Focus on Issues Knesset Session Ends, Not with a Bang but with a Filibuster

The stormy summer session of the Knesset, often suffused with political tension and speculation over the unity government’s imminent collapse, drew to an end this week in an atmosphere of unwonted calm, indeed almost of apathy.

A last-minute effort by the Orthodox parties to push through subordinate legislation on Who is a Jew floundered in the Law and Constitution Committee of the Knesset. And the Labor Party quietly backed away from its much-trumpeted effort to topple the government in an early-elections vote, explaining that the full legislation would have to await the new session in the fall.

The 120 MKs adjourned Wednesday, therefore, for their summer break confident (or frustrated, depending on their political identity) in the expectation of a quiet late summer in the domestic political arena.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir is to visit Rumania later this month where he will doubtless be regaled by President Nicolae Ceausescu as to the benefits of an international peace conference and of the PLO’s representation of the Palestinian cause.

HOPING FOR MOVES ON INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

His colleague and rival, Labor leader and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, is meanwhile hoping that the parliamentary fallow period will be used by the U.S. government to press Shamir on an international conference — and either convince him, or convince themselves that he is unalterably obdurate on this vital issue.

Peres contends that his advocacy of the international conference, far from “returning the Soviets to center-stage in the Middle East,” as its critics contend, would serve to limit and restrain their involvement.

He argues that it is naive and unrealistic to pretend that the Soviets, especially under the novel and resourceful policies of Mikhail Gorbachev, can be kept out of regional peacemaking, as they were excluded during the Kissinger years.

The Labor leader insists that his party’s perceived failure to bring down the unity government over the peace conference deadlock and trigger early elections is not harming it domestically.

WAITING OUT THE SUMMER

Peres maintains that Labor did in fact, by the end of the Knesset session, amass the required majority to vote the House into dissolution — at least on a preliminary reading. But since the full legislation cannot by law be completed during the recess, he decided not to push through the dissolution bill on the first reading but rather to wait out the summer.

By the fall, Peres says privately, the picture must crystallize, both at home and abroad: either the Likud softens its rejection of the conference option, or else domestic opinion, coupled with the prodding of Israel’s friends abroad, will bring the issue to a head and the government will pass. Labor sources indicate that the Americans have undertaken to press the matter energetically during the weeks ahead. These sources suggest that, with the public hearings on Irangate now ended, the Administration will be able to devote more attention to Mideast diplomacy.

WHO IS A JEW ISSUE CONTINUES

While the diplomatic process, and specifically the dispute over an international conference, continues to head the domestic agenda and to interest statesmen abroad, the Who is a Jew issue uniquely blends party-political differences and diaspora concerns.

Without doubt, the Orthodox lobby made unprecedented gains during the session of the Knesset now ending. Several Likud-Liberals who previously had consistently urged their party leaders to vote against all Orthodox-inspired legislation on conversion, obediently supported a Shas amendment to the mandatory change of religion ordinance last month.

But the majority still rejected legislation that would, in effect, enshrine Orthodox conversion as the only form officially recognized by the State. To that extent, Labor and its allies are still triumphantly holding the line — and can proudly assert to the Jewish leadership abroad that they are fighting for this principle — at the expense of immediate expediency.

The diaspora leadership for its part, has become more worried and more strident than ever in their opposition to the proposed Orthodox amendment, and have been more outspoken than ever in their warnings to Shamir of the devastating effects should the amendment ever be passed into law.

DOOMED BEFORE IT EVER HIT THE FLOOR

This week, a back-door attempt by Shas to have subordinate legislation approved by the Knesset Law Committee was effectively filibustered by opposing MKs. The attempt was anyway doomed because a religious MK, Avner Shaki of the National Religious party rejected that Shas proposal on the grounds that it is not far-reaching enough. But the Likud was anxious to demonstrate to Shas and to Agudat Yisrael that it was fulfilling to the end its commitment to help pass the Who is a Jew measures which they submit.

The proposed new rule would require all converts to deposit their certificate of conversion with the (Shas-run) Ministry of Interior. Those certificates would subsequently serve to winnow out Reform and Conservative converts when they wished to marry. However — and this was Shaki’s reservation — these converts would continue to receive ID cards classifying them as Jewish.

Once the unity government breaks up, whether before its time or in late 1988 as required by statute, there is little doubt that who is a Jew will be the key negotiating issue between the Orthodox parties and each of the big blocs. Aguda’s Avraham Shapira said baldly this week that what he wants is a narrow-based government — of either hue. “We’ll never get what we want so long as Labor and Likud are together,” he said. In an attempt to avoid that — by no means the first such attempt in Israel’s political history — a new Liberal center announced its birth this week. Amnon Rubinstein, leader of shinui and until recently a government Minister, joined hands with veteran independent Liberal leader Moshe Kol and with various splinter groupings from the political center, to create a new rallying-point for voters who find the Likud too nationalistic, and Labor too Socialist.