From Challenge # 62
July - August 2000

EDITORIAL

Oslo Puts Israel Into Chronic Crisis

ONE YEAR after installing his government, Prime Minister Ehud Barak found himself without one. As Challenge goes to press, the crisis appears to be over for the moment. The left-leaning Meretz is resigning, and Barak will base his new cabinet on the ultraorthodox Shas. The Israeli army, we know, is expert in "motivating people to leave," so we are not surprised to find its best-decorated soldier exerting this capacity toward Meretz. The fact is, Shas has seventeen seats in the Knesset, Meretz ten. Since the Meretz supporters chose Barak for PM, he can be sure that their party won't turn against him in no-confidence votes. 

For the past year it has been Meretz, with its support for territorial compromise and its insistence on domestic political hygiene, that has served as a balancing force against the government's pull to the right. Its ouster has been Shas's goal from the start. The fundamentalists appear to have won.

How does it happen that a Prime Minister in Israel, after being elected by an unprecedented Jewish majority, should be forced to base his survival on a party of medieval kabbalists?

The answer is complex.

Since 1977, the Israeli Jewish vote has been shifting to the right. Very roughly, by the term "Left" Israelis designate those parties that prefer territorial compromise over an increase in Jewish settlements, by "Right" those that prefer the reverse. In 1992 Labor and Meretz (The Citizens' Rights Party) garnered 56 seats (to which the Arabs added five, enabling Rabin to become PM), while the Right won 59. In 1996 the Left declined to 52 (without the Arabs), while the Right returned to power. In 1999 the Left took a mere 38 (not including the ten Arab seats), and the Right, 54. The Likud too declined in the last election, losing seven mandates to Shas. 

The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin introduced a new axiom into Israel's politics. Rabin had given up territory on the basis of a two-vote leftist majority which depended on the Arab mandates. It cost him his life. The murder opened a glimpse into a dangerous cleft in Israeli Jewish society. Leftist politicians understood the message: there can be no more concessions to the Arabs except through a consensus that includes the Right.

This axiom has been at the heart of Barak's problems.

He pitched his election campaign in order to secure a Jewish majority. He courted the Right, avoided the Arabs - and carried it off. But this big personal victory has not sufficed. The electoral system that went into effect in 1996, separating the vote for PM from that for a political party, frees people to choose their particular interests on the party level. In trying to form a government, the PM then has to face a bevy of special-interest groups, each trying to squeeze out all it can.

Taking into account the post-Oslo axiom that peace-making must include the Right, Barak had two options after his election: either to base his government on the ultraorthodox Shas, with its seventeen seats, or on the Likud with its nineteen. By going with Shas, he would have more flexibility in negotiating peace. Shas features an opportunistic leadership with a right wing rank-and-file. If the leaders support him, Barak may hope to draw Shas voters in his next campaign for PM. The disadvantage: Shas is a special-interest party with a history of using public money in shadowy ways to increase its power from one election to the next. By going with the Likud, Barak would have a partner that rises above merely sectoral considerations, grappling with issues on a broadly national and strategic level. The disadvantage: the Likud is hawkish - and would exploit its position in the government to improve its image with a view to the next elections. Shas poses no danger to Barak's hold on his office. The Likud is another story.

Barak bet on Shas in 1999, putting together a government that has now proved impossible to maintain. 

Culture War

The Barak government included Meretz, an ideal partner for negotiating peace, but also three right-wing parties: Mafdal, representing the Jewish settlers, Israel b'Aliyah, an immigrants' party, and Shas. From its beginnings, this government underwent a war of Gog and Magog between two major cultural groups: Meretz, which stands for a secular, modern, yuppie Israel, gearing up for the next hi-tech economic thrust, and Shas, which stands for an Israel that is ultraorthodox and poor. The sole authority that counts for Shas is not the high court, but religious law, as determined by its spiritual leader. The orthodox Mizrahis who make up its electoral base belonged, not long ago, to the Likud. But the socioeconomic gap kept widening during the Likud's years of power, and the glue of Zionism, which had cemented the disparate social classes, lost its force. Disillusioned, the poorer groups in the development towns found an answer in militant Shas, which provided them with an alternative system of welfare. Indeed, a similar combination of social welfare and religion lies behind the success of certain Islamic movements in the Middle East, which likewise supply simplistic, non-revolutionary answers to their constituents.

The recent, government-breaking dispute concerned the Shas educational system. Through a non-profit association (NPA) called "the Torah-wellspring network", Shas runs day-care centers and schools. Although the number of pupils involved is merely 13,000, the network qualifies to receive funds from the Ministry of Education. And here began the dispute: Shas wants its network to be independent of the Ministry (which was under the control of its enemy, Meretz). It does not want the secularists supervising where the money goes - namely, into political activities such as election campaigns. The Shas network is already heavily in debt, to the tune of at least 25 million New Israeli Shekels, and (outgoing) Education Minister Yossi Sarid wanted to condition all payments on an internal reform. Shas claimed he was singling it out for special treatment because of its ultraorthodoxy. Remembering his arithmetic, Barak leaned toward Shas. 

Until this day, both the Likud and Labor allowed the Torah-wellspring network to be the principal conduit of money for Shas. It is not by chance that Sarid, the Meretz chief, was the one to put his foot down. For unlike Labor, Meretz is not a contender for the PM's office. It owes its ten mandates to a privileged, educated class that draws its income from the private sector, as well as the upper reaches of the public sector, and sends its children to extracurricular lessons ("gray education") without the help of government budgets. Meretz supporters are European in outlook, and they want the party to ensure them a certain quality of life - without religious harassment. Any concession to Shas fundamentalism would have signified, for Meretz, a loss of potential voters - and a defeat for its vision of Israel as the Switzerland of the Middle East. If Meretz had refused to quit, however, Barak would have had to face new elections - much to the dismay of the same Meretz(-Barak) supporters. 

Shas could not give in either. It has no independent financial resources. Its constituents do not, in general, belong to the productive sectors of the economy. For every step it wants to take, therefore, Shas depends - apart from charitable contributions to its many NPAs- on the budgets it receives through the governmental offices it controls. In order to survive, it must be part of the government, be this Labor or Likud - hence its opportunism. And although Shas speaks for the poor, it does not oppose privatization, nor cutbacks in government services. Why not? Because the more neoliberal Israel becomes, the worse off people will be and the more they'll need Shas! This party feeds off the weakness of the poor - why then should it combat the causes of that weakness?

The conflict between the two cultural tendencies in Israel, represented by Shas and Meretz - one side pulling toward archaic religiosity, the other toward modern Europe - will not find resolution. On the contrary, it will continue to grow, undermining every future attempt to govern the country.

The Arab parties: a force on paper 

The elections that followed the Rabin assassination placed us before another absurdity. The Labor candidate for PM needed the Arab voters, but he couldn't let Jewish voters see him ogling them. Labor cut a deal, therefore, with the Arab parties: it would not itself campaign in their towns, provided they worked for its man in the PM race. As a result, the number of Arab-party mandates jumped from five in 1992 to nine in 1996 and ten in 1999. With respect to coalition-building, however, these are so much dead wood. In line with the axiom mentioned above, Barak cannot use them. For their part, the Arab representatives refuse to form an opposition. First, they lack a strategic vision that could serve as an alternative to the Oslo Accords, the American hegemony and the docile positions of the Arab regimes. (Their visits to the courts of Jordan's Abdallah, Egypt's Mubarak, and now to Bashar al-Assad of Syria have become a somewhat ludicrous trademark.) Second, they owe Barak their Knesset seats. Should they vote against him once too often, he can order the Labor Party back into the villages next time. Then Labor will increase its usable mandates.

Israeli society will continue to be riven by conflict. This fact will make it hard for any leader to present this country to the world, especially to the Arab world, as a unified entity capable of regulating the affairs of the Middle East. 

The Oslo Accords Answer No One's Needs

The very agreement that was supposed to establish this country as the exclusive regional power has instead been weakening it. Oslo fails to provide minimal satisfaction either to the Arab world or to Israel's right wing. Not only did it lead to the assassination of Rabin, but it also toppled Netanyahu. Here too Israel stands before a dilemma. If it were to give the Palestinians a good agreement, one they could live with - removing the settlements, withdrawing from East Jerusalem, allowing free return of the refugees - Israel would not be able to fulfil its dream of regional dominance. On the other hand, if Israel forces Arafat to submit to its will, the Territories will remain unstable. The latter option is the one Israel has chosen - and conflict is unavoidable.

The region is changing

The Middle East of the year 2000 is not that of 1990. The process set in motion by the Gulf War has run its course. The Arab world has opened its eyes. It has learned to know Israel's internal weaknesses. It has seen that the package this country has to offer, with its American patron in the background, is not particularly tempting. Jordan is disappointed with the lack of economic development following the Arava agreement of 1994. Syria will not be in a hurry to sign on until Bashar al-Assad establishes himself. Egypt remains stuck in a deep recession, and seeing so little fruits of peace in the offing, it has no reason to prod its client, Yasser Arafat, to sign a final-status pact. 

Contrived solutions create new problems. That is the vortex in which Israel now finds itself, out of which it cannot escape. From this gloomy picture let those draw encouragement who are ready to take on the challenge of transformation - to change the regime - indeed, to change a global and regional system that dictates distorted priorities and uses war to impose them. 
 

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