by the Consulate General of Israel and other organizations, has been covering the peace process for several years.
In 1997, he published “The Other Israel,” a behind-the-scenes account of the months between the November 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the May 1996 election of Netanyahu.
In his book, Ben-Simon explores why Israelis — despite their yearning for peace — voted against Rabin’s Labor Party.
Certain sectors found the peace process threatening — for reasons few outsiders grasp, he says.
Large segments of citizenry — the religious and immigrants, for example — felt abandoned by the Labor Party, sacrificed on the altar of Labor’s quest for peace, he argues.
It wasn’t that they rejected the peace message. It’s that they rejected the peace messenger — the heavily Ashkenazi, secular, well-to-do Labor Party. Russian immigrants, Sephardim and the economically disadvantaged want to feel represented, he said, both in government and the larger society.
That is already happening as the Shas Party, which is heavily Sephardic, and the Yisrael Ba’Aliya Party, which is mostly Russian, become more and more prominent on the political stage.
“The message of these marginal groups who have taken over Israel is not to change the peace process, not to replace it, but to change Israeli priorities,” Ben-Simon said. “The prerequisite to this is to have a peace process, to have quiet times in Israel.”
Therefore, peace is about far more than security, the journalist asserts. It’s ultimately about the national character of a country whose multiple cultures and ethnic groupings currently can find few common denominators.
“The old codes are falling apart — one state, one ideology, one leader, one look,” he said. “We are in the middle of a battle for the new Israeli identity.”
The battle lines are drawn, Ben-Simon says, between Netanyahu supporters and those Ben-Simon dubs “Rabin orphans.”
“When Netanyahu took over, they thought Rabin was killed twice, first physically and then his message,” he said. “They are very, very angry. Compassion is the last thing they have for the religious…or all those who supported Netanyahu.”
The prime minister fully understands this socio-cultural divide, says the Moroccan-born journalist, who wrote and directed “Right-Left-Right,” a television documentary that aired in April in Israel.
Despite Netanyahu’s grasp of Israel’s schisms and their effect on the peace process, Ben-Simon said it’s hard to predict whether the prime minister will end up leading the country to peace.
“I am puzzled by this enigmatic personality. I know him, but I don’t know him,” he said.
Few people do, Ben-Simon contends.
“I talked to politicians who spent time with him. They admire his tenacity, his drive, his stamina, but they can’t ever get into his inside.”
The journalist doesn’t think it will be long, however, before the prime minister reveals his true intentions.
“If he became prime minister to stall the natural move of this area to peace, he will end up like Mussolini. He will be thrown out of power.”
On the other hand, “if he carries on the peace process, he might enjoy once more the support of most Israelis.”