BY KENTA SUGAWARA
On the 6th of February this year, Israel held a Prime Ministerial election in the hope of bringing about some sort of order to the stalled Middle East Peace Process. The candidate of the left-wing Labour party, Ehud Barak, who assumed the Prime Ministership in March of last year, had alienated his supporters, and Ariel Sharon, the candidate of the right-wing Likud party, defending an anti-arab platform, swept to power with a landslide. The Election results gave Sharon 62,5 percent of the vote while Barak won only 37,4 percent. In addition, the turnout was unusually low: 62 percent compared with 78,5 percent recorded in the previous election. The election was held because the Israel nation had lost confidence in the Barak adminstration for its failure to straighten out the bad situation which arose as a result of pro-Palestinian protests last September.
The situation in the Middle East has long been dangerous, and finding a solution to it is urgent. Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, is the centre of ethnic and religious confrontations between the Jewish nation and the Arabs since it is regarded as a holy place not only by the Jews but by Arabs and Christians as well.
A pro-Palestinian protest, inflamed by a territorial dispute between Arabs having Israeli nationality and Israeli armed policemen, lowered Barak's approval rating among the Israeli people. Barak's first priority was to protect the rights of both Israelis and Arabs, and to bring the Middle East Peace Process to a successful conclusion, but these two aims proved extremely difficult to balance and caused Israeli revulsion against him. He was further reviled after he made a concession to Arabs living in Israel by offering them some sort of autonymy and by giving up part of Jerusalem to the Palestinians.
Yet, since religious differences and disputes dominate affairs in this region, it is questionable whether Ariel Sharon, who has become Prime Minister because of his genius as a military field commander, is actually competent to be the Prime Minister of Israel. When Sharon was a commander of the Israeli forces which invaded Lebanon in 1982, his army was responsible for the slaughter of one thousand Palestinian refugees and the government of Israel at that time declared him unfit to be the Minister of Defence. Now, during the election, he has had to show his face as "the father of Israel", who will bring peace to the nation. Although he has refused to make any compromises with the Palestinians, he has indicated, in his speech purposing to promote peace in the Middle East, that he would not oppose the Palestinian claims to expand the area of land they may hold. Although it is hardly possible for us to hope that he will compromise on the territorial problem, the Israelite majority which has elected him to put first stress on keeping the peace, and that he will work carefully to assure that peace is achieved. It is, though, absolutely impossible to achieve a lasting peace without a compromise over the territorial issue, the invisible barrier that people are drawn towards all over the world.
The peace of Israel depends on whether Prime Minister Sharon and President Arafat of Palestine can agree on proposals for concession and compromise while respecting each other's religion and culture. Ariel Sharon, who won the popular vote to be the next Prime Minister of Israel, repeated the same words over and over: "We need to grant a hard condition to buy peace". He tried to make his supporters understand his policy that in order to establish peace, it must be bought with diplomatic concessions. If he can carry out his policy while respecting Arab culture, he will be able to instil in the Palestinians an amicable attitude towards Israel. We wish him success in establishing genuine and lasting peace in the Middle East.