Democratic Palestine : 31 (ص 46)
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- Democratic Palestine : 31 (ص 46)
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FCT
that Shas, Agudat and the National
Religious Party finally backed Shamir.
The upsurge of the religious parties
in the elections has different reasons:
- Labor and Likud’s failure to give a
clear answer to the problems facing
‘Israel’, which provoked a protest vote
in favor of the religious parties.
-A return to traditional (fundamen-
talist) religion similar to the one
observed in the western world, resulting
from the alienation and _ hope-
lessness generated by capitalist
societies.
- The crisis in Zionism and the fall of its
democratic facade in the last years,
which pushed many secular people to
return to religion in order to legitimate
their presence in Palestine.
- The increase of the religious sector
due to the immense development of the
religious establishment and the fact that
immigration since 1967 has been in-
creasingly based on religious motiva-
tions, as well as a high birth rate in the
ultra-Orthodox population.
The reactions to the religious parties’
demands were generally negative. The
majority of Israelis are not particularly
religious and are disturbed by seeing
their life directed even more by
religious law. The Orthodox rabbis
already control the registration of bir-
ths, deaths, marriages, the granting of
divorce, along with the regulation of
hotels, restaurants and places of enter-
tainment. Besides, many Israelis are
angry to see a minority which enjoys
privileges, such as not having to serve in
the army, trying to impose its will.
The proposed amendment of the Law
of Return has provoked an outcry from
Jewish communities everywhere. Jews
identifying themselves with the Conser-
vative or Reform trends have been
sending one delegation after the other
to ‘Israel’ in order to convince the
political leaders to block the demands
of the religious parties. American
Jewish organizations and rabbis, who
have always avoided public criticism of
Israeli policies, and conveyed an image
of unconditional support, have now
signalled that the alienation resulting
from a change in the Law of Return
might affect that support which has
always been essential to ‘Israel’ and is
especially so now, because of growing
Israeli isolation in the face of the PLO’s
peace offensive.
46
LABOR DIVIDED
The big loser of this election is
Shimon Peres who is now facing the
consequences of declaring that he wants
peace on the one hand, meanwhile hav-
ing Rabin practice the iron fist policy
against the Palestinian people on the
other. With King Hussein’s decision to
sever ties with the West Bank, Peres’
Jordanian option was dealt a deadly
blow. Labor lost one-half of its
Palestinian vote as a result of its policy
against the uprising, and the majority
of the Israeli electorate still decided that
other forces were more able either to
achieve peace or to supress the uprising.
But the worst problem Labor is facing
now is internal divisions. Rabin and the
hawks within Labor worked to
strengthen their position in the party;
they favored a coalition with Likud and
a continuation of the current policy of
brutally supressing the uprising. On the
other hand, leading figures, like Uzi
Baram and Ezer Weizmann, and a large
number of the party’s young cadre and
rank-and-file think that going into op-
position is the best thing to do, in order
for Labor to clarify its positions. They
want a change in Labor and are open to
taking the uprising and the decisions of
the PNC in Algiers into consideration.
There was talk that Rabin and his sup-
porters might leave Labor and join
Likud. On the other hand, a coalition
government, in which Labor plays the
role of a junior partner, might increase
the dissatisfaction within the party and
eventually lead to a split to the left.
Peres remains in a personal dilemma:
He knows very well that one of the first
steps Labor would undertake if it goes
into opposition would be a critical
reassessment of his policy, which would
probably cost him his position. By ally-
ing with Likud, he may retain his seat
as a minister, but with a divided party
behind him.
POLITICAL BANKRUPTCY
Likud, though also affected by in-
ternal rivalries, appeared much
stronger in terms of internal unity and
firm positions. The problem it faced
was how to set up a government. A
coalition with the extreme right parties,
Tzomet (two seats), Tehiya (three seats)
and Moledet (two seats), and the
religious parties, was problematic not
so much because Likud disagreed with
them on political issues, but because it
might have created problems with sup-
port to ‘Israel? from abroad, and
deepened the split between the secular
majority and the religious minority. On
the other hand, a coalition with Labor
on the same basis as the previous one
had proven to be unviable. So Likud
worked to pressure Labor into a coali-
tion in which Labor would be forced to
give up its plan for establishing ‘peace’,
namely its project for a ceremonial in-
ternational conference.
Another option was to form a coali-
tion government on the basis of chang-
ing the electoral law, in order to raise
the percentage of votes needed by par-
ties to enter the parliament. This would
lead to more clear-cut results and ma-
jorities; still it doesn’t absolve the
Israelis of having to face their crisis and
to realize that there is only one solution
to it: breaking with Zionist tenets and
recognizing the legitimate rights of the
Palestinian people. Though mentioned
as an aim of the newly formed
government, electoral reform is not its
central issue.
The election results showed that
whatever government was set up, no
real qualitative change is to be expected
in Israeli policy in the near future. One
indicator of this is Peres’ and Shamir’s
identical rejection of the decisions
taken by the PLO in the 19th session of
the PNC.
The deadlock in the Israeli political
life was dramatically expressed in the
petty bargaining which took place to
form a government and the failure of
the big parties to see the main con-
tradiction, the conflict between
Zionism and the Palestinian people, as
the first to be solved. This will lead to
further isolation of ‘Israel’ and increase
its dependency on political and finan-
cial support from the US. With the
cease-fire in the Gulf war, and first and
foremost the uprising of the Palestinian
people and the facts it has created,
much of the world’s attention is now
focusing on this conflict. In the new
atmosphere of detente and widespread
understanding that regional conflicts
need a political solution, it is clear,
more than ever before, that ‘Israel’ is
an anomaly in the modern world, and
that Zionism, like apartheid, cannot be
reformed. - هو جزء من
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