Once again, and perhaps more starkly than ever before, Israel’s political future — and the future of the peace process — are in the hands of the religious parties, which hold the balance of power between Likud and Labor.
Their spiritual leaders and their politicians will be deciding this week whether there is to be a narrow government led by Likud, a narrow government led by Labor or no government at all, meaning new elections.
They will reach their decision against the backdrop of what several observers have discerned as a trend away from political hawkishness in the ultra-Orthodox or “haredi” camp.
Ever since the 1977 political earthquake that swept Menachem Begin into power, the haredim have sided with the Likud-led “nationalist camp.”
But more recently, the parties have been edging toward their former centrist position in the Israeli political spectrum. And they have been doing so while dramatically increasing their strength at the ballot box and in the Knesset.
In the November 1988 election, Shas emerged as the third-largest party with six seats; Agudat Yisrael was just a whisker behind with five; and Degel HaTorah, the anti-Hasidic breakaway from Agudah, ended up with just enough votes for a respectable — and now pivotal — two scats in the 120-member Knesset.
The trend toward political centrism, or at least greater unpredictability, also has affected the National Religious Party, to an extent.
AGUDAH LEANING TOWARD LABOR
On Tuesday, after Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir ousted Labor Party leader Shimon Peres from the national unity government, NRP’s secretary-general, Rabbi Yitzhak Levy, quickly declared that his party would back the Likud-led rump government in the confidence vote schedule for Thursday.
But another NRP Knesset member, Yigal Bibi, said he wanted the party to allow a freedom-of-conscience vote for all five of its members. “Shamir does not deserve our support,” Bibi remarked.
Still, Labor’s hopes at this time are pinned not on the modern-Orthodox NRP, but on the black-hatted, long-coated rabbis of Agudah, Degel and Shas.
The strongest hopes rest with Agudah, which emerged from the November-December 1988 coalition negotiations bruised and bleeding — and bitterly resentful of Prime Minister Shamir.
Agudah maintains that the premier promised far-reaching changes in religious legislation and generous government funding that he had no intention of delivering.
Agudah, moreover, is a much more moderate and attractive coalition partner for Labor now than it was then — because the controversial “Who Is a Jew” issue that dogged the 1988 negotiations has since been quietly shelved by almost all circles in the haredi community, both here and in the Diaspora.
With Agudah’s five votes, and with the blanket support of all the parties of the center and the left, Labor would reach 60 votes Thursday in the no-confidence debate. In order for the present “rump” government to survive, Likud would have to ensure the favorable vote of every single remaining Knesset member.
Agudah’s faction chairman, Rabbi Moshe Feldman, said Tuesday night that his party “has no confidence in the prime minister” — seeming to imply that it would join Labor and the left in a no-confidence vote Thursday.
DEGEL MEMBERS RECEIVE INSTRUCTIONS
Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Labor’s No. 2 leader, also reportedly picked up warm words of encouragement from Rabbi Yohanan Sofer, head of the Erlau Yeshiva and a member of the presidium of Agudah’s Council of Torah Sages.
Rumors abounded in the Knesset that at least one member of Shas would conveniently take sick at the operative moment, again giving Labor an advantage.
Degel HaTorah was considered unlikely to allow its rivals in Agudah to “steal a march” on them by being the only haredi party “in on the ground floor” of an evolving Labor-led coalition.
Degel’s two Knesset members, Avraham Ravitz and Moshe Gafni, met Wednesday afternoon with their ailing mentor, Rabbi Eliezer Schach of Bnei Brak, to receive his blessing and his orders.
He reportedly instructed them to inform Shamir that they would support him only if he reinstated Peres and announced his acceptance of the U.S. peace proposals. It was Shamir’s reluctance to call a vote on those proposals that precipitated the government crisis this week.
Pundits therefore speculated that Degel would either absent itself or vote with Labor, spoiling Shamir’s hope of surviving the vote.
Similarly, the Shas Knesset members were expected to convene with their party’s Council of Torah Sages under Rabbi Ovadia Yosef before the Thursday deadline.
The various sages themselves have been the targets of intensive lobbying this week by the leading politicians of Likud and Labor. Shamir and Peres have either sought audiences with each of them or tried to arrange lengthy telephone conversations to explain their respective positions.
If enough Orthodox swing away from the Likud and the government falls, the political community will be cast into a lengthy period of uncertainty while President Chaim Herzog goes through his statutory duty of consulting with all the parties in the Knesset to decide which leader is best placed to form a new government.
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