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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 May - 2 June 1999 Issue No. 431 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 May - 2 June 1999 Issue No. 431
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Living Features Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Barak's 'preferred partners'
By Graham UsherAs of Tuesday -- when Israel's Election Committee declared that the results for the 15th Knesset were "official" -- Israel's Prime Minister- Elect Ehud Barak had 45 days to form a new government. He may not need them. By yesterday, representatives from Barak's One Israel bloc had already met with their counterparts from Israel's 14 other Knesset parties for the first round of "consultations" in pursuit of their leader's declared goal of establishing "a broad-based government".
For Palestinians -- and the four other Arab nations with whom Israel has either peace treaties or peace "negotiations" -- the consultations are of less interest than the political guidelines that will underpin Barak's coalition, and the question of whether the defeated Likud and Israel's other pro-settler parties will be part of it. On both counts, the auguries so far are not encouraging. According to a report in Israel's Ma'ariv newspaper on Sunday, Barak's guidelines will be identical to the "10 points" that made up One Israel's election platform. These call for a resumption of negotiations with Syria based on the "Rabin principle" that "the depth of withdrawal" from the occupied Golan Heights "will reflect the depth of peace" with Syria, and for a "staged" Israeli withdrawal from occupied south Lebanon, "based on an Israeli-Lebanese diplomatic arrangement with Syrian guarantees".
This (by Israeli standards) is the good news. The bad news: those guidelines pertaining to the Palestinian "track" of the peace process. Aside from the commitment to resume negotiations in line with the Oslo Accords, these are couched in almost exclusively negative terms. Thus, One Israel sticks to Barak's "red lines": in any final deal with the Palestinians, Jerusalem will be "preserved" as Israel's "united, eternal" capital, and there will be "no return to the 1967 borders". It also pledges an "unremitting war against terrorism everywhere and by all means", rejects any "unilateral establishment of a Palestinian state before the signing of the final status arrangement agreement", and promises that such an agreement "will be presented to the [Israeli] people in the form of a referendum".
Apart from the studied silence on settlements (most of whose residents, Barak has elsewhere vowed, "will remain in settlement enclaves under our sovereignty"), the guidelines are so broad as to command the enlistment not only of most of those parties that either supported or were neutral about Barak's candidature in the elections, but also those, like Likud and the Sephardi orthodox movement, Shas, which actively opposed it. This "grand coalition" is apparently Barak's desire, though (according to a statement released by One Israel on Tuesday) Likud would be his "preferred partner in the new government," given "the national consensus required to make important decisions both domestically and abroad".
This is a polite way of saying that Shas is not a preferred partner, if only because Barak's demands that it remove its convicted leader Aryeh Deri "from all positions of leadership" is unlikely to be palatable to a movement that has just won 17 Knesset seats and the support of some 420,000 voters. If so -- predicts the Israeli commentator Nahum Barnea, writing in Yediot Aharonot on Tuesday -- the new coalition will probably consist of "One Israel, Likud, Meretz, [Yitzak Mordechai's] Centre Party, the [pro-settler] National Religious Party and possibly [the Ashkenazi orthodox] United Torah Judaism. That means a coalition of some 70 members, with a working majority of about 10.
With the exception of One Israel and the leftist Meretz bloc, it also means a coalition broadly similar to Binyamin Netanyahu's outgoing one, and a rehabilitation of the Likud and NRP which, between them, lost 18 seats in the 17 May elections.
Nor would it be a coalition that commands quite the "national consensus" Barak would appear to claim for it. "Dovish" Knesset members within One Israel like Yossi Beilin, Shlomo Ben-Ami and Haim Ramon have already signalled that they would prefer Shas to Likud as a coalition partner, not only because of the former's moderate stance on the peace process and settlements, but also because its exclusion from government is likely to aggravate, rather than heal, ethnic divisions in Israel. The 10 MKs belonging to the three Arab lists have also said that they could not support a coalition that includes Likud and the NRP.
The one glaring omission from this "leftist" front is Israel's supposed tribune of the left, Meretz. Emerging from a meeting with One Israel on Monday, Meretz spokesman Amnon Rubinstein announced that his movement wanted the new government to freeze all new settlement construction in the Occupied Territories and cancel the "preferred development status" granted the settlements under Netanyahu. But he also said that Meretz's only "absolute precondition" in joining the coalition would be "the exclusion of Shas and Aryeh Deri".
For many of the Sephardim -- religious and secular -- who voted for Shas in the elections, this is precisely an example of the arrogance and racism that pervade so much of Israel's Ashkenazi left and against which Deri so effectively railed in the election campaign.
As for the Palestinians and the Arabs, they will be scratching their heads as to why it is "impossible" for Israel's premier leftist party to sit in a coalition with the "crook" Deri, but eminently possible for it to sit alongside a butcher like Ariel Sharon, who, as Likud's probable caretaker leader, will land a plum ministerial post if Likud joins the coalition.
Given these portents, Egyptian and Palestinian moves to convene a five-nation Arab summit are commendable, whatever the irritation expressed by Israel and Washington. As Barak puts in place the Israeli "national consensus", Egypt, Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon will need to forge a similar Arab consensus. For only on this basis will they be able to strike out Barak's "red lines" with a few red lines of their own.
