A Surprise Success : Novel Israeli Cabinet at Its Midpoint

On the day nearly 25 months ago when Israel’s novel “national unity” government took office, cartoonist Yaakov Kirschen depicted it for the Jerusalem Post as a horse with a head at each end.

One head, resembling the new prime minister, Shimon Peres, faced left. The other, which looked like his archrival and alternate prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, faced right. And sitting in the saddle were a score of tiny human figures shouting: “Giddyap!”

“In 1984, this nation had one foot in the bucket,” recalled a senior representative here of a prominent American Jewish organization. And Kirschen’s cartoon commentary reflected the widespread skepticism that this desperate political experiment to avert national collapse would work.

Halfway Through Term

Today, however, halfway through its stipulated 50-month term, the unlikely coalition joining Peres’ centrist Labor Alignment, Shamir’s rightist Likud Bloc and eight smaller parties has turned into perhaps the most popular Israeli government in a generation.

Most analysts predicted in September, 1984, that it would be a short-lived marriage, paralyzed by conflicting ideologies and competing personalities. Despite a dozen government crises that brought warnings of an imminent collapse, however, the coalition not only survived but made impressive progress in tackling the country’s problems and restoring a degree of social and economic stability that most considered out of reach when it was formed.

In the process, it has won the support of nearly two-thirds of the Israeli electorate, according to the most recent opinion polls, a rating virtually unheard of in this nation’s extraordinarily fractious political climate.

Close to Success

“The national unity government, in my opinion, comes very close to being an unqualified success,” commented Zeev Chafets, a political analyst and former Likud government spokesman not normally given to superlatives.

The lack of a breakthrough in the Mideast peace process was in a way a relief to many Israelis, who know that any major move would inevitably expose deep divisions here over the future of the West Bank of the Jordan River and the Gaza Strip. It was time, most believed, to concentrate on domestic issues.

In one indication of the public mood, polls show that one of the few things on which Israelis are more agreed than their approval of the government is their anxiety over what is known here as the rotatzia-- the unique feature of the national unity coalition agreement under which Peres and Shamir, who also serves as foreign minister, are to switch jobs next Tuesday.

They are worried that when Peres formally submits his Cabinet’s resignation Friday in the first step toward that exchange, it will trigger political processes that could destroy the new-found national balance and resurrect the uncertainty of the not-so-distant past.

“There was a sense in this country in 1984 that things were completely out of control,” recalled Chafets.

Going to the bank then was a daily routine as Israelis scrambled to protect their resources against triple-digit inflation. The country’s foreign reserves were dangerously near the point at which a credit crisis could have been triggered. Thousands of young Israeli soldiers were still in Lebanon, which meant that many thousands more relatives and friends south of the border opened their morning papers in daily dread that they might find the name of a loved one in a black-bordered death announcement.

Short of Majority

The national unity coalition was born of inconclusive elections in July, 1984, which left both major political blocs far short of a parliamentary majority and confirmed how badly the country was polarized.

Just three months before those elections, police had found and disarmed powerful time bombs planted on five Arab-owned buses, a discovery that led to the arrests of a so-called Jewish Underground whose 27 members were ultimately convicted of anti-Arab terrorist attacks dating from 1980.

An Israeli protest movement called Peace Now was mobilizing tens of thousands to its rallies against the war in Lebanon, and Meir Kahane, an American-born rabbi with a message of hate, was on his way to a seat in the Knesset (Parliament).

In asking Peres to form a national unity government soon after the 1984 elections, President Chaim Herzog warned that “our democracy is in danger.” He spoke of an “absence of tolerance and dialogue” and of a ruinous economic situation “that may well be the most dangerous and difficult this state has ever known.”

Largest in History

The 25-man Cabinet that Peres and Shamir forged to take on the challenge was the largest and, on paper, seemingly the most cumbersome in Israel’s history. The unique “rotation” scheme under which first Peres, then Shamir would head the government for 25 months was admittedly designed to ensure that “neither of the camps achieves a majority over the other.”

Another mechanism was an “inner Cabinet” of 10 senior ministers, five each from Labor and Likud, which screened issues before full Cabinet votes and gave both of the major parties the power to block any government action of which they disapproved.

Peres said from the beginning that it would be a government in which it would be harder to make decisions but easier to carry them out. The record bears him out:

--In January, 1985, the new Cabinet voted 16 to 6 after a two-day, 12-hour debate on a staged, unilateral withdrawal of its army from Lebanon.

--Six months later, it declared a state of economic emergency after a stormy marathon Cabinet session that lasted 22 hours. The final vote was 15 to 7 with one minister abstaining.

--And in January, 1986, the government approached the brink of collapse before agreeing in another all-night session to arbitrate a border dispute with Egypt as part of a “package deal” to thaw the cold peace between the two nations.

In an interview, Peres called the Lebanese decision “the key” to the last two years.

Unable to Make a Move

“I think that if the war in Lebanon had gone on, we wouldn’t have been able to move either economically or politically,” he said.

Up to 1,000 Israeli troops remain north of the border helping an allied, largely Christian Lebanese militia to maintain a self-proclaimed “security zone,” six to 10 miles deep, that is meant to shield Israel’s northern settlements.

Asked when those troops might also be brought home, Peres replied: “The answer is in Lebanon, not in Israel. . . . If Lebanon is able to make peace with itself, then we shall have a date.”

Economically, Israelis endured a 25% to 30% average drop in living standards with barely a whimper as drastic wage and price controls and other austerity measures slashed the inflation rate from a peak of nearly 1% per day to slightly more than 1% per month. The exchange rate of the Israeli shekel against the dollar, which used to fluctuate in keeping with the inflation rate, has remained virtually unchanged for more than a year at about 1.5 to 1.

Little Room for Error

With the help of more than $7.5 billion in American aid over the last two years, the government stabilized its economic standing internationally as well. But Peres conceded that much remains to be done to restructure the economy and to launch it on a phase of growth. And he predicted that during the next 25 months, “the fate of the government will depend upon the management of the economy. You know, you make one or two mistakes, and that’s it.”

On the controversial issue of settlement in the occupied territories, Peres was able to assert that new Jewish settlement was virtually frozen during his term, with only two of six new outposts stipulated in the coalition agreement actually begun. But there were so many housing and other facilities already under construction in more than 120 existing settlements that the Jewish population in the West Bank and Gaza quietly increased by more than one-third, to about 60,000, during the last two years.

Abroad, Israel made important strides in countering the diplomatic boycott that followed the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973, opening or restoring full state relations in the last year with three countries--Spain, Cameroon and Ivory Coast.

Signs of Thawing

Morocco’s King Hassan II became the second Arab leader, after Egypt’s late President Anwar Sadat, to openly host an Israeli prime minister when Peres visited that North African country in August. And Israeli relations with the Soviet Bloc showed signs of thawing.

“All of a sudden, the news from abroad is that people want to talk to us,” said one independent Israeli analyst.

While there was no breakthrough in the quest for Middle East peace, Peres’ summit meeting last month with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the resulting improvement in long-frozen Israeli relations with Cairo was a positive step.

Close Peres aides say they were disappointed that there was not more progress, especially in moving toward formal negotiations with Jordan. But in the interview, the outgoing prime minister said that given political and other constraints, he is satisfied with what he categorized as a stage of “clearing the decks” for future peace moves.

In its all-important relations with the United States, the unity government not only weathered the Jonathan Jay Pollard spy affair and allegations of technology smuggling, but also reached what officials in both countries describe as new heights of cooperation.

A Different Face

Perhaps most important, Peres said, the government presented a different face than that of its Likud predecessor, both domestically and internationally.

“We launched a new era,” he elaborated in a state-of-the-nation address to the Knesset on Tuesday, “an era in which we no longer need to demonstrate our strength to the world by means of boastfulness and demonstrations, but by creating a network of open relations with the world around us, relations developed with self-confidence, without perturbation.”

Added Peres spokesman Uri Savir: “The criterion of success has changed, from machoism to stability. People are tired of politics. People were shocked at how virulent the debate had become.”

While even government critics say the country is much better off today than it was two years ago, there is some disagreement over how much of the improvement is owed to Peres personally. And the reservations about his leadership provide a clue as to the changes that might lie ahead after next week’s leadership shift.

Decided by Cabinet

“It’s not Mr. Peres or, after Oct. 14, Mr. Shamir who makes the policy,” said Likud Minister Without Portfolio Moshe Arens in an interview. “They carry out the policy decided in the Cabinet by majority vote. So whatever the successes and failures, the degree of credit is limited.”

But even Arens acknowledges a special Peres contribution to curbing inflation.

“He played a leading role in that,” the former ambassador to Washington said. “He was the first Israeli prime minister in a long time who devoted a lot of his time and effort to the economy. He gave it the priority it deserved, and after all, that’s the criteria by which you judge a prime minister.”

Some contend that the amount that the government was able to agree on just proves that there is less real difference between Labor and Likud than previously thought. But others credit Peres’ talent for organization and consensus building.

Harry Wall, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Jerusalem office, said: “That’s going to be his mark, as I see it--as someone who was able to forge consensus where there didn’t appear to be any.”

‘A Good Manager’

“He’s a good manager,” agreed Geula Cohen, a leader of the right-wing Tehiya (Renaissance) Party, which favors annexation of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Where the most controversy arises is over Peres’ foreign policy.

The Israeli left contends that all his peace initiatives were really empty words because he was either unable or unwilling to challenge the rightist half of the government by offering real concessions.

“What happened here in the last two years is that the voice of Israel was the voice of Shimon Peres, but the hands were the hands of Shamir,” said Uri Avineri, former Knesset member and p1969384553weekly.

On the other side of the political spectrum, Arens said that Peres’ talk about concessions for peace with Israel’s Arab neighbors has gotten the “inevitable applause,” particularly in Washington. But that is no cause for credit, he contended.

Concessions Are Hard

“The hard thing to get across in the United States is why it is difficult or impossible for Israel to make concessions,” Arens said.

Critics also warned that the apparent lessening of political tensions in the country may be deceptive.

Last summer, continuing friction between religious and secular Israelis burst out in a spate of bus-stop burnings and vandalism of synagogues and religious schools.

Last month, Peres got a personal reminder of continuing mistrust between Israel’s Sephardic Jews, those of Middle East and North African origin, and Ashkenazic Jews, those of European origin. After two years of extraordinary effort to overcome those strains, the Polish-born Peres was almost shouted down when he tried to dedicate a square to the late Moroccan Arab leader, Mohammed V, in the largely Sephardic coastal city of Ashkelon.

Peres appeared the day after an Ashkelon man had been murdered, apparently by an Arab, in the occupied Gaza Strip, timing which Likud Knesset member Eliyahu Ben-Elissar said “shows a very profound misunderstanding of these people’s feelings.”

‘Very Little Change’

Pollster Hannoch Smith contended that appearances aside, there has been “very little change” in public attitudes over the long run.

“The essential feature of the situation is that you have the country divided more or less 50-50 on the essential issues, such as the Arabs and peace.”

That is why the polls suggest that despite a very high personal popularity rating for Peres, new elections now would probably result in the same kind of deadlock as occurred in 1984 between Labor and affiliated parties on one side and Likud and its allies on the other.

“It shows the nation doesn’t want either Labor or Likud to form a government,” Ben-Elissar commented. That may be good news for the national unity coalition, he said, but in the long run it could be bad for Israel’s parliamentary system.

“I wouldn’t make out of it a lesson for other democratic societies,” Ben-Elissar said of Israel’s unusual governing coalition, “and I wouldn’t make out of it an example. It shouldn’t be more than a formula for times of emergency.”

The fact that the Likud lawmaker and a few other commentators are starting to worry that people will grow to see the coalition as more than that is perhaps the most eloquent evidence that it has worked.