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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 July 1999 Issue No. 436 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 July 1999 Issue No. 436
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Special Interview Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters Barak's 'red line' coalition
By Graham UsherDespite -- or perhaps because of -- the onslaught on Lebanon, Israel's prime minister elect Ehud Barak's long toil to form a government appears slowly to bearing fruit. For the Arabs -- as always with Israel -- it is a mixed harvest.
The first coalition agreements were signed on 25 June within hours of Israeli warplanes returning to base from Lebanon. As widely predicted, the Russian Immigrant party, Yisrael B'aliyah, landed the Interior Ministry. Less widely predicted -- and ominously for the Palestinians -- the far right and pro-settler National Religious Party received the Housing Ministry, a post with inordinate powers to market lands and offer tenders for settlement construction in the occupied territories. Having wooed representatives of Israel's "right" and "centre", Barak spent the next 24 hours courting its "left". On 26 June, the 10-MK (member of the Knesset) Meretz bloc initialled a deal which gives them the Trade and Industry and prestigious Education ministries.
Meretz, the NRP and Yisrael B'aliyah had long been Barak's preferred foundation for a government. With these parties behind him, he now had the choice to negotiate a small majority government of 66 members or a "grand coalition" of 77 or more members. If he plumped for the latter, the question was whether the "preferred partner" (as Barak stated last month) would be Ariel Sharon's 19-MK Likud Party or (in line with the vast majority in Barak's One Israel bloc) the 17-MK strong Sephardi orthodox movement, Shas. Barak appears finally to have made up his mind.
At a meeting on 28 June, Barak told Meretz leader Yossi Sarid that he preferred "Shas to Likud" and that Israel's main secularist movement could "take it or leave it". Last month, Sarid had famously invited the Israeli public to "read my lips" when he stated that Meretz would not sit in a government that also included Shas. By 28 June -- and having secured his seat as education minister -- Sarid's lips were mouthing a new mantra. "Nobody in the world wants to give Ehud Barak a positive answer about letting Shas into the coalition more than I," he said, disingenuously. After all, "Shas has undergone significant, important and positive changes" recently.
Maybe so, but Shas has certainly not become secularist or Ashkenazi which, at one point, seemed to be Meretz's conditions for letting them sit in government. Rather, by ditching Aryeh Deri as their secretary-general and agreeing to forfeit their 15-year long tenure of the Interior Ministry, Shas has made the necessary political sacrifices to sit alongside Barak. As a reward, Israel's premier Sephardi movement is likely to receive the ministries of labour and social affairs, health and national infrastructure. And while there are still squabbles over whether Shas should have full control of the Religious Affairs Ministry or share it on a rotational basis with the NRP, few Israeli observers doubt that Shas is going anywhere other than back in government.
And even fewer doubt that Likud is going anywhere other than the opposition benches. Following a terse five minute meeting with Barak on 28 June, Sharon was "sorry to say the partnership [between One Israel and Likud] was not a partnership of truth". It was certainly going to be an equal partnership if that was what Sharon had intended. According to the Israeli media, the main stumbling block was Sharon's desire to amend One Israel's prospective guidelines to include a refusal of any full Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Golan Heights and a commitment to settlement construction in occupied East Jerusalem, especially the high profile settlements in the Old City and at the Palestinian village of Ras Al-Amud. Barak, reportedly, rejected both changes out of hand.
The apparent departure of Sharon and Likud from government undoubtedly will be greeted with sighs of relief by most of the Arab world. Yet it would be unwise to cheer too loudly. The removal of Likud will probably make things easier for Barak to resume negotiations with Syria from the "point they left off" in 1996 or, more precisely, from the different points each side think they left off. But there are enough hawks in Israel's emerging coalition -- including perhaps Barak -- to ensure that no withdrawal from occupied south Lebanon is likely to be forthcoming without firm Syrian or international guarantees for Israel's "security".
As for Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority, this will be faced with an Israeli government that, unlike its Netanyahu predecessor, accurately reflects the Israeli consensus. This could mean the implementation of the 1998 Wye River agreement and a resumption of Oslo's final status negotiations. But there is not a single party in Barak's new political dispensation that is likely to challenge his "red lines" of no shared sovereignty in Jerusalem, no dismantling (but probable expansion) of settlements and no withdrawal to the 1967 borders. And there are a few -- like Yisrael B'aliya and the NRP -- who will blanch at the prospect of a Palestinian state, even if it is truncated and demilitarised.
The only parties in Israel who oppose that consensus are the three Arab lists which, between them, command 10 seats in the new Knesset. And it is because they oppose the consensus that they cannot be in an Israeli government, whether it is small like Netanyahu's or "grand" like Barak's.
