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May 21, 1999/6 Sivan 5759, Vol. 51, No.34
Barak victory leads major political shake-up in Israel
DAVID LANDAU
and MATTHEW DORF
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Pundits everywhere are calling Israel's May 17 election results a "political earthquake." In fact, though, two distinct tremors have overturned the rules and realities that have governed the Jewish state and its policy-making these past three years.
Labor Party leader Ehud Barak's 56 percent to 44 percent victory over outgoing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, signifying the collapse of the "Greater Israel" ideology, is the seismic shift that has brought undisguised joy from leaders around the world. But the massive success of the fervently Orthodox, or haredi, Shas Party, which draws predominant support from Israel's Sephardi population, is also an earthquake. Shas scored the most dramatic victory in the May 17 voting for the Knesset, boosting its representation from 10 seats in the outgoing Knesset to a projected 17 seats in the new legislature. The gain makes it one of the "Big Three" in the Knesset alongside the - much-reduced - Likud and Labor factions.
According to projections, One Israel, the Labor Party coalition, will have 27 seats, compared with its 34 in the outgoing Knesset; Likud will have 19 seats, a loss of 13 from the outgoing Knesset. Given that Shas' strident election campaign focused almost exclusively on the four-year sentence for bribery and corruption recently imposed on its leader, Aryeh Deri, the party's victory, on the face of it, is a victory for the anti-court and anti-establishment rhetoric that its leaders espoused.
Deri announced May 18 that he was resigning as a Knesset member and withdrawing from political life in a move that could clear the way for coalition negotiations between Barak and Shas. But on a deeper level, Shas' triumph dramatically illustrates the daunting task facing Barak in his quest, as he proclaimed on election night, for "unity," "brotherhood" and a "healing of the rifts" that have threatened to tear apart Israeli society.
Ironically, it was Netanyahu's close alliance with Shas that, probably more than any other single factor, brought on his crushing defeat. As the election campaign neared its climax - and especially after Deri's sentencing in April and Shas' vociferous rejection of the ruling - it became increasingly clear that Netanyahu's "coalition of the non-elites," as opposed to the "elitism" he ascribed to Labor's traditional Ashkenazi following, was splitting at the seams. The vast immigrant community from the former Soviet Union bridled at finding themselves lumped together in Netanyahu's governing coalition with a convicted felon whose followers were threatening the judges who had found him guilty.
In the month before polling day, tens, probably hundreds, of thousands of immigrants shifted their support from Netanyahu - seen in the thrall of Shas - to Barak, whose election promise was, "I will not bow to extremists." On the morning after, however, all election promises must undergo searching re-examination under the harsh light of the new Knesset.
Shas' 17 "extremists" are not, arguably, as easily dismissed as 10 "extremists." In practical terms, Barak will find it hard to set up a stable government without either Shas or Likud.
In the meantime, Jews in the United States and Israel are waiting to see how Barak handles the volatile issue of religious pluralism in Israel. The Reform and Conservative movements have spent the last three years playing defense in the Knesset while waging battles in the Israeli courts to win official recognition of conversions performed by their rabbis and government funding for their institutions. They now expect an entirely different dynamic in Israel now that Barak has been elected.
Some religious pluralism advocates believe that the last Labor-led governments, under Yitzhak Rabin and then Shimon Peres, sacrificed their issues in order to gain support for their peace policies from the Orthodox parties.
But proponents of pluralism believe Barak will be different. They point to Barak's agreement with the modern Orthodox movement Meimad, which joined his One Israel party list. Labor and Meimad reached an agreement that would significantly transform the role of religion in Israel.
Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the American Conservative movement's Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, said he expects Barak to follow the covenant as he seeks to reduce secular-religious tensions. But at the same time, Schorsch predicted, Barak will tread carefully because "this government is not going to turn against the Orthodox."
David Landau writes from Jerusalem, and Matthew Dorf writes from Washington, D.C.
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