Shimon Peres was sworn in as Israel's 12th prime minister Wednesday afternoon, forming the same slim parliamentary majority as his slain predecessor and pledging to press for an early peace accord with Syria even if it hurts his chance of re-election.
He told an unusually decorous parliament that he will not permit a "murderer's bullets" to "destroy the democratic process or the peace process." But he also signaled a divide-and-conquer approach to his political opponents, reaching out to moderate Jewish settlers and Orthodox Jews in ways that the governing Labor Party coalition has seldom done of late.In an interview immediately after his swearing in, Peres said he will try to complete a deal with Syria before next year's general election. Swing voters in public opinion polls say consistently, at least in the abstract, that they do not want a treaty with Syria if it means returning all or most of the Golan Heights, Syria's principal demand.
"I said, and I was serious, that for me to win peace is more important than to win elections," he said, sipping mint tea in an office whose door still bears the placard: "Yitzhak Rabin, prime minister of the state of Israel."
The 72-year-old Peres, who admitted to "some long days and short nights" since Rabin's Nov. 4 assassination, looked baggy under the eyes Wednesday evening and slumped a bit in his chair. But he spoke with confidence and energy of his strategy for the coming year, unfolding the diplomatic milestones month by month.
Between now and Christmas, Peres said, Israel will complete its withdrawal from all major West Bank cities except parts of Hebron. He said he hopes the Palestinians will stick to plans to hold their first democratic elections on Jan. 20. Within two months of those elections, they must remove references to Israel's destruction from the Palestinian Covenant - or, he said, "we shall not move" further toward self-rule.
In May, the two sides are scheduled to begin talks on the difficult issues they have saved for last - such as the future status of Jerusalem, final borders and the return of Palestinian refugees - and Peres said he sees no reason to start sooner. August will bring another scheduled round of army withdrawals from less populous parts of the West Bank, and Israel's parliamentary election will come Oct. 29.
In one of the most vivid moments of his speech to parliament, which Peres said he had written himself, he addressed Damascus: "I wish to say to the Syrian president, Hafez Assad, that the logic of war between us has ended. The differences of opinion that remain can be resolved in negotiations based on mutual respect."
Peres addressed himself with equal energy to the divisions in Israeli society and politics after Rabin's murder by a member of the extreme religious right. He carefully avoided the word "settlers," which has taken on a polarizing cast in contemporary Israel, but said he had "no intention of ignoring the distress of the residents of the territories." He pledged to work with them to resolve their "real problems."
The cabinet that Peres formed was equally calculated to reassure. He kept the defense portfolio himself, as Rabin had, to exercise direct control of what he called "the no man's land between security and peace." But he appointed retired Lt. Gen. Ehud Barak, the decorated former chief of the general staff, as foreign minister.