Page 3-THE NEWS-December, 1988
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Opinions and Commentaries
Religious Revival? With 18 Knesset Seats, Israel’s Orthodox Parties Wield Clout
By David Landau
JERUSALEM (JTA)-Three
ultra-Orthodox parties and
their spiritual mentors seem to
hold Israel’s political future in
their hands following the
Knesset elections.
The National Religious Par
ty, Agudat Yisrael and Shas
command 16 Knesset seats
among them, according to the
all-but-final results of the vote.
Two additional religious
seats have been won by the
new ultra-Orthodox party
Degel Hatorah, an Agudat
Yisrael breakaway. It remains
to be seen whether the fierce
personed and doctrinal dis
putes that caused the split can
be resolved.
One thing is clear, however:
neither Labor nor Likud C£in
form a government without
the religious right.
The religious bloc is con
sidered far more likely to align
with the nationalist Likud
th£ui with the socialist and
strongly secular Labor Party.
The religious parties eire ex
pected to drive a hard bargain
in the coming weeks, one that
may be unpedatable to Likud,
some anedysts say. Therefore,
the possibility of another
Labor-Likud unity govern
ment can not be ruled out. But
at this juncture it seems re
mote.
The resd winners in the elec
tions app>ear to be Lubavitcher
Rebbe Menachem Mendel Sch-
neerson, 85, who supported
the Agudat Yisrael ticket from
his Chabad Hasidic headquar
ters in Brooklyn, N.Y.; Rabbi
Eliezer Schach, 92, of Bnei
Brak, a foe of the Chabad
movement and a spiritual
guide to both Agudat Yisrael
and Shas; and Israel’s former
Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia
Yosef, 70, of Jerusalem.
Moved the Voters
These venerable rabbis in
spired, cajoled, encouraged
and threatened a large and
rapidly growing constituency
to show its true strength for
the first time. In fact, the
stunning rise of the religious
vote appears to be the single
most salient feature of the
election.
Demography euid the con
tinued surge of the return-
to-religion movement among
Sephardim and Ashkenazim
point to further increases in its
strength in the future. Such
immigration as there is, more
over, is largely Orthodox and
ultra-Orthodox.
The various religious peirties
fought this election with a pas
sion born of schism and fac
tionalism. As it turned out, it
made for a higher turnout of
religious voters.
By contrast, both Likud and
Labor produced a lackluster
performance in the balloting.
With 99 percent of the vote
counted, they held 39 and 38
Knesset seats, respectively, in
the 120-seat Israeli parli
ament.
This was a net loss from the
1984 elections, when they won
41 and 44 seats, respectively.
Parties g£iin seats propor
tionate to the percentage of
votes won.
Peres Doomed?
Labor’s humiliation was
especially bitter. As soon as
the shock and disappointment
over the exit poll results was
absorbed, a wave of disaffec
tion swept through the halls of
a Tel Aviv hotel where a vic
tory party had been planned.
Its focus was p£u-ty leader
Shimon Peres, the foreign
minister and former premier
who led Labor to its fourth
consecutive defeat.
Peres had built the entire
campaign around his record,
his achievements and his
hopes, to the virtual exclusion
of all of the top echelon of the
Labor P2u*ty, except Defense
Minister Yitzhcik Rabin.
Energy Minister Moshe
Shahal, party Secretary-
General Uzi Baram and other
party leaders all vented their
spleen to representatives of
the news media the night of
the election.
The result was headlines in
the morning newspapers such
as "Labor Leaders Demand a
Soul-Searching — Now!”
Less Displeased
There were celebrations at
Likud headquarters. The po
litical arithmetic of the bedlot
makes the hard-line p£u*ty the
most likely leader of the next
government.
Premier Yitzhak Shamir,
the Likud leader, emerged as
the only man capable of form
ing a new government. But his
joy is by no means unbounded.
His options are to be prime
minister of a narrow-based
government, in pgirtnership
with the ultra-Orthodox and
the far right-wing secular par
ties, or of £inother broad coali
tion with Labor.
Both options are fraught
with personal, politicsd and
ideological difficulties. Sha
mir’s experience as head of a
narrow government in 1983
and 1984 left a bitter taste.
At age 73, he would have
wished to be spared the need
to conduct arduous negotia
tions with half a dozen ex
tremist parties — extreme
rightists and extreme Or
thodox — most of which be
lieve correctly that he needs
them as much as they need
him.
It became clear during the
preliminary consultations be
tween Likud and the religious
parties that a string of conces
sions would have to be made
on divisive religious issues.
‘Who is a Jew*
Foremost is the controver
sial “Who is a Jew” amend
ment to the Law of Return.
This is not seen as a major pit
fall for Likud, since its Herut
wing has always supported
the Orthodox measure, which
would allow automatic Israeli
citizenship to Jews by choice
only if they have undergone
the Orthodox conversion.
Herut and its Liberal Party
partners in the Likud pre
sumably can live with that.
But passage of the amend
ment would arouse the fury of
the non-Orthodox, who com
prise the majority of affiliated
Jews in the U.S. and elsewhere
overseas.
Herut, presumably, also
could accept demands for fat
ter government subsidies for
the ultra-Orthodox communi
ty’s educational eind welfare
institutions.
But the religious parties
plainly do not intend to stop
there. Dealing, as they see it,
from a position of strength,
they are expected to demand
government enforcement of all
kinds of religious customs and
restrictions, such as the clos
ing of movie theaters on the
Sabbath.
In the eyes of many secular
Israelis of all political persua
sions, such measures would
constitute a direct assault on
their personal freedom.
And from the Right
On the far right, moreover,
Shamir can expect constant
pressure to abrogate the 1978
Camp David accords, to annex
the West Bank £md Gaza Strip
and to embark on a vast new
settlement program in those
territories.
The far-right Tsomet p£u-ty
and the NRP also urge the
mass expulsion of Palestinian
activists as the way to curb
the uprising.
Shamir knows well that
such an approach would trig
ger a devastating response
from Israel’s friends abroad,
notably the U.S., regardless of
which party would win the
presidential elections.
Likud went into the elec
tions cleaving to Camp David,
which was the achievement of
its longtime revered leader,
Menachem Begin. One of its
likely coalition partners, the
expansionist Tehiya p8irty,
fought its election campaign
on an anti-Camp David pro
gram. Shamir, in fact, voted
against the accord.
The even more extreme
Moledet party demands the
mass transfer of Arabs from
Israel and the administered
territories, as part of a
negotiated peace settlement.
Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Kach
party was banned from the elec
tions for advocating an imme
diate transfer of the Arabs, a
position the Central Elections
Committee deemed racist.
Yet without Moledet’s two
seats, Shamir’s majority would
be whittled down to the barest
minimum, and his government
would be at the mercy of the
whims of any one of its com
ponents.
Back to ‘Unity'?
All of these factors led
observers not to rule out
another unity coalition with
the Labor Party — though one
in which Likud clearly would
be the dominant partner and
Peres would play no role.
Shamir’s animosity toward
Peres is personal as well as
political. Many pundits believe
that if Shamir can be rid of
Peres, he actually would keep
Rabin as defense minister,
rather than appoint the power
ful and fiercely controversial
Herut rival Ariel Sharon, or
the even harder-line Tehiya
leader, Yuval Ne’eman.
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