JERUSALEM, July 20 (JTA) — When two old warriors put their heads together, as Ariel Sharon and Shimon Peres recently did, younger politicians should start worrying. Sharon is by most accounts on the warpath against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who recently denied the national infrastructure minister a promotion to head the Finance Ministry. He is vigorously campaigning for an amendment to the election law that would make it easier for the Knesset to vote Netanyahu out of office without the legislators losing their own seats. Sharon met last Friday with Peres, who recently stepped down reluctantly as Labor Party leader, to discuss the amendment, which would lower the Knesset majority needed to depose a prime minister — while keeping the Parliament intact — from 80 to 61. The initiative, coming on the heels of a coalition crisis over how Netanyahu would fill the Finance Ministry slot, which eventually went to former Justice Minister Ya’acov Ne’eman, is the latest sign of the erosion of support for the premier from one of his Likud allies. But if Sharon and Peres fail to muster broad support for the amendment, the move may become just another irritant for a prime minister who has been beleaguered by crises. Under the law that went into effect for last year’s elections, a vote by 61 of the Knesset’s 120 members against the prime minister would lead to the legislature’s automatic dissolution and the holding of elections, within 60 days, both for premier and for a new Parliament. If 80 Knesset members voted against the premier in a no-confidence vote, new elections would be held for the premier, but the Knesset would not be dissolved. These provisions of the election law have proven Netanyahu’s staunchest ally during the tempestuous troubles he has faced since taking office in June 1996. Netanyahu has a 66-54 majority in the Knesset, which makes the 80- vote hurdle in a no-confidence vote difficult to achieve. Knesset members disillusioned with his leadership have proven reluctant to vote against him in a no-confidence vote because if only a 61-vote majority were achieved it would mean that they, too, would be toppled from their Knesset seats. Netanyahu’s aides stated this week that he remains implacably opposed to any change in the election law. Sharon, for his part, insists that his support for the amendment should not be seen as a personal assault on Netanyahu. Rather, he maintains that he is seeking to change the situation created by the new election law so that “no prime minister can take weighty national decisions entirely unilaterally, without reference to his own key ministers.” Sharon told Israel Radio this week that consultation by Netanyahu “with ministers who have a contribution to make” to national security matters is “almost non-existent.” Sharon says if his proposed amendment goes through, it will result in Netanyahu’s “functioning better” as prime minister. Sharon launched his initiative in the wake of his recent, chastening experience of being passed over by Netanyahu for the prime post of finance minister, even though he was repeatedly touted in the media as the frontrunner for the job. His candidacy ran into trouble when Sharon insisted on being made a member of Netanyahu’s prestigious Kitchen Cabinet, along with Foreign Minister David Levy and Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai. Both bridled at the prospect of the veteran Likud hard-liner joining their deliberations. Netanyahu’s efforts, moreover, to placate Sharon and assure him that he would be consulted — privately — on major national policy issues have left the infrastructure minister unconvinced. Sharon has already met privately with Labor Knesset member Moshe Shahal, who has introduced a bill proposing the amendment to the election law. Sharon has also met with one of his longtime political foes — Dan Meridor, whose resignation as finance minister triggered this latest crisis. Both Shahal and Meridor are reported to have promised Sharon their backing in his bid to rally parliamentary support for the proposed amendment. Meridor is said to be organizing his own challenge to Netanyahu’s Likud Party leadership. Peres, too, in an interview Sunday, maintained that his uppermost consideration was the preservation of Israel’s democracy, rather than any design to rid the country of Netanyahu. Peres noted that even ardent advocates of the new election law are now having second thoughts about some of its aspects. By strengthening the prime minister, for example, the law was intended to clip the wings of the smaller parties. But many believe that the law seems to have left these parties stronger than ever. Sharon and Peres are very old friends as well as political rivals. Their warm relationship transcends their obvious doctrinal differences and goes back decades to the period when Peres served as a key aide to Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Sharon was a rising young officer and commander of the elite paratroopers brigade. But in their present quest, the two face a difficult problem of credibility. Both are aging politicians in the waning period of their careers — and both are loath to see their star dimming. Each has said during the past year that he was in favor of a national unity government — purportedly in order to save the country from looming military and diplomatic disaster. Needless to say, in a unity government, which they would have helped to bring about, their own standing and influence would have been dramatically enhanced. Peres, moreover, faces an imminent deadline: Under a “gentlemen’s agreement” with his successor as head of the Labor Party, Ehud Barak, Peres has until September to pursue his efforts to create a unity government — in which Peres would serve as Labor’s senior minister. But Barak’s aides insist that the Labor leader neither wants a unity government nor believes that it is possible to set one up at this time. Labor’s goal, they maintain, should be to bring about the earliest possible demise of Netanyahu’s premiership. Peres no doubt subscribes to that goal, as indeed does Sharon. But they both know that if Netanyahu goes, in the context of a major political upheaval, their own decades-long careers would probably end as well. This accounts for the widespread suspicion that Peres and Sharon have a personal agenda in seeking the amendment’s passage.
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