PERSPECTIVE ON THE MIDDLE EAST : The Israeli Left Is Stuck : Unable to say publicly what it hopes for privately, the peace movement looks to America for rescue.

JERUSALEM — Despite any hoopla that would surround the Middle East peace conference Secretary of State James A. Baker is attempting to engineer, most peace activists believe Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir when he assures Israeli right-wingers that the whole enterprise is merely a show to appease international public opinion and will never result in an exchange of land for peace. So, when liberal Jews from around the world assemble in Jerusalem in June for the First International Conference of Progressive Jews, they will be facing the same issue that perplexes many in the Israeli peace movement:What kind of U.S. pressure on the Israeli government can they publicly support?

When Dovish Knesset members met congressional supporters in Washington in mid-May, they were labeled traitors by Israeli right-wingers who accused them of advocating external pressure. The fear of a popular Israeli backlash, plus doubts that President Bush would have the political courage to follow through on any serious efforts to pressure Israel, led Knesset doves to publicly insist that they are merely interested in sharing information, not inviting pressure. A strategy that seemed to rely on the United States, particularly after its abandonment of the Kurds, would have little public support in Israel.

Yet, many doves privately acknowledge that the only hope they have for bringing peace lies in the United States finding a way to pressure Shamir to offer something more than a recycled “autonomy plan” that gives Palestinians little self-determination. Since Shamir ignores not only the moral arguments but even the equally powerful security arguments for withdrawing from the occupied territories, many activists now believe that only tough economic realities could mobilize the Israeli public against him.

Israel may soon be pleading for a dramatic increase in U.S. aid. Only a massive infusion of dollars can significantly ease the severe economic burden caused by Israel’s attempt to resettle Soviet Jewish refugees. Privately, peace activists hope that Bush will offer an explicit deal: a mutual-security treaty, coupled with $15 billion in aid a year for five years, in exchange for an Israeli pledge to create a demilitarized Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. But these same activists fear that if they are seen as publicly advocating such linkage they will be held responsible for the plight of Soviet Jewry if U.S. aid is not forthcoming.

Why, the right-winger asks, should aid to resettle Soviet Jewry be held hostage to the political program of the peace movement? Yet that question misses the point. Many Americans may be equally tempted to ask, “why the United States should give massive aid to build housing in Israel when it has not dealt with the needs of millions of homeless people in the United States.” A plausible answer to that objection might be: Because in so doing it could avoid future Middle Eastern wars and resolve the terrible tragedy of Palestinian refugees. Yet, if Israel is unwilling to yield land for peace, its claim on American dollars is significantly weakened. In fact, new infusions of aid may only strengthen the intransigence of the Israeli right and make the peace movement’s warnings about possible curtailment of aid look foolish. Finally, even if the warnings are true (i.e. aid for Soviet Jews is withheld by a Congress wary of supporting Shamir’s intransigence), the peace movement makes itself vulnerable to charges that its advocacy of linkage caused a loss of funds for resettlement.

So, the Israeli peace movement is stuck, unable to articulate publicly what it hopes for privately. Not only does this situation make them look manipulative and dishonest, it also depends on a questionable assessment of reality. A major reason why the movement hopes for external pressure is that it is convinced that it has no way to change the political stalemate in Israel.

The polls, however, paint a different picture. Figures released in early May showed that 58% of Israelis now favor territorial compromise, up from 50% before the Gulf War. If the Israeli left can’t translate that support for peace into political support for its candidates, the problem may lie more in the culture of the left than in its politics.

The Israeli left fails to win an electoral majority for two major reasons. For the Sephardic majority of Israel, the Israeli peace movement represents an elitist European-related Establishment seemingly as unconcerned with the economic and social realities of their daily struggles today as the Labor Party seemed 40 years ago when the Sephardic immigration, largely from Arab lands, was at its height.

The left has never acknowledged the legitimacy of Sephardic anger, nor seriously integrated demands for social and economic justice into its peace perspective, nor has it made significant attempts to incorporate Sephardim into the leadership of its institutions and organizations.

Second, the left continues to project an image of insensitivity bordering on hostility to the Jewish religious tradition and the rich cultural heritage of the Jewish people. Until the left in Israel engages in a significant campaign to change the way it is perceived by the Israeli public, it will remain politically isolated.

Yet, like the left in so many other countries, Israeli leftists sometimes feel more comfortable providing sophisticated explanations of why their isolation is inevitable than in developing strategies to end it. Rather than change their public image, they look to a deus ex machina from the United States.

This puts a difficult burden on U.S. supporters of the Israeli peace movement. Israeli activists privately tell us that should Israeli intransigence block the progress of the impending peace conference, American peace activists should do everything in our power to convince Secretary of State Baker to pull out the stops and pressure Israel. On the other hand, they tell us that the dynamics of Israeli politics requires that they distance themselves from the actions they ask of us. We, in turn, become sitting ducks for charges of “disloyalty” from sectors of the American-Jewish Establishment that long ago abandoned independence of judgment so that it could march in lock-step with the Israeli government.

No wonder, then, that progressive Jews will be searching for new strategies when we meet with our Israeli counterparts in Jerusalem in late June.