Story of a Secret Deal Jolts Coalition : Israeli Political Turmoil Complicates Peace Efforts

When Israeli right-wing political leaders recently got wind of a document prepared in the prime minister’s office that outlined a proposal to share power with Jordan in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, they quickly and publicly cried foul.

They accused Prime Minister Shimon Peres of secretly selling out what they hold to be an integral part of “the Land of Israel” and of violating the 14-month-old coalition agreement binding Peres’ centrist Labor Alignment and the rightist Likud Bloc into a rocky “national unity” government.

The Likud’s hard-line Ariel Sharon, formerly defense minister and now minister of industry and trade, demanded a clarification. Peres denounced what he said was Sharon’s affront and repeatedly denied that he had made any secret deal with Jordan’s King Hussein.

Only later did aides to the prime minister concede that the document had been leaked by Peres loyalists, who--oddly, except in the context of Israeli politics--hoped that it would help bring down the government that Peres leads.

The agreement under which the current coalition was formed includes a “rotation” provision calling for Peres to switch jobs next October with the Likud’s Yitzhak Shamir, who is now alternate prime minister and foreign minister.

However, Peres’ popularity has soared in recent months, and his supporters are confident that he and Labor could win an election and form a government without the Likud’s help.

Thus, the aides who leaked the document were trying to help the political fortunes of their boss.

“Some . . . are afraid (Peres) may be serious about going through with the rotation,” one of the prime minister’s associates explained.

The incident illustrated both the increasingly Machiavellian nature of Israeli domestic politics and the way political maneuvering here can affect the current flurry of diplomatic efforts aimed at launching new Mideast peace talks.

Most analysts here see the government infighting as a threat to the peace process. After the incident of the leaked document, for example, Hussein also denied any secret deals and appeared to take a harder line on the prospects for direct negotiations between Jordan and Israel.

Also, the affair stirred up Israeli settlers in the occupied territories, some of whom warned that they will begin a campaign of civil disobedience at the first hint of concessions by Peres to Jordan concerning the West Bank and Gaza Strip. There were even thinly veiled threats of armed uprising.

However, a few experts take another view. In the short term, at least, they say the peace process may prove to be the glue that holds the shaky national unity coalition together. Also, they suggest, the peace process may have a chance to advance more rapidly--at least through its early stages--thanks to the Israeli political turmoil.

Designed to Break Coalition

The sentiment within Labor is clearly for breaking the coalition. Political correspondent Akiva Eldar of the newspaper Haaretz quoted an unnamed Labor Alignment Cabinet member recently as saying that Peres appears to be the only one in the party leadership who supports rotation.

“Most people feel we’ve done well and we shouldn’t have to transfer power to Likud,” a Peres appointee said in an interview. “We’re out of Lebanon, we’ve gone a long way toward curing the economy, and now we’ve got something going on the peace process.”

Another key Peres aide noted that the latest public opinion polls show that more than two-thirds of the electorate approve of the way the prime minister is doing his job. “He’s higher than Reagan now!” this person said gleefully.

At the same time, the Likud, weakened by an internal power struggle, has been losing ground.

“The Likud gets more desperate, and it acts more stupidly,” said Daniel Elazar, director of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a political research organization. “It has managed to shoot itself in the foot, in the knee and in the jaw on issues where it should have been able to make points.”

The Likud may have reached its political nadir late last month after Peres returned from making a new peace overture at the United Nations. Led by Sharon and Deputy Prime Minister David Levy--two rivals for the party leadership now held by Shamir--some elements in the Likud threatened a coalition crisis unless Peres clarified his position on the peace process.

The prime minister stuck by his U.N. speech and won successive showdowns in the Cabinet and in Parliament, the latter giving him an overwhelming vote of confidence.

Peres’ aides crowed that their boss was “playing with Likud like a satisfied cat with a wounded mouse,” Eldar of Haaretz wrote.

“I could do very well without this week which just passed,” conceded Dan Meridor, who was Cabinet secretary to former Prime Minister Menachem Begin and now a Likud member of Parliament, in an interview for Israel radio’s English-language section.

“Admittedly, after the departure of Mr. Begin from the Likud leadership, about two years ago, we have a different sort of leadership,” Meridor said. “The influence . . . that Begin had on people, the moral authority he had on people in the party and other parties, cannot be matched by anyone in the Likud or outside the Likud. So we are in . . . a post-Begin period, and some struggle, I admit. This is normal.”

Likud leader Shamir, who stands to inherit the prime minister’s job next October, understandably appears to be going out of his way to avoid a government crisis.

“Peres could take away his car and driver and Shamir wouldn’t break the coalition,” one Western diplomat quipped.

However, some of Shamir’s rivals within the Likud seem to have almost as much to gain as Peres does if the government collapses.

If Shamir does “rotate” into the prime minister’s job next fall, the fear of rivals like Sharon and Levy is not only that he will keep the job for the remaining 25 months of the national unity government’s life but that he will be in a strong position to maneuver someone else, like Moshe Arens, a minister-without-portfolio, into line as his successor.

Thus, the argument goes, Sharon and Levy could have less to lose if the government falls and Peres remains in charge than if the rotation occurs as scheduled.

Since the rotation clause mentions Shamir by name, his ouster as Likud leader would break the coalition agreement and leave Peres in virtual total command. Likud strategists argue that while both Sharon and Levy are ambitious, they have little choice but to wait for a chance at the top party spot.

Commented one Likud member of Parliament, who requested anonymity:

“One must understand that in the framework of Herut, for someone today to bring about the collapse of this coalition, which is to damage the chances of a Likud representative, namely Mr. Shamir, to become prime minister, is to . . . destroy himself in the party. It’s really suicide.”

‘We Have Learned’

Likud Parliament member Ehud Olmert said: “We have learned something from the mishandling” of the crisis over Peres’ U.N. speech. “I think . . . the Likud side will be careful to avoid any such crises in the future.”

There would be two ways for Peres to stay in power if he broke the agreement. One would be to have enough of the smaller political parties lined up ahead of time that he could form a narrowly based, Labor-led government without calling new elections. The other would be to win new elections.

Labor has been trying for months to win over the small Israeli religious parties now aligned with Likud. The effort appears to have been successful, to a point.

On an important issue of principle, or if Likud brought down the government, enough of the religious parties would apparently swing to Labor to keep Peres narrowly in power. However, those same parties have made it clear that they will not back Peres in a pure power play.

New elections would be even more risky, given the notorious inaccuracy of Israeli public opinion polls and the ephemeral nature of political popularity here. Labor strategists admit privately that they believe they would pick up only a handful of additional parliamentary seats if they went to the polls now.

Of major importance would be the issue on which the government collapsed. And there are few issues on which the Israeli public is as divided as on the one that would be central to any new round of Arab-Israeli peace talks--the future of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

That is the reason a few analysts here talk about the peace process as possibly turning into the glue that will hold the coalition together.

“Just as the right cannot make war, the left cannot make peace,” explained political scientist Elazar. “Peres needs the Likud to go through with the peace process.”

An aide to the prime minister said Peres also believes that the further along into the peace process he can go in coalition with Likud, the broader the consensus he can win for the process itself.

Meanwhile, in its current state of disarray and with the rotation hanging in the balance, Likud may be more pliable than it would be if it were in a stronger position.

Whatever the reason, the Likud’s Olmert contended that “the policy of Likud will be that Likud will not interfere in any meaningful way with the efforts made to establish some process of negotiations. On the contrary, the Likud will be helpful on the technical and procedural levels.”

Olmert also noted that the latest efforts to start Arab-Israeli negotiations are still in an early stage.

“The peace process has not already developed to such a stage where (Peres) could already benefit (politically) from its consequences.” If the prime minister had tried to use the incident over his U.N. speech to break the government, “he may have destroyed any (peace) initiative at a very early stage,” Olmert noted.

Olmert even offered Peres some unsolicited advice. If the prime minister goes through with the rotation agreement as planned, “maybe he will then have a better reason from his point of view to break the government,” Olmert said.

No one could accuse him, then, of violating his agreement, and he could use the excuse that Likud “didn’t really live up to its commitment to peace and peace negotiations.”

Of course, Peres might understandably suspect that such advice coming from a Likud member of Parliament could be just another Machiavellian ploy.