Shas Says It Will Rejoin Coalition, Strengthening Rabin at Critical Moment

The fervently Orthodox Sephardic Shas party announced plans this week to rejoin Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s government after Passover.

Shas leader Aryeh Deri said Tuesday that his party’s return, after a five-month absence, was made possible by that government’s decision to support legislation to continue that present ban on importing non-kosher meat, even after industry is privatized.

The bill, which a mends a quasi-constitutional law protecting occupational freedom, easily passed its initial Knesset vote on Tuesday by a vote of 82-11, after the Labor party threw its support behind it.

It was supported, too, by all the religious parties and many traditional or observant members of Likud opposition. Labors’ left-wing coalition partner, Meretz, strongly opposed the bill.

Deri said Tuesday that the peace process, too, was a factor in Shas’ decision to move slowly back into the coalition fold.

He said his party would rejoin the government after the Knesset’s Passover recess “if nothing untoward happens in the peace talks till then”.

But observers here expect many ups and downs and more political maneuvering before Shas actually rejoins the government, if indeed it ever does.

Deri himself is barred from resuming his former position as interior minister, since he is currently facing criminal charges relating to bribery and abuse of his office.

Another Shas Knesset member, Raphael Pinhasi, is also banned from regaining his former post as deputy religious affairs minister because he is also under indictment on separate corruption charges.

Shas withdrew from the coalition following a High Court of Justice ruling last September that Deri and Pinhasi had to step down from their posts to face the charges against them.

Shas, whose spiritual leader is the politically moderate Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, has always been the favorite coalition partner among Labor’s doves.

For Rabin, the news from Shas is welcome indeed. Since Shas left the coalition, Rabin has governed with a narrow 61-59 majority that relies on the support of two predominantly Arab parties outside the coalition.

No Israeli government has ever included the Arab parties in its coalition. Rabin has been particularly loath to base crucial national decision, such as possible territorial compromise with the Syrians, on Arab support.

At the same time, Rabin has been aware that recent talk of reaching out to right-wing parties to help broaden the coalition has brought opposition within Labor.

In recent days, the National Religious Party, the right-wing Tsomet party, and Yi’ud, a Tsomet breakaway, have sent out coalition feelers to Labor.

Observers here say that fear of such an expansion of the coalition to the right prompted the controversial remarks over the weekend by Knesset Member Nissim Zvili, the Labor Party’s dovish secretary-general.

Zvili sparked a political storm by daring to predict publicly that a Palestinian state would eventually emerge from the process begun last September, when Israel agreed to grant Palestinian self-rule in the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank.

Zvili also predicted aloud that Israel would eventually recognize Syrian sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

The secretary-general offered his prognoses in the course of a speech given last weekend to a group affiliated with the Mapam party, part of the Meretz bloc.

Zvili noted that Labor did not, as a matter of policy, favor the creation of a Palestinian state; rather it sought a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation.

But his assessment, he said, was that Labor’s desire for such a joint entity would not ultimately carry the day.

An embarrassed prime minister quickly upbraided the ultra-dovish Zvili, while the Likud and other parties on the right made predictable hay of Labor’s obvious discomfort.

But the storm of political controversy may have been deliberately seeded, according to some observers here.

These observers say Zvili made his remarks at this juncture because the time had been ripe for Rabin to find right-wing coalition partners. Zvili and other members of Labor’s left flank sought to scare away any potential right-wing allies.

There is a sense among both Israeli and Palestine Liberation Organization negotiators that the main hurdles have been crossed in the talks leading to an Israeli withdrawal from parts of Gaza and the West Bank, and that the negotiating, though still daunting, should be relatively downhill from here.

The accord reached in Cairo last week, which spelled out the security arrangements for Palestinian self-rule, has fueled subsequent negotiations.

delegate to Israel-PLO talks in the Sinai border town of Taba, confirmed that much progress was being made.

This means the first stage of the Israel-PLO declaration of principles now looks significantly nearer to implementation than it did until recently.

And it means that potential rightist allies, awry of joining the government while key decisions remained to be made in the talks, could now contemplate signing on.

After all, most of the decision that needed to be made have been made, and can hardly be reversed.

If it was indeed Zvili’s unspoken plan to head off the approach of the National Religious Party, Tzomet and Yi’ud, then with the announced return of Shas to the coalition, the plan seemed to have been a success.

And if Zvili’s weekend comments had in any way helped bring about Shas’ renewed interest in joining the government, then Rabin’s anger at him will doubtless now have much abated.