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<text id=89TT0033>
<title>
Jan. 02, 1989: Arens--Mr. Hard-Liner
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
Jan. 02, 1989 Planet Of The Year:Endangered Earth
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
WORLD, Page 82
Arens: Mr. Hard-Liner
</hdr><body>
<p> Moshe Arens, who is slated to become Israel's new Foreign
Minister, has something in common with his predecessor, Shimon
Peres: he looks and acts like a gentleman diplomat. But while
Peres, the head of the Labor Party, played the moderate during
his two years in the post, Arens is expected to act the
hard-liner. Arens, 63, was one of the few Israeli politicians
who refused to support the Camp David peace accords with Egypt
in 1978, and no one expects him to display any less
determination in pressing his opposition to negotiating with
the Palestine Liberation Organization. Warns a U.S. official
who counts the former Israeli Ambassador to Washington as a
friend: "It will be tough to strike a deal with Arens." He adds,
"But if you have a deal, it sticks."
</p>
<p> Born in Lithuania, Arens went to the U.S. as a teenager,
served in the U.S. Army and earned engineering degrees from
M.I.T. and Caltech. He emigrated to Jerusalem shortly before
Israel became a state, and during the war for independence
served in the armed Jewish underground movement headed by
Menachem Begin, who became the young American's mentor. After
engineering careers in academia and industry, the bookish and
brainy Arens entered politics in 1974, and was elected to the
Knesset as a candidate of Begin's Likud.
</p>
<p> Appointed Ambassador to Washington at the height of his
country's invasion of Lebanon, Arens made enemies at the State
Department by misleading Washington about Israeli intentions in
the conduct of the war. But he also won admiration for his
skillful management of Washington's vaunted Jewish lobby, even
though his most cherished project, the Israeli-built Lavi jet
fighter, turned out to be a $1.8 billion failure. From 1983 to
1984 Arens served as Defense Minister, a post that did nothing
to lessen his commitment to Israeli control over the occupied
territories. In 1986 Prime Minister Yitzak Shamir put Arens in
charge of Israeli-Arab affairs. According to Shlomo Avineri, a
political scientist at Jerusalem's Hebrew University and Labor
supporter, Arens' primary goal "will be to try to dislodge the
United States from a dialogue with the P.L.O. If there is
someone who can present the case to the United States
intelligently, it is he."
</p>
</body></article>
</text>