Dissolution of the 12th Knesset Goes Almost Unnoticed in Israel

The 12th Knesset, in office since 1988, was almost lethargic when it voted Tuesday to dissolve itself to make way for early elections set for June 23.

All 45 members present raised their hands in support of the motion. No one voted against it.

Although the termination of a national legislative body is an event of some historic import, fewer than half of the Knesset’s 120 members, not a single Cabinet member among them, bothered to attend the session.

The vote was indeed a formality. As leaders of the rival blocs congratulated each other afterward, all were aware that the present Likud-led coalition government had run its course.

Deprived of a Knesset majority last month by the defections of its far-right partners, the government had little choice but to seek a new mandate from the voters.

But in the four months until elections, the two major parties will have to put their own houses in order.

Labor is bruised by the continuing abrasive rivalry between incumbent Chairman Shimon Peres and No. 2 man Yitzhak Rabin. Both men, well into their 60s, face a possible insurgency by a younger generation of aspiring leaders.

In Likud, Yitzhak Shamir has already been challenged by super-hawk Ariel Sharon, whose views are further to the right than the feisty 76-year-old prime minister’s.

There is also a fight brewing for the No. 2 spot on Likud’s election list, between Foreign Minister David Levy and Defense Minister Moshe Arens, who wants Levy’s job back.

Labor, meanwhile, has been sobered by the departure of Ezer Weizman, one of its most innovative legislators, who this week announced his retirement from public life.

A former Likud defense minister who helped draft the Camp David accords, Weizman decided long ago that Likud was not truly interested in peace and has said so publicly.

But as a Laborite for the last dozen years, he also concluded that the Labor Party was too weak to achieve peace.

Widely respected for his candor, Weizman made clear that he thinks Labor has little chance to win the next election.

According to Gideon Samet, a columnist for the daily Ha’aretz, Weizman realizes that “whatever was will be, only more so; the continued rule of a strengthened right-wing government being pushed to the deadlock of war.”

The only politicians who believed they had cause to celebrate this week were the Citizens Rights Movement, Mapam and the Center-Shinui Movement.

With 10 Knesset seats among them, they agreed to form a single, left-of-center “peace bloc,” in hope of increasing their parliamentary strength to 15 seats in the upcoming elections.

That would make them a powerful balancing force between the two major parties.

Whether their electoral hopes materialize is as questionable as the durability of their alliance. It took much soul-searching on the part of the veteran socialist Mapam to join with the two much younger parties, which are dedicated to laissez-faire economics no less than to civil liberties.