The morning of 11 September was relatively happy for the Israeli Prime-Minister Ehud Barak. The decision of PLO’s central committee to postpone the declaration of Palestinian statehood was interpreted by most observers here as a great victory for the Israeli diplomacy. Barak’s numerous friends in the media have been plugging-in stories and commentaries about Yasser Arafat’s total isolation in the West, and these were confirmed by the bitter complaints of the Palestinians that the US administration was advancing the interests of Israeli openly and shamelessly. To Arafat’s dismay, the European Union towed the American line, and abandoned its traditional sympathy for the Palestinian cause. Arafat is totally dependent on the West, and without financial support from Europe and the US, his PA would collapse. Therefore he dashed the aspirations and dreams of his people, at least for the time being, and enabled Barak to gloat that his policies are winning the day for Israel. This may be so, but the haples PM himself has but a meagre chance to celebrate for much longer. His political base in Israel is now so narrow, that it is almost unfair to press Arafat to deal with him. The PA’s talented politician Muhammad Nashashibi has dismissed the reports about general disappointment and unrest in the West Bank and Gaza, and claimed the “the date (of declaring independence) is not important for our people”. This utterance must be taken with a pinch of salt. Nashashibi knows that the Palestinain population is upset and terribly worried over Arafat’s apparent capitulation, and Barak’s open jubilation exasperates their despair.
Barak’s temporary sense of achievement is bound to be short-lived and pretty empty, and his political options are almost non-existent. His present government is consisted of 24 MKs from his own One Israel faction, and 6 MKs from the rapidly disintigrating Centre Party. Of the infamous six, two former Likudniks, Dan Meridor and Roni Milo, have already disassociated themselves from Barak’s “excessive concessions” to Arafat, especially on Jerusalem. The third, Yitzhak Mordechai, a former minister of defence in Binyamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, is now facing a criminal trial for alleged sexual harrassment, and his predicament has mysteriously revived his nationalist and hawkish instincts, after two years of highly publicised flirt with political dovishness. Therefore, Barak can rely only on three further Centre Party MKs.
Meretz’s 11 MKs will support the peace process unconditionally, but their commitment to Barak is now more tenuous than ever. The same applies to the 7 Mks from the Arab factions, and the 3 Hadash members. Two Russian MKs, both genuinely moderate politicians who broke away from Natan Sharanski’s Yisrael B’Aliya faction, and one MK from the trade-union faction Am Ehad (his colleague
is a vehement nationalist), can also be counted as more-or-less Barak loyalists.
This optimal head-count is well-appreciated by Barak, despite his propensity to ignore bitter realities from time to time. Hence his comical turnabout on religion. Less than two months after exempting the orthodox youth from military service (MEI 629), and thus alienating the bulk of his voters, Barak became the chamption of religious freedom, separation of church and state, public transport on Saturdays (including El-Al flights on the holy day!) and secular constitution. His new vision, charting out spectacular horizons for Israel, angered the religious politicians, excited some naive Israeli journalists who have grown sick of religious coercion, and amused the more cynical observers. His houdini tricks were so transparent, that even the most ardently anti-clerical Shinui faction (6 MKs) did not take them all that seriously (it did not prevent their maverick leader, Tommy Lapid, from celebrting an “ideological breakthrough” for his creed).
Shinui plays an important role in Barak’s bid for political survival. Since he burned down all his bridges with the 22 ultra-orthodox MKs, let alone the settler faction of the national Religious Party (6 MKs), he can not forge a new political alliance without Lapid and his gang. This is, in itself, a difficult task. Shinui is the most radical right-wing party on socio-economic issue, and Lapid’s view on the poor and on organised Labour are bound to alienate Meretz and some One Israel (Labour) politicians, not to mention Am Ehad’s MKs Amir Peretz, who is also the chairperson of the Histadrut (General Federation of Labour) . To make matters much worse for Barak, Two MKs from Shinui are known supporters of the settlements and the Greater Israel cause, and even Lapid himself, a reluctant voter for the peace process, is anti-Arab, avid nationalist, and a notorious critic of oriental culture, Jewish and Arab alike. In any European country, Lapid would have been regarded as extreme right-winger; but in Israel, that has yet to resolve 19th century issues of identity, religion and state, his party is part of the “left”.
But even if the entire Shinui faction did join the Barak coalition, the PM would still have only 57 MKs (out of 120) at his disposal, notably now, when David Levy and his brother Maxime have made an irrevocable alliance with Likud. Hence Barak’s curious attempt to court the Likud leader Ariel Sharon, in order to setup a Government of National Unity with the declared aim of carrying-out a civil, constitutional and social revolution in Israel.
Barak bases his forlorn hopes on Sharon’s vote against the exemption of religious Yeshiva students from military service. He tends to forget that Sharon’s deviation from his long-standing support for every legislation instigated by the orthodox is unlikely to repeat itself in the near future. Sharon sought (successfully) to embarrass Barak on the delicate conscription issue, reasonably assuming that the religious politicians, who are becoming increasingly right-wing on political issues, would forgive him. The ideological commom denominator between the new iconoclastic Barak and the ultra conservative Sharon is very weak indeed. Barak himself has admitted several times during the month of September,
that a coalition with Sharon is possible, only if the peace process is finally terminated.
But Barak’s aides have not given up on Sharon. They reason, with varying degrees of inner conviction, that Sharon has some vested interests in prolonging the tenure of the current parliament. The Likud leader is seriously threatened by his popular predecessor, Netanyahu. His total failure as PM, and his various troubles with the law, only increases his standing among his traditional rank and file voters. Sharon, the legendary if brutal military hero, has aged considerably, and most polls indicate, that even Barak can defeat him in a new general election. Many Likud MKs support Netanyahu as candidate despite the openly contemteous attitude of Bibi towards them in the recent past.
Barak’s arithmetics seem to be very faulty. If he joins forces with Sharon, sacrificing the peace process altogether, his entire constituency will be totally alienated. Anti-religion alliance with Sharon, Lapid, and some of the Russians, against Meretz, the Arabs and half of his own faction? This folly is not going to succeed, and by 11 September Barak has embarked on another turnabout, in order to appease the religious parties.
Unless the Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein adopts the police recommendations to indict Netanyahu on several corruption charges (and the fickle AG is extremely unpredictable), “Bibi” is almost certain to face Barak as a right wing candidate in the general elections early next year. Sharon is apparently doomed, and Barak’s exercise in secular politics will go down in history as an interesting, but futile, episode.
ירושלמי אדום 