Israeli Election

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Campaign moments, 1999: Labor candidate
Ehud Barak, top center, makes a point; top right,
Ze'ev Begins right-wing campaign made little
headway; bottom right, Azmi Beshara was the •
first Israeli Arab candidate for prime minister;
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, bottom
center, strikes an ecological pose; the Center Party
of Yitzhak Mordechai, bottom left, faded and
faded. Netanyahu kept the loyalty of Shas Party
leaders Age Deri and Rabbi Ova is Yosef

LARRY DERFNER
Israel Correspondent

Jerusalem
f the May 17 election follows the
consistent findings of Israeli pub-
lic opinion polls, the next
Knesset will be even more frac-
tious than the outgoing one. However
a predicted drop in the right's strength
could soften the left-right division that
has persisted for generations.
Further, if Labor candidate Ehud
Barak is elected prime minister, he could
form a government strictly of the left
and center without including religious
parties or possibly Arab ones. On the
other hand, if Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu is re-elected, he would need
a collection of religious and ethnic par-
ties now at each other's throats.
The pollsters for Israel's two largest
newspapers, Yediot Aharonot and
Maariv, stress that they only take a
"picture" of public opinion at the time
of the poll. Still, the surveys reflect
what many commentators have predict-
ed for weeks. They say:
• Not one, but two Russian immi-
grant parties will sit in the 15th
Knesset. Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael
Beitenu (Israel Is Our Home) would
become a new small party, one in con-
stant competition with Natan
Sharansky's Yisrael B'Aliyah (Israel Is
Rising) for the allegiance of Russian
voters. The two are already political
rivals and sniping at one another.
• Shas, the Sephardic Orthodox
party, will retain its 10 seats. Its assaults
on the judicial system have escalated
since the criminal conviction of its

I

5/14

1999

24 Detroit Jewish News

Photos by the Associated Press

can Seats

The infighting in this Knesset is a warmup for what's to come.

leader Arye Deri for accepting bribes.
• Tommy Lapid's Shinui (Change)
party would gain as many as six seats.
Before the campaign, the then-veteran
journalist was the most provocative
presence on the talk-show circuit.
Those talents are focused against the
haredim (fervently religious). In return,
the haredim have regularly accused
Lapid, a Holocaust survivor, of "anti-
Semitism," and he has reportedly
received death threats.
• The Center parry would establish
itself as a considerable force. Its top
three — former Defense Minister
Yitzhak Mordechai, former military
Chief of General Staff Amnon Lipkin-
Shahak and former Finance Minister
Dan Meridor — share deep animosities
toward Netanyahu, their former boss.

• On the right, the Likud will gain
fewer seats than Labor while the new
National Union, led by prime minister-
ial candidate Benny Begin, will debut
as only a small party. And old warhorse
Rafael Eitan's Tsomet (Crossroads)
party will be out of the Knesset. The
Third Way, champion of the Golan
Heights and the Golan settlers, would
likewise be gone. Some other outspo-
ken, veteran leaders of the ideological
right — West Bank Rabbi Benny Elon,
Gaza settler leader Zvi Hendel —
could lose their seats.
"The Israeli public has been steadily
losing its ideological commitment, its
willingness to fight for national causes,"
said Yisrael Harel, a former chairman
of YESHA, the West Bank and Gaza
settlers' council. Oddly enough, he

added, "It was Netanyahii who broke
the ideological back of the right, not
the left. Netanyahu did it when he
signed the Hebron accord and then the
Wye accord," which relinquished West
Bank land
the biblical heartland —
to the Palestinians.
Ehud Barak, if elected prime minis-
ter, could put together a Knesset major-
ity among his One Israel coalition
(lArhich includes Labor, David Levy's
Gesher, and Meimad, the moderate
Orthodox party), the left-wing Meretz,
the Center party, Yisrael B'Aliyah,
Shinui, One People (led by Histadrut
union chief Amir Peretz) and the Pnina
Rosenbloom party (named for the
Israeli sex symbol running on a femi-
nist platform). The last two in the list
are likely to gain a handful of seats in
the 120-member parliament.
This secular, left-center alignment
would have but one ethnic party. Left-
wing Arab parties could bring this coali-
tion a muscular majority of up to about
70 seats, but that's unlikely, said retiring
Labor Knesset Member and past
Knesset Speaker Shevach Weiss. Barak,
he said, wants a broader coalition.
"Otherwise, all the parties represent-
ing Israelis who consider themselves
`oppressed' and 'dispossessed' will be
concentrated in the opposition," he
said. "This would raise animosities to a
truly dangerous level. The only way to
overcome it is with a broad coalition."
On the other hand, if Netanyahu
won, he would be forced to form a
broad and seemingly irreconcilable
coalition with the Likud, Yisrael
Beitenu, Shas and the Ashkenazi
Haredi United Torah Judaism. II