Concern over the stability of Israel’s government is mounting amid increasing signs that the Shas party may bolt the Labor-led coalition over the handling of the case against Interior Minister Aryeh Deri.
Deri, who heads the fervently Orthodox party, has been accused by Attorney General Yosef Harish of committing acts of bribery, fraud and breach of the public trust.
But formal charges cannot be brought against him unless the Knesset waves his parliamentary immunity, a move it is unlikely to make before it returns from summer recess in October.
Harish and Justice Minister David Libai are urging Deri to step down from his Cabinet post in the meantime, but Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has indicated he will not force such a move until an indictment against Deri is presented in court.
The High Court of Justice is expected to rule next week on whether Deri should be required to step down. A ruling against Deri may prompt the six-member Shas Knesset faction to leave the government, as many within the party’s leadership and constituency have demanded.
New indications that a serious crisis is looming over the coalition surfaced over the weekend as Shas party figures unleashed sharp verbal attacks against Harish and Libai. Another indication of the seriousness of the crisis was seen in Deri’s absence from the weekly Cabinet session Sunday.
His aides said Deri had extended a weekend leave. Deri spent the weekend at a religious seminar organized by his wife, Yaffa, at the Washington Heights College near Ashdod.
So far, the Shas party’s spiritual mentor, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, has stood as a buffer against the pressure on the party to leave the government, while encouraging Deri to remain in office.
HARISH’S DISMISSAL URGED
If Shas quits, the coalition would be left with a governing plurality of 56 Knesset members from the Labor Party and Meretz bloc. Unless it can persuade additional parties to join the government, it will be forced to rely on the tacit support of the five Knesset members belonging to the two left-wing Arab parties: Hadash and the Arab Democratic Party.
Labor recently has been reaching out to the United Torah Judaism bloc, which has four Knesset members, but these talks have born no fruit so far because of the fervently Orthodox party’s continued objection to the formation of any ties with the secularist Meretz bloc.
Shas officials have grown especially militant following an interview the attorney general gave Israel Television over the weekend in which he claimed that Deri had no “appropriate response to the charges against him.”
Knesset member Shlomo Benizri of Shas demanded that the government fire Harish immediately because he “has sentenced Deri even before the charge sheet was presented to court.”
Shas intended to go ahead with its plan to file a counter-petition to the High Court of Justice, demanding that the court intervene against the attorney general for his having reversed his original position in the affair.
Harish, prior to signing the coalition agreement about a year ago, endorsed Deri’s pledge to suspend himself from office only after a charge sheet is presented in court.
The attorney general now claims there is no need to wait until the indictment is brought to court. He argues that his presentation of the charges to the Knesset, with the demand that it lift Deri’s parliamentary immunity, was tantamount to “standing at the entrance hall” of the courts.
Harish also claims that at the time of the coalition agreement Deri was only suspected of having misused public funds for public purposes, whereas now he is suspected of corruption for personal gain.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
