Israeli political life jumped a generation this week as Prime Minister Shimon Peres appointed two relatively young ministers to top posts in his Cabinet.
Ehud Barak, 53, the former chief of staff, is to be foreign minister in the new government, and Haim Ramon, 45, will serve as minister of interior.
His new government was overwhelmingly approved by the Knesset on Wednesday. At the same time, Peres was sworn in as Israel’s 12th prime minister.
The final vote was 62-8, with 38 abstentions. Most of the opposition abstained in the vote, with the exception of Moledet, Tsomet and a number of other opposition Knesset members.
Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu stressed prior to the vote that the abstention was to underscore the party’s faith in democracy, but that he remained opposed to the new government’s policies.
While much of the Cabinet makeup is the same, one completely new face is Rabbi Yehuda Amital, head of the Har Etzion yeshiva at Alon Shvut, near Bethlehem in the West Bank, and leader of the moderate-Orthodox movement, Meimad.
Meimad, which unsuccessfully ran for the Knesset in the past, supports territorial concessions.
Peres’ decision to reach out to Amital was seen as an effort to include Orthodox Israelis in the wake of deep secular-religious divisions, especially in the wake of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.
Amital is to be a minister without portfolio. His responsibilities will include maintaining the government’s dialogue with the settlers, and also with Jewish communities in the Diaspora.
As for Barak and Ramon, both men will be members of the “Inner Cabinet” and will be closely involved in the peace process with the Palestinians and with Syria.
In his speech presenting the Cabinet before the Knesset, Peres pledged to continue the peace policies begun by his predecessor, the late Rabin.
Peres will hold the Defense Ministry himself, in the tradition of his mentor, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, and of Rabin.
Peres surprised and pleased the Labor Party Central Committee Tuesday night by telling them that talks would continue with the Orthodox parties with a view to drawing one or more of them into the new government.
“Some may want to help actively, others passively,” Peres said.
The intense and hopeful talks between Labor and the National Religious Party Tuesday triggered a minicrisis with Labor’s leftist-secularist coalition partner, Meretz.
At one point, Yossi Sarid of Meretz lashed out publicly at Labor’s Yossi Beilin, minister of economic planning who is moving to a special ministerial post in the Prime Minister’s Office.
Beilin is handling the talks with the religious parties.
The wrath of Meretz eventually subsided after Peres penned a formal assurance that support for any religious legislation in the future would require the consent of all the coalition partners.
The Orthodox parties are pressing for legislation that would counter the effects of a recent High Court of Justice ruling that opens the way for state recognition of non-Orthodox conversions performed in Israel.
Such conversions carried out abroad have long been recognized under Israeli law, after a High Court ruling in 1989. But they have not been permitted in Israel and the Orthodox say they want legislation that would preserve the “status quo.”
Pending the possible accession of an Orthodox party, the coalition now is made up of three factions: Labor, Meretz and Yi’ud. It also enjoys the consistent support of two largely Arab factions, the Arab Democratic Party and Hadash, giving Peres a total of 63 votes of support in the 120-seat chamber.
The new government’s policy platform – a legal requirement under Israeli constitutional law – is almost a carbon copy of the Rabin government’s platform, with its accent on the pursuit of peace. The new document, however, adds a pledge to conduct a dialogue with the settlers, something the Rabin government was often criticized for failing to do.
In that vein members of the Labor Party Knesset caucus led by Raanan Cohen met Tuesday with representatives from Jewish settlements. Both sides described the meeting as useful and said contact would continue.
Peres’ elevation of younger men to prominent positions has come at the expense of several middle-age hopefuls.
Among them are Housing Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, Tourism Minister Uzi Baram, Labor and Welfare Minister Ora Namir, Finance Minister Avraham Shohat and Police Minister Moshe Shahal, all of whom are staying in the Cabinet.
Most openly smarting from being passed over was Shahal, who actually threatened to resign Tuesday and return to his large law practice in Haifa.
He told reporters that he had never really wanted to be police minister in the first place. He was reportedly lobbying hard with Peres for the interior or foreign affairs portfolios.
In the end he made do with what Peres announced to the party as a new “ministry of internal security” that would embrace, according to the prime minister, significantly more responsibilities than just the police.
Israeli media reported, however, that Peres has refused to hand over to Shahal responsibility for the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency. This has been in the personal purview of the prime minister since the creation of the state.
Shahal, according to these reports, is to have responsibility for the army’s home front command, which includes civil defense forces in times of peace and war.
One Labor minister who dug his heels in and has won, at least thus far, is Shimon Shetreet, the reformist-minded minister of religious affairs.
Despite strong pressure from the Orthodox parties, which have opposed Shetreet’s vigorous shakeup of the Religious Affairs Ministry, Peres has kept him in place, though he would presumably be shifted if an Orthodox party actually joined the Cabinet.
The new Cabinet will have one less ministry than the old: The Ministry of Economic Planning is to be split up among other departments.
Yossi Beilin, who had held the post, will now be in the Prime Minister’s Office, where he will essentially be Peres’ senior point man in the peace process.
The arrangement underscores the fact – well known to political insiders – that regardless of the various promotions and shufflings of portfolios in the new Cabinet, the man closest to Peres, personally and politically, remains Beilin, his aide of 18 years.
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