WITH NETANYAHU, ISRAEL VOTES FOR PEACE.

Byline: A.M. Rosenthal

ON Election Day, Benjamin Netanyahu had the support of a substantial majority of Israeli Jews. They included some leftists, plus moderate conservatives, centrists and much of the Orthodox right. This majority voted for peace, not war, with the Palestinians and other Arab peoples. They thought Netanyahu would be more likely to give them the reality of peace, not a charade of peace, than Shimon Peres.

But the depth and variety of Israeli Jews who supported Netanyahu and their desire for peace has never been grasped or was ignored by his opponents abroad, from President Clinton on down.

For years the opposite has been preached on TV and printed by American and European writers, politicians and academics who had committed themselves to Peres and the Labor Party.

They painted all Israeli and foreign Jews who did not accept the Labor plan for a settlement with the Palestinians as enemies of peace. In the United States, President Clinton openly campaigned for Peres, violating international conduct and risking presidential credibility, his strange addiction.

Now that Netanyahu has won the election, it is important to understand how distorted this portrait of Israeli reality was and take it off the wall. Otherwise, achievement of peace will remain far more difficult than it will be if the ideas and hopes of this Jewish majority are decently respected.

Technically Netanyahu's edge came from a thin majority of the citizens of Israel. That was because 99 percent of Israeli Arabs voted for Peres. Maybe someday Arabs in Arab states will be given equal voting freedom.

But it is hypocrisy - worse, fatuous - not to acknowledge that the election was about the fate of a Jewish state. To work, those decisions must be by a Jewish majority.

More than 55 percent of Jews voted for Netanyahu. They did so despite Peres' whopping advantages - a healthy economy and the tireless choreographed support from Clinton.

And they did it despite the unrelenting pressure of ugly attack from abroad. No other majority is demonized as eager for bombs from neighbors to fall on its land, eager to keep its children in lifelong danger.

Their offense was to criticize Peres's peace plan, worked out in stealth. It included giving up most of the West Bank, plus the Golan Heights, the inevitability of a Palestinian state, and ambiguity about Jerusalem. And worst of all, subcontracting Israeli protection against terrorism to Yasser Arafat.

Labor, led by Yitzhak Rabin and Peres, had said it would not do such things. That was before the 1992 election. So, plainly, the majority wondered which promises Peres would break this time if elected. Is that hard to understand?

The majority was not voting against peace - the very idea is idiocy - but for the hope that Netanyahu and a Likud-led coalition might create a peace they could trust while they slept, not just while they stood at arms.

Netanyahu will continue peace talks. He will not demand the return of the West Bank territory already given to the Palestinians. But he will ask for adjustments that would give Israel more military security. The Golan Heights: no. And he will insist that Israel, not Arafat, is responsible for the protection of Israelis against terrorism, from wherever it comes.

Netanyahu's job will not be merely to stand firm. He will have to do something new for him - seize opportunities to move toward peace, even if some of his coalition object.

All the while, political attacks will resume against Israel from governments that patted it on the head for doing what they and Peres wanted. Some Arab leaders may not be so cozy to important Jewish visitors from America.

But others will remember that the only land-for-peace deal, with Egypt, was made not by Labor but by Likud's Menachem Begin. And given Palestinians' itch to run Jordan, maybe King Hussein will find limitation of their armed power bearable.

Those American Jews who will give Israelis anything but forgiveness for a Labor defeat will try to destroy a Netanyahu government. They will resume the warmonger chant against the Israeli Jewish majority and maverick foreign journalists who try to explain it, like me. Bearable.

MEMO: A.M. Rosenthal writes a column for The New York Times.

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos

Photo: (1--Color) Victory: Benjamin Netanyahu

(2) Defeat : Israel's Prime Minister Shimon Peres rejected by voters.

(3) Triumph: Supporter of Benjamin Netanyahu celebrates.

Associated Press