|
|
November 1, 2002/Cheshvan 26 5763, Vol. 55, No. 10
Labor leaves Sharon with hard choices
LESLIE SUSSER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - For a year and a half it was predicted, and this week it finally came: The Labor Party handed the Likud a bill of divorce, ending Israel's national unity government.
What the divorce will mean for the country amid the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians, the prospect of an American-led war against Iraq and a staggering economy is far from clear.
The pretext for the divorce was the Oct. 30 preliminary vote on the 2003 budget. After negotiations on a compromise ended in a shouting match, Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer submitted his resignation to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and the other Labor ministers followed suit.
The resignations take effect in 48 hours, which means the country is likely to be in political limbo.
Barring new developments in that narrow window, Labor will join the opposition after a 19-month experiment in national unity in the face of the violent Palestinian uprising.
The ostensible sticking point was some $150 million in budget allocations for Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that Ben-Eliezer said should go instead to social programs. But pundits - and, polls showed, many Israeli voters - considered that a transparent excuse: Ben-Eliezer faces Labor leadership elections in three weeks, and trails badly behind his two dovish challengers.
Labor's defection leaves Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with four stark choices: Tender his resignation and call new elections in 90 days, limp along for as long as he can with a minority government, set up a narrow but stable right-wing government, or agree with Labor on a date for new elections sometime next spring.
Labor's defection means Sharon now commands the support of only 55 of the 120 Knesset members. To survive, Sharon would need to split the opposition on key issues or get the seven-member, far-right National Union-Israel, Our Home faction to join the coalition or, at least, support it from the outside.
That makes Avigdor Lieberman, National Union-Israel, Our Home's leader, a key player. The trouble is that Lieberman dislikes Sharon, and is a close political ally of Sharon's rival, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Sharon is ambivalent about the possibility of a narrow right-wing government. On the one hand, by instituting right-wing policies that are pro-settler and tougher on the Palestinians, he could erode some of Netanyahu's support on the right.
But he knows those policies would bring him into the kind of head-on confrontation with Washington that he has tried at all costs to avoid.
What Sharon does next largely will be conditioned by Netanyahu's leadership challenge.
Sharon also hopes to stay in office for at least a few months more, so that the vote will take place after an American strike on Iraq, when Sharon presumably would bear the aura of a successful, war-time prime minister.
That's why, analysts say, Sharon seems most likely to choose the fourth option: agreeing with Labor on new elections next April or May.
Ben-Eliezer's moves also have been greatly influenced by internal party leadership challenges.
Pundits say Ben-Eliezer's change of heart stems from polls that show him trailing his challengers for the party leadership, Haifa Mayor Amram Mitzna and Knesset member Haim Ramon.
Both Mitzna and Ramon have clamored for Labor to leave the Sharon government, and their message is popular among Labor members who will choose the party's leader Nov. 19.
With time running out, Ben-Eliezer was advised to make a dramatic move that could bring him back into contention.
But pundits aren't convinced that the dramatic step Oct. 30 really will do Ben-Eliezer much good.
According to polls, most Israelis believe Ben-Eliezer engineered the budget crisis for partisan reasons, since the settlement spending in question - some $150 million - is a minuscule portion of the $60 billion budget, about one-quarter of 1 percent.
Leslie Susser is diplomatic correspondent for the Jerusalem Report.
|
