June 23, 1992 has not produced any exceptional change in the relation of drive political forces in Israel.
The only significant novelty of these elections is the fact that the Labor Party has succeeded in vanquishing Likud after 15 years of opposition.
MARCELO MEIR — July 1, 1992
VEN if the Labor Party currently
E holds a majority of seats in the
Knesset — with the left liberal coalition Meretz, the Communist
Party and the Arab Democratic List - its leader, Yitzhak Rabin, has already said that to constitute a coalition with the forces of the left alone would represent a grave error.
That is why he is trying to convince political forces on the right - especially
Tsomet (Crossroads), led by the former
Israeli army chief Rafael Eitan and Mafdal, a religious nationalist party — as well as the orthodox religious parties — to participate in the new government.
The Israeli electors voted for Rabin essentially with the aim of punishing
Likud. This party has governed for the last
15 years with the support of the poor layers of the population, on the basis of a populist ideology. However, over the last decade, and particularly under the governments led by Shamir, the Likud has reverted to its original ideology, stressing above all else the need to preserve a Greater
Israel in opposition to the interests of the Arabs even if this means coming into conflict with
Israel's US backers. As regards social polithe cy,
Likud has applied austerity measures which have been reinforced with the arrival of Jewish immigrants from the ex-
Soviet Union. The Oriental
!
Jewish population, the inhabitants of the poor quarters and the unemployed — unemployment now affects 15% of the active population and 40% of the new immigrants — have seen the Likud devote most of its efforts in government to the diplomatic and economic issues concerning the occupied territories, abandoning its natural electors. Faced with this, and then with the emergence of debates inside
Likud on this question, it became obvious that a significant part of the electorate were going to transfer their votes to Yitzhak Rabin.
But it should be stressed that support for
Rabin does not mean support for his party's programme. In the eyes of the popular classes, the Laborites bear the historic responsibility for the evils which afflict them. In other words, the vote of
June 23 does not translate into programmatic support for the Labor Party, but rather support for Rabin himself, for a leader who is felt to possess enough charisma and strength to "resolve the most burning problems".
The Labor Party itself understood the nature of this electoral support: it centred its campaign on Rabin, while developing a hard line in relation to the Palestinian intifada
(uprising).
The
Labor
Party thus appeared to most people as a second Likud.
This strategy is confirmed
5 by the fact that the Labor
ISRAEL Party's left wing deputies were carefully kept out of the way during the month which preceded the ballot.
All this reinforces Rabin's policy, which involves presenting himself first as the leader of the majority of the people, and only then as the standard bearer of Labor's programme and leader of all the forces active inside the party. This position automatically implies the necessity of forming a broad coalition, where the left and the right can counterbalance the strength of the centre, that is Rabin and the deputies around him.
Even so, the elections left the left liberal Meretz in a position to deliver an ultimatum to Rabin, by insisting that it was not ready to take part in a coalition with the right. This has not been the case: the leaders of Meretz have been quick to confirm their readiness to support a broad coalition, even if the parties of the right participate.
Why this turn on the part of Meretz, which has become the third electoral force in the country and whose electors see it as the representative of the peace movement? The answer is simple. From an ideological, programmatic and historic point of view Meretz still adheres to the forces of Zionist national consensus. Meretz prioritizes the interests of the central state - among which, the necessity of creating a broad and stable government - before those of the peace movement.
The leaders of Meretz have justified their willingness to participate in the same government as the rightist but secular Tsomet by saying that the latter had received the votes of an electorate which seeks a response to the pressure and influence of the orthodox parties. In this sense, Meretz sees Rafael Eitan, the leader of Tsomet, as a natural ally.
But this is only partially true: in fact, so far as the future of the occupied territories goes, Tsomet has the same positions as the parties of the far right. The presence of Tsomet in the government could mean the indefinite postponement of essential decisions concerning the future of these territories. In other words, Meretz is ready to fundamentally review its principles to take part in a coalition, even if this leaves a free hand to the Labor Party and Tsomet to decide the government's programme concerning the peace negotiations.
### Betrayal of mandate
The policy of the Meretz leaders amounts to an outright betrayal of its electorate and the mandate it has received from them. It is to be hoped that the rank-and-file supporters of this coalition will eventually react, although this will not happen at once given that Meretz' supporters will at first entertain hopes of seeing Meretz 6 ministers in the government changing the relation of forces inside the latter. International Viewpoint # 233
No respite for Palestinians
OUTSIDE Israel, Labor's surprise success in the June 23 elections to the 13th Knesset was widely perceived as a vote for peace or even the "left". The generalized apathy and reduced turnout which characterized these elections are hardly features which usually accompany upsurges of pacifism or left wing victories, but of course Yitzhak Rabin's triumph represented neither of these things.. It is true that the primary elections held to select Labor's leader and parliamentary candidates before the elections revealed a swing to the party's doveish wing, with high placings for those, such as the young M.K. Avram Burg, whose politics do not vastly differ from those of the left Zionist Meretz coalition.
Nonetheless, Labor's election propaganda during the campaign stressed Rabin's authoritarianreputation, summed up in his boasts of having deported more Palestinians in his period as minister of defence than his Likud successors. Labor's television propaganda attacked the Likud's record on "security" , employing such slogans as "Get Gaza out of Tel Aviv" (the party supported the two week closure of the Gaza Strip enforced by the Likud government as the reponse to the killing of a 15 year old girl by a Gaza resident on May 25). Election campaigning centred around Rabin or military figures like Avigor Kahalani, who claimed to be further to the right than the Likud, and Amir Drori, implicated in the Sabra and Chatila massacres of Palestinians during the Lebanon war. Secret services chief and torturer Yossef Ginossar was responsible for party propaganda directed at Soviet Jews (which was undoubtedly very successful - in contrast to predictions that the Soviet newcomers would vote massively for Likud and the right, the majority voted for Labor or Meretz).
At the ideological level, Labor completely abandoned even the vague and hypocritical references to socialism employed in the past, and there was no mention in its campaign of the flagship elite institutions of Labour Zionism despised by the Oriental masses, like the kibbutzim or the Histradut "trade union federation" Labor's election proposals advocated the continued Israeli retention of 40% of the occupied territories, combined with a freeze on "political" settlements and a commitment to expanding others. Even this is now being revised in the context of attempts to bring the rightist somet into a new coalition - on June 30 policy guidelines drawn up by Rabin and his aides for the next government dropped the call for a one year settlement freeze and promised to "reinforce settlement along the confrontation lines", Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights. The policy guidelines made no mention whatsoever of autonomy for the Palestinians or the acceptance of United Nations resolutions as the basis for a negotiated peace - B.G. *
Finally, these elections have confirmed the changing consciousness of the Israeli people on an important point: the future of the occupied territories. This was reflected in the debacle of the far right Tehiya (Rebirth) party. This organization did not cross the electoral threshold which would allow it to have a deputy in the Knesset -in the preceding parliament, it had three of them.
This shows the electorate's growing maturity in the face of the positions of the extremists, who advocate giving priority to Jewish settlements in the occupied territories and massive repression of the Palestinian population.
The Israeli electorate has shown that it is no longer disposed to believe that these settlements are the magic solution to all the problems of Israeli society. This constitutes a change, small and certainly ambiguous, but nonetheless real, in the consciousness of the electorate.
It is to be hoped that, with the creation of the new governmental coalition, an important political phase will open up in Israel. Both the far right and the militants of the peace movement will be forced to review their strategies as well as their attitudes towards their respective leaderships. *
July 20, 1992
ex-YUGOSLAVIA