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Rather week — culminating in the rat- than pour energy into culling ification of the Declaration of more support the agreement, Principles signed with the PLO he decided to concentrate on re- — was a fascinating power ducing the number of votes that game in which old players sud- would be registered against it. denly found themselves on Which brings us to Shas, the brand new ground and had con- Sephardic Orthodox party that siderable difficulty jockeying for Mr. Rabin courted last year to positions. get around the "Jewish major- On the face of it, the upshot ity" issue. There are a number of the vote was a victory for the of uncanny parallels between government and a defeat for the Shas and the Arab parties. Shas Likud — which has been left in is no more a "Zionist" party an embarrassing state of disar- than they are. Its hard-core con- ray. stituents are, like most of Is- On a deeper level, however, rael's Arabs, exempted from even the old definitions and military service. rubrics of Israeli politics have Nevertheless, because it changed since the mutual recog- could contribute to the "Jewish nition of Israel and the PLO, majority," Shas became Mr. Ra- leading to thoughts of new bin's highly coveted fig leaf. But alignments in the domestic are- Shas, seemingly intoxicated na as well. with the power that goes with The first change has to do that role, precipitated a num- with the attitude toward Israel's two Arab parties: the Democ- ratic Front (which is formally a mixed Arab-Jewish party but draws its votes overwhelming- ly from the Arab sector) and the Democratic Arab Party. Neither is in Yitzhak Rabin's coalition, although it was their five Knes- ber of government crises over set votes that made it possible patently irrelevant matters for him to form a government (such as whether or not the 19 months ago. world had been created in six Their support for direct talks days), primarily to prove its with the PLO and the estab- clout. lishment of a Palestinian state Last month, however, Shas's was reason enough for Prime leverage changed after the High Minister Rabin to disqualify Court of Justice forced both of them as coalition partners and its ministers, Aryeh Deri and throw in his lot with the Or- Rafael Pinhasi (who have been thodox Shas Party instead. indicted on a variety of corrup- Clinging to a long tradition, tion charges), to leave the gov- he believed it was imperative ernment. With their departure, for his government to rest on a Shas found itself out of the gov- "Jewish majority." ernment but still inside the After his daring recognition coalition. of the PLO, however, that nu- Had it voted against the De- ance changed — subtly, per- claration of Principles — after haps, but definitively. While the Mr. Rabin had classified the opposition was actively dis- vote as a motion of confidence crediting the right of Israel's in his government — it would Arab citizens to have an equal have found itself out of the coali- share in critical national deci- tion, as well. And though the sions, Mr. Rabin quietly government still wouldn't have changed his position on the fallen, Mr. Rabin would have need for a "Jewish majority." been left in the position of head- "A majority is a majority," he ing a minority government at a pronounced. He would have particularly critical juncture. been happier had he received So naturally there was am- the support of 70 of the Knes- ple drama surrounding the set's 120 members. But he had question of how Shas would ul- no compunctions about pursu- timately vote. Mr. Rabin paid ing his policy on the basis of a repeated visits to Rabbi Ovadi- simple majority. And he cer- ah Yosef, the party's venerated tainly would not apologize for spiritual leader, naturally fuel- the fact that five votes of that POLITICS page 26 The old definitions of Israeli politics have changed.