Unity Government Concept Finds One Defender at Symposium-premier Shamir

A three-day symposium on “The power-sharing polities of national unity government — cure or predicament?” produced few defenders of national unity government as a permanent fixture of Israeli politics. Most participants contended that it wasn’t functioning properly and many deplored what they saw as subordination of ideology to political factors.

The symposium, which opened Sunday at Tel Aviv University, is sponsored by the Jeane Kirkpatrick Forum for Public Leadership and Public Policy, named for the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. It drew speakers from the major Israeli political factions and from abroad.

The best that was said of the present Labor-Likud unity coalition was that it did a good job extricating the Israel Defense Force from Lebanon and stabilizing the economy. Most participants agreed it failed to resolve social problems or make progress toward peace.

Its most vocal defender, Premier Yitzhak Shamir, insisted that the unity government was “continuing to function effectively,” though he admitted that the dispute over an international peace conference for the Middle East “came close to threatening the government’s stability.” But he added that this was no reason to dissolve the coalition and call early elections.

IDEOLOGY SAID TO BE SUBMERGED

Israeli author Moshe Shamir noted that the dispute over the proposed international conference was not expressed in ideological terms, as he believed it should have been. Another author, Amnon Shamosh, said ideology was rendered impotent under national unity governments and this produced only shallow leadership.

Former Histadrut Secretary General Yitzhak Ben-Aharon charged that Israel was not making maximum use of its available resources because ideological goals were being ignored. “We all sit by the stream and go thirsty,” he said, adding that it was better to take an ideological stand on issues than to abandon ideology.

Dr. Bernardino Gomes, former chief of the Prime Minister’s Office in Portugal, observed that the problem is not confined to Israel. “Nobody wants to discuss ideology today… Throughout Europe, bureaucratic and technical approaches to government take precedence over ideology,” he said.

OTHER OPPOSITION

Labor MK Abba Eban, who chairs the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, likened the present coalition to strong medication which can become addictive if taken to excess. “The sooner we return to our previous system, the sooner we place responsibility on one political bloc, the better our democratic system will be,” Eban said.

Likud MK Eliahu Ben-Elissar, who was Israel’s first Ambassador to Egypt, cautioned that in the future national unity governments should be formed only in a grave emergency. He predicted it would be a long time before the experiment is tried again.

Yossi Beilin, Political Director General of the Foreign Ministry, said the rival political parties continued to assert their differences within the national unity government, impairing its ability to function properly.

Knesset Speaker Shlomo Hillel maintained that the national unity government in fact has ceased to function. He suggested that if Labor and Likud cannot work together, the coalition should be disbanded because the present situation endangers democracy. Hebrew University Prof. Yehezket Dror suggested that if Israel’s national unity government must continue, it could be improved by giving the Prime Minister more power, holding referenda on controversial issues such as the future of the West Bank, improving the civil service and spelling out a clear code of conduct for ministers.

U.S. Secretary of Labor William Brock said power-sharing in the U.S. “is done at the behest of the electorate” and “there are a lot of Americans who seem to like it,” a reference to the Republican Administration and Democratic-controlled Congress.