Israeli Cabinet Crisis Resolved : In Compromise, Sharon Retracts Some Charges

The crisis that threatened to bring down the Israeli government ended early today as Trade Minister Ariel Sharon retracted several charges he had leveled against Prime Minister Shimon Peres and submitted written “clarifications” of others.

Under a compromise worked out by the leader of a small religious party, Peres, in return, was to drop his plan to dismiss the controversial war hero from his Cabinet.

Peres was to make a public statement this morning after a scheduled meeting with Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who is also the alternate prime minister. Peres was still seeking assurances from Shamir that a similar incident would not occur in the future, but the outcome of the meeting is not expected to change the basic compromise settlement.

Shamir heads the Likud Bloc, the most important partner of Peres’ Labor Alignment in Israel’s nine-party “national unity” coalition government.

Education Minister Yitzhak Navon, a Labor official who represented Peres in intensive negotiations conducted throughout the day Thursday, told Israel Television: “The matter has ended. . . . On matters of substance, we have been satisfied.

“As far as we’re concerned, there is regret or an admission (by Sharon) that he either had not meant it or retracted the position he took,” Navon said.

He added, however, that if Sharon attacked Peres in the future, “there will be a dismissal notice, and that’s that.”

Emerging from his Tel Aviv office around midnight, Sharon said he has sent a letter to the prime minister with a list of what he called “clarifications” of his remarks that Peres was following Mideast peace policies that would “cost a great deal of blood.”

Then Sharon told reporters: “I hope the clarifications that I have given will improve the atmosphere, and I hope my colleagues in the government will act as I have and a better atmosphere will be created.”

Party Leader Mediates

Sharon thanked Interior Minister Yitzhak Peretz, the leader of the Shas or Sephardi Tora Guardians Party, for his efforts in mediating the compromise. He also thanked his fellow Likud Bloc ministers for standing by him.

Peres triggered the government crisis when he notified ministers at an extraordinary Cabinet meeting Wednesday evening that he intended to dismiss Sharon because of the trade minister’s blistering attack by the Likud minister on Peres’ efforts to advance the Mideast peace process.

Sharon had accused Peres of negotiating secretly with the Arabs and suggested he wanted to return the West Bank and the Golan Heights to Lebanon and Syria, respectively, in exchange for a peace treaty. He also claimed that Peres had refused to rule out the possibility of including two of Israel’s archenemies, Syria and the Palestine Liberation Organization, in peace negotiations.

Sharon subsequently issued what Labor officials characterized as a halfhearted apology, which Peres rejected. Sharon’s Likud Cabinet colleagues then vowed to leave the government if the prime minister went through with his dismissal threat.

Chooses Law Over Coalition

Under the coalition agreement, Peres is theoretically barred from firing a Likud minister without Shamir’s consent. However, Peres argued Wednesday that Sharon had violated the country’s basic law on collective government responsibility. And faced with the choice of upholding the law or upholding the coalition agreement, he chose to uphold the law.

In one unfinished bit of business, Peres was expected to demand in his meeting with Shamir today an explicit promise that he has the right to summarily fire any minister who in the future might exceed acceptable norms of criticism.

Many of Peres’ Labor colleagues, buoyed by his strong standing in recent public opinion polls, have made no secret of the fact that they would like him to end the coalition with Likud. Their reason: Under a unique “rotation” provision of the accord, Peres and Shamir are to exchange jobs next year.

If Peres were to break the coalition, these colleagues say, he could stay on as prime minister by forming a narrow government of his own, without the Likud Bloc, or, at worst, he could call for new elections.

Religious Parties Key

Key to this thinking, however, are Israel’s small religious parties, which together control 12 seats in the 120-member Knesset, or Parliament. While Labor strategists had calculated that they could win over enough of the religious parties’ members to form a narrow government, the religious deputies proved determined to try and save the broad coalition despite all its faults.

Peretz played the key role Thursday, shuttling between the Tel Aviv offices of Peres and Sharon, trying to work out a compromise statement that would end the crisis.

Emerging from the prime minister’s office with the final compromise, Peretz said: “I want to praise the prime minister for having risen above the crisis. Rather than personal considerations, the prime minister took into account the national interest.

“Ariel Sharon also rose above the situation and agreed to apologize in front of the entire nation, and to give clarifications which proved that the Israeli nation is important to him and so is the national unity government,” Peretz added.

Earlier Thursday, Peres insisted at a meeting of his Labor Alignment central committee in Tel Aviv that he would go through with his threat to dismiss Sharon unless the 57-year-old general and architect of Israel’s June, 1982, invasion of Lebanon backed down on what he called Sharon’s “six lies.”

Among other things, Sharon had accused Peres of “unparalleled cynicism” in his efforts to renew the Middle East peace process, “wishy-washy policies” toward Egypt, and “base craftiness” in his comments on his attitude toward the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Sharon dealt with each of Peres’ objections in a six-paragraph letter of clarification that is a combination of apologies, retractions, and, in one case, a denial that he had ever made the offensive remark attributed to him.

Despite the crisis atmosphere that prevailed throughout the day, Sharon took two hours off Thursday to attend the graduation of his son from an Israeli Army officers’ course. Later, however, he postponed his scheduled departure early this morning on a trip to the United States and Colombia.

For his part, Peres insisted all along that he did not want to destroy the coalition.

“I greatly fear that going to elections would halt the process of economic recovery, and is also liable to harm our diplomatic efforts,” he told Israel radio early in the day.

“I think that neither of the large parties in Israel have a better alternative than to continue to maintain the national unity government,” he added. “I personally will do all I can in order to maintain the national unity government, and also to fulfill--as we also undertook to do--the rotation agreement.”

A Peres aide commented that despite the prime minister’s desire to hold the government together, “I don’t think he was left with any choice” but to confront Sharon over the Likud minister’s remarks.