Review 22.5
11 April - 24 April, 1997

Since coming to Israel have you felt the need to recite David's Psalm number 23 that included the words: "fear no evil?" I asked Natan Sharansky, Israeli Minister of Trade and Industry in his spacious Jerusalem office. He laughed and reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a tiny black book. It was the book of Psalms that his wife Avital had sent to him in prison. He had been prepared to suffer hunger and torture during 10 years in Soviet jails in order to keep the book with him. The phrase "fear no evil" later became the title of Sharansky's autobiography of that period. "Yes, of course," he replied. "First of all, life in conditions of freedom is no less challenging. Evil comes to you in different forms and even freedom comes in different forms. You always have to test yourself."

When Sharansky was elected to the Knesset as head of the Yisrael Ba'aliya party he carried with him not only the hopes of new immigrants, but also the admiration and high expectations of many Israelis. People felt comforted that a man with his intelligence and wisdom was in the government. Now, after ten months in office, the extent of Sharansky's influence and efficacy is still unclear. Certainly his deliberately casual appearance has influenced the dress code of others. In a recent meeting, the Australian Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer praised his courage and copied his informality by removing his tie at dinner in the regal King David Hotel in Jerusalem. It almost turned into a diplomatic strip-tease when the Australian Ambassador to Israel, Peter Rodgers, also flung his tie aside to loud applause.

As Minister for Trade and Industry, Sharansky is considered a very good Minister. The appointments he has made within his ministry have been judged to be made according to professional qualifications and not partisan interests, unlike many appointments in the higher echelons of the Israeli bureaucracy. The Industry Ministry appears to be "on the move" after a period of stagnation, according to some business commentators. It is at present in the process of expanding the type of incentives and grants it gives to promote business and exports. One of the objectives of Sharansky's recent highly publicised visit to Russia was to discuss trade with countries in the former Soviet Union. In the US, his reputation and connections open many doors. Whether all these elements will translate into appreciable achievements, is still too early to tell.

If Sharansky is on the right track in his ministry, is he also fulfilling the expectations of some of his greatest supporters? The Rabin Government in 1992 removed Jewish settlements from its eligibility list for generous grants. In January this year the Netanyahu Government reinstated their preferential status. Despite his close ties with the West Bank settlers, there has so far not been any significant increase in the grants and investment approved by the Ministry of Industry for factories in the territories.

One of the key questions in evaluating his performance is whether he will help the new immigrants from the former Soviet Union who voted him and his party, Yisrael Ba'aliya, into the Knesset as the sixth-largest party. They gave him their mandate, and he in turn is expected to solve their most pressing problems such as housing and employment. In the political haggling after the elections, Sharansky lost his bid to be Housing Minister. However, in the lndustry Ministry he is in a position to assist the thousands of highly qualified immigrants who are unable to find suitable work. Again, it is still to early to see if the immigrants will actually reap concrete dividends from the mandate they gave him.

With regard to his role in the government, he is one of the few people who has influence on Netanyahu. The Prime Minister admires him. The advice Sharansky gives is received by Netanyahu without the usual filter of suspicion he uses towards the other ministers. Sharansky is considered a great influence on the direction of the peace process. Yet, even he is not privy to Netanyahu's plans. Sharansky, unlike the other ministers, appears infrequently in the local press, and he is much more guarded in his public criticism of Netanyahu. Yet recently there was a report that he was sharply critical of Netanyahu in a closed meeting of presidents of Jewish organisations in New York. He apparently said that Netanyahu did not have a clear strategic goal or concept about a final settlement in the peace process. If indeed Netanyahu did have an overall strategy, it had never been discussed with the government ministers.

Sharansky seems to believe that the Palestinians are conducting themselves in a much more skilful way than the Israelis in the current negotiating process. "The Palestinians play chess while Israel plays checkers," he said. With regard to his own view of the final settlement, it appears that he is opposed to a Palestinian state. His position is a combination of toughness and generosity. That is, if the Palestinians 'play fair', Sharansky is in favour of a generous agreement with them regarding withdrawal from the territories. But he is also prepared to get tough if he believes the Palestinians 'play dirty.'

Natan Sharansky discussed some of these key issues in a recent interview with the Australia/Israel Review:

In your meeting with Tim Fischer, did you discuss ways to overcome the trade imbalance whereby in 1996 Australian exports to Israel amounted to US$87 million, while Israel exported US$207 million of goods to Australia?

We are becoming part of the global village and to look for reciprocity is inefficient. The problem is that the imports from Australia are mainly coal. We need coal, but it's difficult to increase the amount - you can not absorb two or three times the amount of coal you need. So in this case when we have different types of economies, then the best direction for the future is in joint ventures which include the advantages of each side. For example, the joint irrigation project with Netafim.

What advantages does the Israel economy have?

No doubt Israel's niche is hi-tech and R & D. Israel today has twice the number of scientists and engineers in proportion to unskilled workers than America and three times more than Germany. So it is by far the leading country in terms of quality of the labour force. Furthermore, only America has more hi-tech start-ups in a year than Israel. We have more than 1000 start-ups in a year which is far more than Britain, France or Germany. It's not accidental that Microsoft, Intel, Silicon Graphics have branches all over the world, but only in Israel have they opened R&D centres in addition to those in America.

King Hussein made a very critical assessment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. What is your assessment?

Well I'm not sure that my criticism is the same as that of King Hussein. In the government vote on approval of the first stage re-deployment I voted against because I believe that we have to clarify our strategy and to know what we are going to do in the next three, four moves. For any government of Israel it would be very difficult to continue the peace process that was begun in Oslo. From the very beginning the peace agreement was built in such a way that practically all the political issues that we could not agree on were postponed to the next stages of the peace process. So it was easy to start when talking about issues that were more or less on the consensus or that did not constitute big resistance such as Judea or Samaria or Jerusalem.

The present government is made up of different parties that were critical of the way this peace process started. The most active main core of supporters of Netanyahu was from those who wanted to stop this peace process In general I believe the Prime Minister made a very courageous effort to move the peace process to the centre of the political map. He is trying to build a new broad consensus of support in Israeli society for the peace process and continuing it, differently of course. It is very difficult and he is paying a very big price first of all among his supporters, among those who brought him to power. So I think our partners should really appreciate much more those efforts he is making.

What is your evaluation of the peace process?

The peace process and the Oslo agreement was not born from some very clear strategic thought about what kind of peace settlement there would be in the end. From the beginning, there was a confusion of two concepts. On the one hand Shimon Peres was talking about a "New Middle East" without borders where there would be full trust between the two countries and a common economy, with Israel leading the Arab countries to a brighter future. And at the same time Yitzhak Rabin and all the military leaders who were leading the negotiations were talking about the need to make a clean separation between the two peoples, to isolate one from the other.

The idea of the "New Middle East" was that the Arab countries were to become more democratic and freer, while at the same time we could hear Israeli leaders saying: "Well, we can't cope with the Arab extremists. It will be easier for Arafat to cope with them because he has no Supreme Court, no free press and no democratic institutions."

Also the question of trust or rather distrust is as deep as it was in the beginning. From the very beginning this process was built on the principle of reciprocity. From the very first exchange of letters in which Israel recognised the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people and the PLO wrote an obligation that it would change its Charter which denies Israel the right to exist. The Charter is not amended until this day.

There are very serious problems and only patient, slow and difficult work and a lot of good will on both sides can help. If the other side simply thinks they can sit and wait while we give up Judea and Samaria and that is the essence of the peace process it will not work this way. The hope was that we would start making some steps, the atmosphere would be better and there would be more trust and then we could start thinking about the big strategy. As a result we are very much inside this process and there is still no clear strategy.

Why has there been no discussion of overall strategy in the government?

Arafat is not afraid to say that he is expecting us to give him 90 per cent of the territories during the further redeployments. We do not accept it, but we know clearly his position. What is important is that he knows what he wants and he acts in accordance with this. For us the fact that he knows our final aims maybe is not good, but much more important is that we will know them for ourselves. So I prefer that we know where we stand and he knows where we stand and we make decisions in accordance with our strategy and our interests. So let's say that that is my criticism of my own government.

If I have to mention one mistake of the previous government, it was that the leaders felt that if the peace process led to a big split amongst Israelis this was not important. What was important was to move quickly and then this would help to overcome the split. So tensions were very deep, the split was serious and the government was changed. The principal difference of Netanyahu's policy is that he tries to move ahead in such a way as to avoid a deep split amongst Israelis.

What is your personal vision regarding a political solution?

I'm ready to give to the Palestinians all the rights in the world except the right to destroy us. That means we have to keep control over the important strategic areas, such as strategic borders and roads, and control over resources which for us are a matter of life or death, such as water. A third of all the waters of Israel come from Judea and Samaria.

Israel has to leave all the areas where there is an Arab population and give them all the possible rights and help them to a create a modern powerful economy. To some extent my Ministry and I believe we can do a lot to help. The solution for the Palestinians is not in sending their workers to Tel Aviv and other places, but to have good modern industry at home. And with some goodwill on both sides we can do a lot.

As to the final stages, a lot depends on the level of trust and readiness for mutual co-existence we reach as a result of this process. That is perhaps one of the saddest things in that although we went far already in our concessions, the level of trust is still very, very low.

You were given a mandate by the immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Have you achieved any of your goals yet?

The goal we achieved was to give to hundreds of thousands of immigrants here and to those potential immigrants who still are not here the feeling of belonging to the country where they are integral and active part and where they have influence on the most important decisions about their fate and the fate of the country. This really gives them the feeling of being equal citizens. So the party (Yisrael Ba'aliya) becomes a tool for quicker integration.