It looks like Fuad Ben Eliezer is really going to bolt the Israeli government this time. You have to ask what he thinks he's doing, as polls indicate that if new elections are called, Labor will lose its majority in the Knesset (currently they still hold the seats they won when Barak was elected) and Fuad is likely to lose the Labor party chairmanship as well. So Labor will be out on the street, and Fuad won't even be party chairman -- but he will have scored a blow against Arik Sharon, who wants to keep the unity government. Is Palestinian political thinking catching, or what?
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Israel's Coalition Government on Brink of Breaking Apart
By JAMES BENNET
TEL AVIV, Oct. 29 — Israel's coalition government was on the brink of breaking apart tonight after 19 months of broad-based unity, as ministers from the left-leaning Labor party said they would bolt rather than support Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's proposed budget.
With a vote on the budget scheduled for noon Wednesday and Mr. Sharon promising to dismiss any minister who opposes it, both sides in the dispute lamented the prospective loss of the coalition, which has helped sustain a national consensus for Mr. Sharon's hard-line stance toward Palestinian violence.
Mr. Sharon said he would try to form a narrower coalition without Labor, a step that would surely move the government further to the right. If he is unable to do so, elections to form a new government would be held within 90 days.
Negotiations continued toward a possible budget compromise despite the brinksmanship. But as the two sides traded charges of political opportunism and claims of high principle, they all but ruled out a compromise. A confrontation dismissed by analysts a few days ago as mere posturing had suddenly become a political crisis with possible fiscal consequences.
Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the defense minister and Labor leader, said that, unless Mr. Sharon accommodated his demands, "We're quitting tomorrow."
Business leaders, who met with both sides in the dispute today, pleaded for support of the budget, calling it necessary to safeguard Israel's precarious international credit rating and avoid further damage to the economy.
But Labor ministers said that Mr. Sharon's budget priorities were scrambled, favoring settlers over pensioners who were seeing their benefits reduced to restrain the budget deficit. "We can't accept that there is one sector in Israeli society — and I mean the settlers — who are exempted from shouldering the burden," said Ephraim Sneh, the minister of transportation.
He added: "We don't underestimate the importance of our participation in the cabinet, but it can't be at all costs."
Natan Sharansky, the housing minister and leader of a small, right-leaning faction, dismissed Mr. Sneh's claims about settler favoritism. Needy settlers faced the same cuts in mortgage subsidies as needy residents of Tel Aviv, he said.
He accused Mr. Ben-Eliezer, of manufacturing a fight over settlements, because he faces a three-way fight for continued leadership of his party in elections on Nov. 19. He said that as defense minister, Mr. Ben-Eliezer had not until recently objected to the growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel occupied in the 1967 war.
Referring to Mr. Ben-Eliezer by his nickname, he said, "Fuad, as they say in Hebrew, had climbed into a very tall tree."
Mr. Ben-Eliezer said he was fighting for principle. "My interest in not political," he said. "I think that if anyone is trying to engage in politics here it is the prime minister. Had it not been for his political reasons he would have met us to discuss the issues and granted us what we are fighting for."
If no compromise is reached, Mr. Sharon may have trouble forming a new government. Some right-wing leaders favor going immediately to elections, believing that they could increase their support at the expense of Labor, whose influence they bemoan as moderating Mr. Sharon's policy toward the Palestinians.
Avigdor Lieberman, whose small fusion party might otherwise fit in a new Sharon government, said today that he favored elections instead. "My opinion is clear: I am against any attempt to form a narrow government," he said.
Mr. Sharansky said he also had doubts about a narrower coalition. "The political price of keeping such a government would be so high," he said. "It will be very vulnerable to extreme demands." Unlike the present government, a narrower coaltion could be brought down by a small faction, dramatically increasing each member's bargaining power.
Polling here supports the theory that, in immediate elections, the right would gain ground against Labor, once Israel's dominant party. The newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth published a poll today suggesting that Mr. Sharon's Likud party would increase its number of seats in parliament, and therefore its proportionate voice in the government, from 19 seats to 29; Labor, it found, would decline from its current 25 seats to 21.
The poll, which had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points, found that Mr. Sharon was in a strong position to prevail in internal party elections over his Likud rival, former prime minister Bibi Netanyahu. But Mr. Ben-Eliezer was shown to be trailing his Labor competitors, Amram Mitzna, the mayor of Haifa and a former general, and Haim Ramon, a seasoned politician and skilled speaker.
But the poll also pointed to public resentment of perceived budgetary favoritism toward settlers, with 63 percent describing as unjust the amount of money spent on settlements rather than poor towns.
A separate poll published by Yedioth on Monday found that 78 percent of Israelis think the overwhelming majority of settlements should be dismantled as part of a broad agreement with the Palestinians. One out of five Israelis surveyed said that no settlements should be touched. That poll had a margin of sampling error of 5 percentage points.
The findings followed by a week confrontations in the West Bank between settlers and soldiers who were seeking to dismantle outposts the Israeli government called illegal. At one of the outposts, Havat Gilad, settlers clashed with the army and then rebuilt their camp after the army took it apart.
In a surprise move Monday night, soldiers again dismantled Havat Gilad. Settlers returned there and began setting up new structures today.
nytimes.com |
