News Analysis: Government Crisis Highlights Need for Rabin to Expand His Coalition

If there was a lesson that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin learned from this week’s political crisis here, it was that he can no longer regard the Shas party as a reliable coalition partner and must broaden his government.

But that has already turned into a formidable task because of enormous ideological differences between some of his prospective partners and the current ones.

Although Rabin averted Shas’ withdrawal from the coalition this week by working out a temporary one-week reprieve, the prime minister has yet to come up with a permanent solution to satisfy both the fervently Orthodox party and his other coalition partner, the secularist Meretz bloc.

Rabin now has his eyes set on the larger picture. He is trying not only to solve the immediate problem but also to prevent such crises from occurring again.

After getting Shas party Chairman Aryeh Deri and Meretz leader Shulamit Aloni both to “deposit” their portfolios with him for one week, the prime minister engaged in intensive consultations with leaders from the United Torah Judaism Front, the National Religious Party and the right-wing Tsomet party.

Should Shas withdraw next week, Rabin seemed determined not to let his government rely on a one-seat majority of 61 in the Knesset, with five of those seats belonging to Arab parties formally outside his coalition.

The Labor Party leader appears to be pinning his hope on inviting into his coalition the United Torah party, itself made up of two Ashkenazic Orthodox factions: Agudat Yisrael and Degel HaTorah.

OTHER RELIGIOUS PARTIES MAY JOIN NOW

With the controversial Aloni virtually out of the Education Ministry, Rabin believes the other religious parties could now be persuaded to join his government.

It has been Aloni’s controversial comments about religion that have triggered several coalition crises with Shas, including the present one.

Sparking this latest crisis was a comment by Aloni criticizing Rabin’s recitation of the Shema Yisrael prayer at a commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising last month. Aloni, dismaying even many of her supporters, said Rabin’s use of the prayer was fatalistic.

Shas then demanded that Rabin make good on an earlier written pledge to remove Aloni from the education post if her controversial statements continued.

The Agudah faction within United Torah is favorable to the idea of joining the government. But the Degel HaTorah faction, which adheres to the orders of Rabbi Eliezer Schach, opposes it. Schach has vetoed any partnership with Meretz.

Rabin’s effort to add another party other than Shas is also prudent since Deri, long the target of a police investigation into financial corruption, may soon have to face legal charges.

The prime minister is offering the smaller opposition parties the same deal he had promised Shas at the time the government was formed last summer: that before Israel agrees to make any territorial compromise in the peace process, the issue will be brought to a national referendum.

But that is apparently not good enough for Rafael Eitan of Tsomet and NRP spokesman Zevulun Hammer, who said this week there was not much to talk about, since they have little common ground with Labor when it comes to policy.

Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu denied speculation on a possible national unity government with Labor.

Meanwhile, negotiations continued within the coalition. Energy Minister Amnon Rubinstein of Meretz met with Deri for an hour-long meeting Wednesday, but there was no real movement toward a solution, just speculations about who would give up what.

Meretz leaders insisted that they would not give up the Education Ministry, now presumably reserved for Rubinstein, unless they received a significant post in return, such as the Foreign Ministry.

Such a scenario would mean a reshuffling of Labor ministers.

If Meretz were given the Foreign Ministry, then incumbent Foreign Minister Shimon Peres might be shifted to defense, a portfolio currently held by Rabin himself.

So far, though, there has been no indication that any of the Labor ministers, or Rabin, intend to move in that direction.