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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 - 31 March 1999 Issue No. 422 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 - 31 March 1999 Issue No. 422
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Profile Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters After the fall
By Graham UsherWhen -- after a marathon five year trial -- Shas political leader Aryeh Deri was found guilty on 17 March of taking bribes, Israel braced itself for an "uprising" by those Sephardi orthodox Jews of mostly Arab descent that form Shas's core constituency. Yet apart from one or two street skirmishes -- and perhaps deterred by the massive show of strength mounted by Israel's police outside of Jerusalem's Supreme Court building -- there was no popular explosion.
Rather Shas's message after the verdict was aimed less at Israel's security establishment than at each of the three main prime ministerial candidates for the Israeli elections on 17 May. Asked how Shas would respond to the possible imprisonment of their leader, one supporter outside the court simply shrugged his shoulders. With "20 seats in the next Knesset", he replied.
This is probably an exaggeration, though no future Israeli leader is likely to bank on its being so. In the 1996 elections, Shas doubled its vote and returned 10 members of the Knesset (and gained two cabinet ministers), making it Israel's third largest party after Labour and Likud. Even if Shas were simply to keep its present representation in the Knesset in the upcoming elections, it would still be a party without which neither Labour nor Likud could govern. And the question the leaders of those parties are now asking themselves (together with the leader of Israel's new Centre Party, Yitzak Mordechai) is whether the Supreme Court's verdict will rally Sephardi support behind a perceived political martyr or alienate it from a convicted crook.
Their dilemma is real because Deri is both a martyr and a crook. After an investigation spanning nine years and on the basis of 917 pages of evidence, Israel's three Supreme Court judges found Deri guilty not only of bribery, fraud and falsifying documents during his five year tenure at Israel's Interior Ministry but, since then, of intimidating witnesses and perverting the course of justice by building an "edifice of lies on a foundation of truth". Under Israeli law, Deri could receive a seven year prison sentence for the bribery charges alone.
Should he do so, he will almost certainly be deemed a victim by his and Shas's followers. This is because Deri used his position in the Interior Ministry not only to line his own pocket (though he did this too, moving his young family from a modest flat to a luxurious apartment in one of West Jerusalem's more affluent areas); he also used it to finance some 500 kindergartens and 100 supplementary schools for those Sephardi poor historically neglected by the Israeli state and, through these, restore in them a sense of ethnic and religious pride based on (as the Shas election slogan has it) "2,000 years of Sephardi civilisation" rather than the 100 year marginalisation they have received from the Eurocentric ideology of Zionism. This is why Israel's liberal Ashkenazi elite view Deri and Shas as not only crooked but "suspect" on Zionism. This is also why the Sephardi poor see Deri as a Robin Hood figure who, until 17 March, was adept at beating the Ashkenazim at their own game.
Deri was adept in other ways too. For the leftist Israeli commentator Haim Baram -- who is neither Sephardi nor religious -- Deri is "corrupt to the core"; but he is also "the most gifted politician in Israel". Nor was the gift confined to matters of graft.
Shas Party leader, Aryeh Deri, greeting supporters after he was convicted of bribe-taking, fraud and breach of public trust
(photo: AP)During his 15 year stewardship of Shas, Deri (together with Shas's spiritual guide, Rabbi Ovadia Yusuf) steered what had been a staunchly pro-Likud constituency to an exclusively Sephardi movement that, though orthodox on social issues, was pragmatic (by Israeli standards) on peace with the Palestinians and the Arabs. Thus Shas supported the last Israeli government in return for the crucial domestic portfolios of interior and social affairs, but it also backed Rabin's government in 1993 to get the Oslo Accords through the Knesset and threatened to ditch Netanyahu unless he signed the 1997 Hebron and 1998 Wye agreements.
It is unclear whether such positions were based on opportunism or principle, but they gave Deri enormous leverage with both Labour and Likud. And the fear that is now rippling through these parties is how Shas's "king-making" powers will be used in the run up to 17 May.
Shas has already set out its store. Following the verdict, Ovadia Yusuf declared his protégé "innocent" according to the Halacha (Jewish religious law) while Shas supporters insisted that Deri would remain their leader even if this meant conducting an election campaign "from the inside of a prison cell".
Such a scenario would tie Netanyahu, Mordechai and Labour leader Ehud Barak in the tightest of binds. Should they be tempted to aid Deri in the fight Shas will wage to overturn the verdict, they risk alienating those Ashkenazi and secular Israelis for whom Deri and the religious ideology he espouses are an anathema. But should they stand full-square behind "the law", they chance the wrath of the Sephardi communities who, collectively, represent just over half of Israel's population. Either way -- in the short term at least -- it looks as though Aryeh Deri, after the fall, will remain what he became during his rise -- the most influential man in Israeli politics.
