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-- What matters for Ze'ev (Benny) Begin is seriousness. The lack of seriousness in public life is the root of all Israel's evils and has led the country into making, Begin tells Jeff Barak, the horrendous agreement with the Palestinians --

-- Despite his gloom-laden predictions of an inevitable clash with the Palestinians - to take place from within a matter of months to a few years - Ze'ev (Benny) Begin, the National Union's candidate for prime minister, considers himself an optimist.

"I am the optimist. I'm branded as the pessimist but it's vice versa." It is the Left that is pessimistic, he asserts, because they went for an agreement with the PLO on the grounds that time was against us and the Arabs were gaining strength.

In reality, "we have succeeded in the last 51 years to build a very strong society... not because of the agreement of our enemies, but despite the disagreement."

Begin, who entered the Knesset only in 1988 after an academic career as a geologist, knows he's seen by others as totally out of touch with reality, a political dinosaur in his thinking.

"I don't like this splendid isolation," he remarks, but he would not dream of compromising his beliefs for short-term popularity.

This lack of seriousness in public life is the root of all Israel's evils and has led the country into making, in Begin's eyes, the horrendous agreement with the Palestinians.

"There's a light attitude to everything. Everything goes. Even the inclusion of spouses in campaigns adds a light measure because it's not the issues, it's the smiles."

Begin's spartan Knesset office certainly reflects a man who has no intention of projecting a carefully planned image to visitors. The bookcase is filled with gray files, while the white walls are mainly bare, graced here and there with a few landscape photographs and an ancient map of Israel.

Unlike Defense Minister Moshe Arens, who has a large, tastefully framed photograph of the late prime minister Menachem Begin by his desk in his plush ministerial office, there are no photographs in Begin's office bearing witness to his illustrious family background. And despite his reputation for being a family man, there are no photographs of his wife or six children.

What matters for Begin, at least during work hours, is seriousness. In his perfectly fluent, American-accented English (only in Hebrew does he sound like his father), he derides the Western political correctness that has entered Israel, a zeitgeist marked by a non-judgmental approach in which every piece of trash can be considered art, and where people agree not to judge one another's actions. "This," he says, "is paradise for evil."

This approach, he goes on, results in a lack of commitment and no sense of the Jewish principle of shared responsibility. From here, it is but a short jump to the same lack of commitment towards a nation's history, heritage, or geography.

Therefore, he concludes, people are prepared to trade geography "to have it nice."

WHAT bothers Begin is Israel's refusal to take the Arabs, and what their leaders say, seriously.

We think the Arabs must be the same type of people as us, prepared to trash their dreams, he says. Describing Shimon Peres as a shallow thinker, Begin says Peres thought he could buy off the dreams of the Palestinian refugees. "The tragedy lies in our total misconception of the Arabs' seriousness. They have clung to their dreams" while we, he notes, have grown fat, looking for the easy life. But, he cautions, we can't afford this trivial approach.

According to Begin, the Palestinians are not looking for a return to the 1967 borders, but to at least the 1947 lines, as set by UN Resolution 181 partition plan. He pays great attention to recent remarks by Palestinian leaders which refer to this resolution, in which Jerusalem was internationalized and parts of Galilee and the Negev were set aside for the mooted Palestinian state. To ignore this talk is careless and irresponsible, he maintains, just as it was wrong to ignore Saddam Hussein's threats to scorch Israel a decade ago.

THE three other Jewish candidates for prime minister, whom he refers to mockingly as the unholy trinity - Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Mordechai - are deceiving the electorate, Begin complains.

They are not letting the campaign focus on issues. They have embarked on a "deception campaign," trying to create a false impression, "or the impression of a false reality," that each one of them holds the key to peace and security. There can be no peace with the PLO, Begin asserts, for the PLO is the problem, not the solution. He points to the December 1995 Cairo agreement between the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas, under which Hamas is not to carry out attacks from PA-run areas, but can attack Israel otherwise.

As far as Begin is concerned, Hamas is Arafat's strategic arm. He quoted Arens from the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee as saying that the PA these days is not interested in large-scale terror incidents, but is not against small-scale attacks.

Hitting out at Netanyahu for the Hebron and Wye agreements, and gladly taking responsibility for bringing the government down to stop the implementation of Wye, Begin argues that his candidacy for prime minister is the only real alternative being presented to the electorate.

"There is no sense, knowing the crisis is imminent... when the PLO's position becomes clear... to continue ceding more territory... It is really irresponsible." The only alternative for Israel is to maintain as much territory as possible before this clash takes place, Begin says, making clear that he is not urging a return to Nablus and Ramallah, just holding on to what Israel has. If the next prime minister - for Begin has no illusions as to his chances - is prepared to agree to the National Union's guidelines, then Begin and his party will join the next government. If not, they will sit in opposition.

As for his preference for prime minister, Begin won't say, adding that he will not make any recommendation to his supporters. "Our voters are clever people... they don't need guidance from us."

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Links in this section:

Ehud Barak      Fact File      In-depth Profile      Interview Ze'ev Binyamin Begin      Fact File      In-depth Profile      Interview Azmi Bishara      Fact File      In-depth Profile      Interview

Yitzhak Mordechai      Fact File      In-depth Profile      Interview Binyamin Netanyahu      Fact File      In-depth Profile      Interview