Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, working hard to settle a coalition crisis caused by feuding between the two smaller parties allied with him, has won another week’s grace to resolve the political conflict.
The Labor Party’s two partners in government, the secularist Meretz bloc and the fervently Orthodox Shas party, agreed tacitly Monday to postpone a deadline for settling the crisis until next Tuesday, the eve of the Shavuot holiday.
But Meretz leader Shulamit Aloni warned she is determined to hold Rabin to his promise of offering her the Communications Ministry and the Department of Culture, including control of government-run broadcasting, as her price for agreeing to leave her post as education minister.
Shas, for its part, has agreed to let Meretz retain the Education Ministry, with Amnon Rubinstein at the helm.
But Shas has dug in over its opposition to Aloni continuing to be in charge of the Department of Culture and her gaining control of all state-run broadcasting.
It has been Shas’ objections to Aloni’s many controversial remarks on religious issues, seen in the Orthodox community as deeply offensive, that led to a string of coalition crises, including the present one.
Shas has also come under pressure from right-wing politicians and Jewish activists in the administered territories for backing the Labor-led government’s policies in the peace process.
For the second night in a row, settler activists clashed Monday with Shas supporters outside the Jerusalem home of the party’s spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.
Over the weekend, a leader in the Jewish settlers movement, Rabbi Menachem Felix, was badly bruised when a group of Yosef’s followers attacked those at the sit-in “protest watch.”
The thrust of the settlers’ campaign is to urge Yosef to take Shas out of a “leftist, defeatist” government that they fear will make territorial concessions to the Arabs for the sake of peace.
Yosef’s followers point out that the rabbi, in his writings on Jewish law, has specifically sanctioned such concessions, if made in return for peace and security.
DEGEL AGAINST JOINING GOVERNMENT
On the political plane, meanwhile, Shas continues to come under virulent attack from rival Orthodox parties.
The Degel HaTorah faction of the United Torah Judaism Front, in its daily newspaper Yated Ne’eman, attacked Rubinstein for his secular positions, suggesting that even if Aloni quits the education post, the government will still remain tainted by anti-religious attitudes.
By painting the government as being anti-Orthodox, the other Orthodox parties make it uncomfortable for Shas to remain in the coalition.
Yated Ne’eman on Monday published a lengthy article cataloging Rubinstein’s secularist positions on a whole range of state-religion issues, culled from his books, speeches and articles.
Rubinstein was dean of the Tel Aviv University Law School and a prolific commentator in the Ha’aretz newspaper before joining the government.
The Degel HaTorah newspaper concluded that while Rubinstein is more “civilized in his style” than the irrepressible Aloni, he is “more dangerous” to Orthodox concerns about the character of general education and culture in the state.
Degel HaTorah leaders also accused Shas leader Aryeh Deri of seeking to stay in government “at any cost.”
Moshe Gafni, Degel’s secretary, accused Shas in a radio interview Monday of “betraying the values that we once shared.”
But equally significant was the silence from the other, numerically stronger faction of United Torah, Agudat Yisrael. That party’s spiritual leader, the Hasidic rebbe of Gur, Rabbi Pinhas Menachem Alter, gave a grudging green light last week to Agudah’s three Knesset members to pursue negotiations with Rabin, with a view to joining the coalition.
Agudah’s position has always been that Aloni as education minister represented an unacceptable obstacle. But with the Meretz leader serving elsewhere, the party could well break its election-time alliance with Degel and join the coalition.
Degel’s leader, the nonagenarian Rabbi Eliezer Schach of Bnei Brak, has forbidden his party to join the government.
Even if Agudah does not openly join the government, its leaders may reach agreement with Labor to support the government in key Knesset votes, in return for Labor’s support of certain Agudah institutions and interests.
The prime minister is clearly anxious to broaden his government, if only to avoid further Shas-Meretz standoffs in the future.
With the backing of Agudah, Rabin would be significantly strengthened in the pursuit of his peace policy. Yet he also must take care not to alienate Meretz, whose 12 Knesset seats are still considered pivotal to the stability of the Labor government.
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