The Crisis Without End

Every few years, a centrist party comes along that seeks to break the stagnant duopoly by offering a vision that is not tied to the siege. None of those parties has survived. The latest to try is Shinui, which finished a surprisingly strong third in last year's election just behind Labor and joined Sharon's governing coalition. Shinui imagines a modern, middle-class, pluralistic Israel with less centralization and more individual choice. It also wants to strip the ultra-orthodox religious establishment of its powers. Yet critics contend that Shinui's impact on social and economic issues while in office has been minimal.

The party's leader, Yosef Lapid, a former journalist and TV talk-show host, has found himself in the incongruous position of mediating between Sharon and right-wingers in the cabinet who oppose the Gaza withdrawal. (Lapid is deputy prime minister and justice minister.) Lapid's own utterances have stirred the pot -- he said televised images of an elderly Palestinian woman searching for her medications in the rubble of her Rafah home reminded him of his grandmother's suffering during the Holocaust.

Shinui wants to focus on modern Israeli concerns. But the siege keeps interfering with the party's real agenda, draining its energy and deflecting attention from socioeconomic issues back toward the main event.

Optimists here will tell you that the political stalemate is beginning to crack. Both Likud and Labor now agree that a two-state solution -- Israel and Palestine living side by side in separate nations, with a high wall between -- is the only way to prevent the Jewish state from being overwhelmed demographically. Sharon may hope to hang onto large portions of the West Bank. But his withdrawal scheme could set in motion a process he can't control that would inevitably lead to Israel's departure from most of the West Bank. Like the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev or South Africa under F.W. de Klerk, momentum will take over. "The status quo has stopped being an option," declares Dan Meridor, a former justice minister and Likudnik who says that many of his fellow former party members have come around to this view.

Perhaps he's right. But I recall how the Oslo peace process wore a similar air of inevitability in 1993. Peace, prosperity and normalcy were fated to follow.

Only they didn't. From this vantage point, Oslo looks more like a temporary blip in the 100-year war between Arab and Jew than a turning point. In May, 111 Palestinians were killed, the highest monthly Palestinian death toll in two years. Nineteen Israelis -- 14 soldiers and five civilians -- also died. Each of the dead had a family and friends, and each death is another reason for enmity and revenge. The conflict never sleeps. The state of emergency continues.

Author's e-mail:

frankelg@washpost.com

Glenn Frankel, The Post's London bureau chief, just completed a three-week reporting tour in Israel. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for his coverage of Israel.