Israeli Election: 'Peres doomed Qana, so Qana doomed Peres'

The Arabs view Netanyahu's victory with despondency and even fear, writes Robert Fisk

Back in the Sixties, they made a film about the superpowers' attempt to prevent planet Earth colliding with the sun. Based around the newsroom of the old Daily Express, it ended with the paper's printers setting two front page headlines. One said "World Saved". The other announced: "World Doomed."

Like the rest of us, the Arabs were led to believe that only the re-election of Mr Peres, Nobel Peace Prize winner and instigator of the bloody Operation Grapes of Wrath, could bring peace to the Middle East. The election of Mr Netanyahu meant "World Doomed". And that is how it must have felt for Messrs Arafat and Mubarak and King Hussein when they woke up yesterday morning. Suddenly, the Middle East had moved from its axis and all those who had been cajoled or bullied into the American-Israeli "peace process" found their world spinning out of control, moving inexorably into a far more dangerous trajectory.

What was supposed to have been signed, sealed and delivered on the White House lawn turned out to be just another piece of paper.

Such was the degree of cynicism towards the peace process that many Arabs responded yesterday with little more than despondency. "The West told us that we had to make peace with Israel," a Lebanese journalist remarked. "We were ordered to sign up for peace - or else. So the Arabs signed up for peace and then Israel held an election. And now we're told 'tough luck - the Israelis can change the rules'. No doubt we'll be told to trust America again while being forced to make more concessions."

But the fruits of the Israeli election are going to produce more than sarcasm. As Suheil Natoor put it in his dingy Palestinian 'Democratic Front' office in Beirut's Mar Elias camp yesterday, Mr Netanyahu's victory could prove literally explosive. "Those Arab regimes who made the agreement with Israel - Egypt, Jordan, the PLO - are cornered; they have to explain the fruits of this illusory peace to their people. How can they do that? And those other regimes who hurried under the American umbrella to make ties with Israel - Qatar, Oman, Tunisia - and who jumped to give cards to Mr Peres, they find it's worth nothing. Arafat? He is finished. I can say that in Lebanon because Arafat cannot arrest me here."

Nor could Syria's silence yesterday dispel fears that a right-wing Israeli government which believes that "Arabs understand force" will try to steamroller Syria into peace at any price - even war. For weeks, Washington's commentators have been telling their readers and President Clinton that Syria must be brought to heel.

"No troublemaker is more widely cultivated than President Assad," Stephen Rosenfeld wrote in the Washington Post. "... Syria is now a much-reduced power that remains ready to play the spoiler but seems unprepared for the heavy political lifting at home that it would take to fit it out for a serious peace initiative."

Syria, it seems, is a "terrorist" state obstinately refusing peace because it wants the return of all of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Even Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan has been beating his tin drum, warning of pressures that may be brought to bear on Syria.

And it does not take much imagination to see how a new Israeli-American alliance could be engineered to isolate Syria, to attack "terrorist" camps inside Syria's frontiers. There are those, like the Lebanese journalist Jihad Zein, who believe there are "Likudists" among the Arab nations - he has named Syria and Saudi Arabia - which would in reality be happy to see four years of Netanyahu rule because they are not yet ready for normalisation with Israel. But this is more an attempt to deal with the "world doomed" headline than with political reality.

As another Lebanese writer observed, "the lie of the 'peace process' has been stripped away by Netanyahu's victory. Now we [will] find out how the Americans tell their people that Israel doesn't want its peace any more. And be sure of one thing: they will blame the Arabs."

At least one Lebanese ex-prisoner of the Israelis, Jamal Mahroum, speculated that it was the Qana massacre - which revolted so many Israeli Arabs - that lost Shimon Peres his vital votes. "Peres doomed Qana, so Qana doomed Peres," he said with satisfaction.