The end of the Alignment
Patrick Cosg rave
Complicated, confused, frenetic and sometimes hysterical though they have always been, Israeli politics have nonetheless, until last Tuesday night, always been eminently Predictable. It could always be assumed With certainty that someone or other belonging to the Labour 'Party — the dominant partner in the coalition that has ruled the state since its foundation twentyme years ago — would be Prime Minister; and that he would be supported by some at be of the minority partners. It could also ne assumed, with equal confidence, that Menachem Begin would continue as Leader of the Opposition. The ex-guerrilla leader, bead of the most extreme and militant organisation of Jewish settlers resisting British authority in the days of the old Palestine mandate, ex-assassin, ex-tough guy, destroyer of the King David Hotel, seemed to have as permanent a lien on the leadership of the opposition coalition as Labour had on power itself. Yet the new Prime Minister of Israel is a Tan whose whole mien belies his reputation. At a time when the Labour Party has been riven by financial scandal he lives a life of great personal austerity and even claims — tturabile dictu —to exist on his parliamentary alarY. Now, having entered at last on his inheritance, he has expressed the desire not merely to ally himself with the National Religious Party (whose insubordination Precipitated the election and who have Promised him their support) and the ShOomozion Party of General Arik Sharon (the hero of Suez in the last war), but with all P°1itical factions in a coalition of national unity.
This ambition may or may not be fulfilled: traditionally it has taken the Israelis between six and eight weeks to form a government after a general election, though this tradition, like others, may well go by the board. Mr Begin will need a coalition, for his triumph has amounted to no .More than winning forty-four seats in a one
Knesset. With the —RP and Shlomozion he would have a hare majority, and he will thus certainly seek the help and counsel of Professor Ylgael Yadin's Movement for Democratic Change which has won sixteen seats. It was !actin's success that really destroyed Labout and its alignment partners.
. The conventional assumption has been that Yadin's new party founded its appeal essentially on its determination to clean up domestic politics and reform the crazy Israeli system of proportional re presentati?il (according to which there are no con.stituencies and each voter is obliged to cast his suPport to one or other party list) replac ing it instead with a constituency-based system on the British model. With this assumption went another — that Yadin, like Yitzhak Rabin, was a dove on the issue of territorial concessions to win peace with the Arabs. In recent weeks, however, Yadin has been joined with a number of soldiers and technocrats whose affinities might be thought to lie more naturally with Begin's Likud, and by the ex-Likud MK Shmuel Tamir. Tamir has one of the most brilliant minds in Israeli politics but his wayward independence has caused those familiar with British as well as Israeli politics to compare him to Enoch Powell. Like most Likud members he is utterly opposed to the Kissinger-type step by step search for a Middle Eastern settlement, though he is perfectly happy to settle for what he calls a 'total' settlement with the Arab countries, involving the achievement of complete peace and mutual recognition (with security) in one giant step. Again like most of his erstwhile Likud colleagues, Tamir is the reverse of racist in his attitudes to the Arabs: his law firm has successfully prosecuted more civil rights cases in favour or Arabs than any other in Israel. The fact is, though, that the addition of such men to Yadin's party has perceptibly hardened its line on foreign policy. There is a healthy possibility of a Likud-DMC coalition that would both set about the reform of domestic politics and produce a much more selficonfident Israeli foreign policy.
If it is not wholly true that power tends to corrupt, the behaviour of the Labour Party in recent months certainly suggests that it wearies. It is almost as though Rabin and Shimon Peres and their colleagues have gone out of their way to arouse the suspi cion of the voters about the wisdom of leaving them in office. Apart from ineffi ciency, unnecessary inflation, and a consid erable degree of corruption, they gratuitously stirred up unease about their inten tions in foreign policy. At times, it seemed that every minister had a different foreign policy. And then, at the behest of their minority left-wing partner Mapai, Labour leaders set about removing from their platform an age-old undertaking that there
would be a fresh general election on the terms of any overall agreement reached with the Arabs.
But there are deeper reasons for the sea change that has taken place in Israeli politics. There is more to this result, and there will be more consequences of this result, than the events immediately
surrounding it would suggest. For a start — because Israeli political parties make it harder for a man to get a fresh nomination
the longer he has served in the Knesset — nearly half the members of the new assembly will be fresh to the job. Again, the average age of members of the new Knesset will be substantially below that of its predecessor. Then, too, for the first time the increasing weight of the Oriental Jews (those coming mainly from other Middle Eastern or North African countries, whose family experience of Arab persecution has made them noticeably more sceptical of the possibilities or a settlement in the near future than their European and American fellow-citizens) has been felt in this election, to the benefit of Yadin and Begin.
Further, although voters from the kibbutzim constitute only a relatively small proportion of the electorate, the fact that they have always voted for Labour (or one of Labour's close allies) in a highly disciplined fashion has given them disproportionate influence: now the kibbutz vote has split, and the fact that Yadin and Begin have picked up many thousands of votes from the settlements the history and character of which make them the symbol of the state of Israel will give the new government a legitimacy it might otherwise not have enjoyed. But one must not forget, finally, that the urbanisation of Israel has been proceeding apace in recent years. For the first time the urban vote has expressed itself solidly against the traditional tenets of which the young state has been governed.
Another of Begin's most important colleagues is the Herut leader, General Ezer Weizman, the flamboyant architect of the 1967 air strike against the Arabs, and nephew of the great Chaim Weizmann, founder of Israel. Hitherto, the General's glamour, his almost obsessive use of RAF slang and his general air of romantic derring-do have always aroused suspicions about his stability and the quality of his political judgment. But Weizman has shown remarkable patience and discipline in propounding the case for free enterprise as against state socialism in Israel, and has been highly successful in educating his colleagues in the formulation of alternative economic policies. He, too, has gained political success after a long wait; and has now an unparalled opportunity to show his mettle. If Begin, who has a weak heart, does not remain long in office, Weizman has a strong chance of the succession.
It is wrong as well as superficial to say that the arrival of Likud has made it more dificult to achieve peace. Peace has never been very near anyway, for all the pronouncements of President Carter. To any Israeli citizen the crucial question about a settlement is less what the Arabs will demand than what their country needs to retain her security against modern artillery with a range of forty-three kilometres. In preserving that security — and, of course, in its commitment to retaining territories, like East Jerusalem, that no Israeli would give up — the new government is likely to be both more self-confident and more singleminded than the old.
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