The Beilin Syndrom  

Carlos Latuff/ MWC NEWS

MEPHISTO, the demon who bought the soul of Faust in Goethe's monumental drama, describes himself as "a part of that force which always wants the bad and always creates the good."

Yossi Beilin, who resigned this week as chairman of the Meretz party, is Mephisto's opposite: he always wants the good and all too often creates the bad.

THE "SETTLEMENT BLOCS" provide a glaring example. It was Beilin who invented this term a dozen years ago. It was included in the unofficial understanding that became known as the "Beilin-Abu-Mazen agreement".

The intention was good. Beilin believed that if most settlers were concentrated in several limited areas near the Green Line, the settlers as a whole would agree to a withdrawal from the rest of the West Bank.

The actual result was disastrous. The government and the settlers jumped at the opportunity. The permit of the "Zionist peace movement" was displayed like a Kosher certificate on the wall of a butcher shop selling pork chops. The settlement blocs were enlarged at a frantic pace and became veritable towns, like Ma'aleh Adumim, the Etzion Bloc and Modi'in Illit.

For dozens of years, the United States had insisted that all the settlements violate international law. But the approval granted to the "settlement blocs" enabled President George W. Bush to change this stance and approve Israeli "population centers" in the occupied territories. Haim Ramon, who in the past had been Beilin's partner in the group of "eight doves" within the Labor Party, went even further: he initiated the "Separation Wall", which in practice annexes the "settlement blocs" to Israel.

But Beilin's brilliant idea did not in the least diminish the opposition of the settlers to a withdrawal from the rest of the West Bank. On the contrary: they continue to prevent by force the dismantling of the settlement outposts, even a single tiny one. Nothing good came out of this idea. The result was totally bad.

ONE CAN GO ON enumerating Beilin's brilliant ideas. As in the song of the former master comedian (and current orthodox rabbi) Uri Zohar: "The Jewish head is inventing patents for us." In Israel's political and diplomatic arena, there is no head more fertile than Beilin's.

I don't know what exact role Beilin played in the invention of the patents displayed at the 2000 Camp David conference. For example: the idea that Israel should demand sovereignty over the Temple Mount, but only below the surface. It did not appease the Israeli Right, but it terrified the Palestinians, who feared that Israel was intending to undermine the Islamic holy shrines until they collapsed, thus making it possible to replace them with the Third Jewish Temple. The next step was Ariel Sharon's "visit" to this sensitive site, which triggered the outbreak of the second intifada.

After the 2006 elections, Beilin had another brilliant idea: to invite Avigdor Liberman to a well publicized friendly breakfast. The intention was no doubt good (even if I can't fathom what it was) but the result was calamitous: it gave Liberman a "leftist" Kosher certificate which enabled Ehud Olmert to include him in his government.

After that, Meretz announced that it would not, under any circumstances, sit in a government that included Liberman. But one cannot return Rosemary's baby to the womb of its mother. Liberman stays in the government, Meretz remains outside. Now Olmert explains to the Americans that he cannot dismantle even one settlement outpost, nor negotiate about the "core issues" of the conflict, because Liberman would then bring the government coalition crashing down.

Indeed, Beilin is very generous in dispensing Kosher certificates to extreme rightists. On the eve of one of the annual mass meetings of the "Zionist Left" in commemoration of Yitzhak Rabin, he announced that he was prepared to appear together with the leader of the most extreme Right, General Effi Eytam. Fortunately for him, nothing came of this.

There must be some connection between these ideas and his stand at critical junctures. For example: his support for Ariel Sharon's Separation Plan, without making it conditional on reaching an agreement with the Palestinians. The result: the Gaza Strip turned into the "biggest prison on earth".

Worse: the determined support of Beilin for the Second Lebanon War during its first and most critical stage. In the course of the war, he proposed attacking Syria, too. Only in the fourth week, after a dozen stormy anti-war demonstrations, did Beilin start to voice any criticism and have Meretz organize a demonstration of its own.