The clear-cut victory of the Labour Party leader, Mr Ehud Barak, as prime minister-designate in yesterday's Israeli general elections is a welcome affirmation of a popular desire for change, which heralds a renewal of the Middle East peace process. Assuming the parliamentary elections show a similar trend, it should be possible for him to put together a centre-left coalition with this as its most important task. The obstructive tactics of the outgoing Likud leader, Mr Netanyahu, have been rejected by Israeli voters in what amounts to a sea-change in Israel's politics.
Despite the serious implications of this result for the Middle East peace process, the campaign was notable for its relative silence on the issue. Mr Barak stood on his record and that of his party, in favour of a rapid agreement based on the Oslo peace accords and accepting the prospect of a Palestinian state through a partnership arrangement with Mr Yasser Arafat. The party is also committed to reaching a "land for peace" deal with Syria, involving the Golan Heights. An agreement with Lebanon would be likely to follow, involving Israeli withdrawal from the south of that country.
But these positions were not in the foreground of political debate during the campaign which concentrated rather on personalities and especially on Mr Netanyahu's trustworthiness to remain in office. This was the strategy chosen by Mr Barak and his US campaign advisors, who were certainly able to convince voters that he offered the better leadership. Mr Netanyahu's efforts to suggest that Mr Barak's policies would undermine Israel's security interests were found unconvincing by most voters, in the belief that shifting the emphasis to reaching an agreement with Mr Arafat is the better way to protect them.
The last-minute decision of an Israeli Arab candidate and a dissident Likud minister to withdraw from the contest trumped Mr Netanyahu's efforts to gain a second term by prolonging the campaign over two further weeks in a second round of voting.
Running through this prolonged campaign were other major issues concerning the development of Israeli society. Mr Netanyahu relied on ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups to maintain his coalition; the concessions he made to them on educational and religious affairs and their continuing right not to serve in the armed forces have antagonised and exasperated the majority of secular Israelis. So did his failure to satisfy another large constituency, the Russian immigrants, on welfare issues. Overall, there is a more relaxed attitude in Israel towards making peace with the Palestinians and their Arab neighbours based on the experience of the last few years and, it must be recognised, on Mr Arafat's compliance and the many severe constraints on the Palestine Authority imposed in the name of Israeli security.
Mr Barak has a real opportunity to revive the peace process and bring it to a satisfactory and just conclusion by engaging fully with the Palestinians and Arab states in a way that Mr Netanyahu failed or refused to do. This is welcome news in the region and throughout the world, notably in Europe, which has borne much of the cost of Palestinian development and the frustration of seeing the peace process flounder, and for President Clinton, who may now be able to see it come to fruition during his final period in office, after putting so much effort into it.