Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s Likud-led government tottered on the edge of dissolution this week, as it struggled to satisfy the conflicting demands of its right-wing and religious coalition partners.
Ironically, the government was brought to the brink in the waning hours of 1991 at least partly because Likud decided to oppose a pending electoral reform bill designed to free the major political parties from precisely the parochial quarrels and extortionist maneuvers of the small factions they face now.
The reform measure was due to be voted on Wednesday. But the Knesset was bound by law to pass the state budget by midnight Tuesday, so that it would be in place when the new fiscal year began Jan. 1.
The fate of both bills rested on razor-thin majorities. The deadlines hanging over them touched off the kind of frantic round of year-end horse-trading the electoral reform bill was intended to eliminate.
The first breach in the coalition was over the reform bill.
Rafael Eitan, who supported it, officially resigned as agriculture minister at Sunday’s Cabinet meeting and pulled his far-right Tsomet party out of Shamir’s government. His resignation became effective Tuesday.
The former Israel Defense Force chief of staff quit because Shamir refused explicitly to allow Likud’s Knesset members a free vote on the reform bill, which political pundits said would doom its chances of adoption.
Although Tsomet’s two Knesset members would not be bound by Likud party discipline, Eitan insisted Shamir’s stand against reform violated the terms of their coalition agreement.
SHAMIR CHANGED HIS MIND
Shamir, in fact, originally supported the measure, which provides for the direct election of the prime minister by separate ballot while the rest of the Knesset is elected from party lists.
Eitan and other advocates of election reform have expressed disgust with the way the small coalition parties hold their big partners, such as Likud or Labor, to ransom.
They are convinced such practices would be reduced, if not entirely eliminated, by a freely elected prime minister not beholden to the small parties for a governable majority.
But Shamir changed his mind on the bill. He had become convinced that electoral reform could open the way for a more charismatic Labor Party leader to become prime minister by rallying apathetic voters, as well as Israel’s Arab citizens.
As matters stood late Tuesday, the religious parties threatened to topple the government over the budget and, paradoxically, were in a position to help the proposed reform measure pass in the Knesset.
The situation may be confusing to anyone not acquainted with the jealousies and rivalries among the Orthodox parties.
Collectively, their almost exclusive concerns are with obtaining public funds for their privately run yeshivas and retaining their monopoly over religious life in Israel, especially on matters of personal status.
The present crisis stems from the National Religious Party’s bitter opposition to “special funding” for the educational institutions of the rival haredi or ultra-Orthodox parties: Shas, Degel Ha Torah and Agudat Yisrael.
The NRP, which is Orthodox but Zionist-affiliated, warned that its five Knesset members would vote against the budget bill if it retained the “special funding” without a system of controls for its allocation.
The three haredi parties countered with a threat to oppose the budget bill if their subsidies are eliminated or put under any constraints.
The haredi bloc had the edge, considering that it fields 12 Knesset votes to the NRP’s five.
SETTLERS DEMAND MORE FUNDS
But the NRP came up with a new ploy. It said it would support the electoral reform bill unless Shamir and the Likud stood firm against the haredi demands on the budget.
Meanwhile, having lost Tsomet, Shamir’s coalition faced possible defections by its other two far-right parties, Tehiya and Moledet.
They demanded hundreds of thousands of dollars for more Jewish settlements, more Jewish housing and more road construction in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights.
Apart from the international political complications such moves would inevitably create for Israel, the Treasury is strapped for funds.
Tempers were said to have flared during a meeting Tuesday between Finance Minister Yitzhak Moda’i and representatives of the militant Gush Emunim seeking more money for settlements and housing in the administered territories.
Moda’i was so infuriated by the demands that he became ill and had to be treated by the Knesset physician. But he was back at his office in due time.
Shamir, who has often bridled at the sort of naked duress that marked the waning hours of 1991, seemed on the verge of throwing in the towel and resigning.
“It doesn’t make any real difference to us,” he told the Likud Knesset faction, “whether the elections are held in one month, three months or 10 months.”
The Knesset elections are slated for November 1992, but should the government fall now, they would most likely be advanced to the spring.
Even if the coalition weathers its latest crisis, it is doomed to fall apart before long, political pundits say.
As the new year approached, it was not only the political climate that was chilly. Israelis braced for the latest in a series of exceptionally severe winter storms to hit the country.
Snow fell Tuesday afternoon in the Hebron, Bethlehem and Gush Etzion areas of the West Bank, as well as in Galilee and the Golan Heights. Weather forecasters predicting more rain, snow and high winds said the worst was yet to come.
The Jerusalem police made special arrangements to transport lawmakers to the Knesset for the crucial votes Tuesday night and Wednesday.
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