Israel bid farewell this week to a number of political figures who have been part and parcel of national politics for the past 15 years.
At least three of them, former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, Finance Minister Yitzhak Moda’i and Defense Minister Moshe Arens, have announced they will be leaving politics altogether, sooner or later.
There departure will create a dramatic change in Israel’s political landscape, triggered by the volcanic results of Israel’s June 23 elections.
Until Election Day, Shamir had still been hoping to lead the country for another four years. And Arens was regarded as having the best prospects of succeeding Shamir when he retired.
Moda’i was confident that his New Liberal Party would win enough Knesset seats to hold the balance of power between Labor and Likud.
Two years ago, Moda’i did wield that kind of power. When Shamir was having trouble forming a coalition government, Moda’i was able to foil an attempt by Labor Party leader Shimon Peres to create an alternative coalition to that of Shamir.
He agreed to go with Shamir by extracting a promise, one never kept, that he would get a “safe spot” on the next Likud list for Knesset.
As it turned out, his new party did not win enough votes in last month’s elections to qualify for even one Knesset seat.
But as he was packing his belongings this week, Moda’i took satisfaction in his record as Israel’s finance minister.
It was during his term, he pointed out, that the annual inflation rate was kept below 20 percent, that the country had absorbed hundreds of thousands of new immigrants and that a slow pace of economic recovery began.
“I hope that the next finance ministers will be better than me, not worse, and I promise that the results will be just as good as the results I am leaving behind,” said Moda’i.
ARENS BITTER, SHAMIR PROUD
Arens, though, is leaving politics with hard feelings. While he had wanted to be Likud’s next leader, he has been shaken by the party’s internal strife and has adopted a more dovish stand since Likud’s crushing defeat in the elections.
Before leaving office, he dropped several bombshells. Arens, who voted against the peace agreement with Egypt and was always considered a hawk, declared that it was time to change Likud’s “Greater Israel” doctrine.
He also took issue with the massive settlement-building drive and said he favored giving up the Gaza Strip. And this week, he criticized lack of discipline in the Israel Defense Force.
Shamir, on the other hand, is leaving proud of his accomplishments, which he listed in a speech at his last Cabinet session Sunday: the beginning of direct peace negotiations with the Arabs, the immigration of 430,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia, and the spread of Jewish settlements “throughout Eretz Yisrael.”
The outgoing prime minister knew exactly where he had been heading the country during the past four years. He had wanted peace, but he had not wanted to go down in history as the man who made concessions for peace. He expressed no remorse over anything he had done or not done.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
