Israeli Political Calm Ends Today as Knesset Tackles 3 Tough Issues

For eight weeks, since Israel’s coalition government deadlocked on the issue of an international Middle East peace conference, the political scene has been strangely calm, but that calm is about to be broken.

All the members of the Knesset (Parliament) who are out of the country have reportedly been asked to return by this morning for an expected clash over three controversial legislative proposals.

The proposals are widely seen as crucial tests of broader political loyalties on which early elections and the future of the peace process may rest.

One proposal concerns the Orthodox religious leadership’s role in ruling on religious conversions carried out abroad; another concerns clemency for members of the so-called Jewish Underground, and the third involves Jewish settlement on the West Bank.

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, whose centrist Labor Alignment and allied parties favor an international peace conference, is still at least two parliamentary votes shy of the majority he needs to force new elections and, he hopes, a mandate from the people to proceed with the peace process.

But the political edge held by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, head of the rightist Likud Bloc and steadfast opponent of the peace conference idea, appears to be tenuous. Shamir is under pressure from smaller, allied parties to either support the controversial initiatives that they favor or to risk their defection to the Peres camp.

“It’s not a stable situation,” Moshe Arens of Likud, a Cabinet minister without portfolio, said in an interview.

‘We Haven’t Given Up’

A senior Peres aide said things are “touch and go” but added, “One thing is sure; we haven’t given up.”

Labor and Likud formed the uneasy coalition government in September, 1984, after inconclusive parliamentary elections gave neither party a strong enough plurality to form a coalition with some of the 13 smaller parties represented in the Knesset. New elections are not scheduled until November, 1988.

“There are two major questions,” the Peres aide said. “First is how to come to a decision in Israel on the peace process (a euphemism in the Peres camp for breaking the current government and bringing on early elections). Second is how to keep the process alive until the decision is reached here.”

The end of the current Knesset session, in August, is seen as something of a watershed. If there is no vote to break the national unity government by then, it will be virtually impossible to schedule new elections before the end of the year.

The Knesset will not reconvene until after the Jewish High Holy Days in early October. And by then, given the normal pace of campaigning here, new elections would not be scheduled until perhaps February or March of next year.

“I don’t know if it’s worthwhile to anybody to have elections then, when you have to have them anyway by November,” a Shamir confidant said.

Immediately after the Cabinet deadlocked May 13 on the proposed Middle East peace conference, Labor Alignment politicians were predicting that they could put together a majority for new elections within weeks. But the optimism has faded. The Peres aide said Labor is now “looking at the beginning of 1988 in the best of conditions.”

But Likud is wary that Peres may yet make a move before the current Knesset session ends.

“Don’t underestimate him,” a Shamir associate said. “We have to be watchful.”

Likud is particularly concerned about two smaller parties that have been trying to use the delicate political situation as leverage to force Shamir’s hand on special-interest legislation, some of which is scheduled to come to a vote today.

One measure would establish the authority of Israel’s Orthodox religious leadership to pass on the validity of religious conversions carried out abroad. In practice, the move would affect only a handful of converts who immigrate each year, but its symbolic importance is such that it is referred to here as the who-is-a-Jew question.

It is particularly controversial in the United States, where the majority Conservative and Reform sectors see the proposal as a slap in the face aimed at relegating them to the status of second-class Jews. Israel’s secular majority also opposes the change because it is loath to see the religious camp extend its power and because of warnings that Reform and Conservative Jews might reduce their financial support for Israel if the Orthodox establishment wins out.

Amendment Promised

The religious political party Shas, also know as Sephardic Torah Guardians, which controls four critical seats in the Knesset, extracted a promise from Shamir last May that Likud would do its best to see the law amended within 60 days. At the time, the party was being wooed by Peres’ Labor Alignment on the early elections issue.

Now the time is almost up, and two legislative proposals intended to achieve the same end are on the Knesset agenda. One would change Israel’s “Law of Return,” which guarantees citizenship to any Jew, by redefining a convert as one who has been instructed under Orthodox law.

The other would amend a 1927 British ordinance still on the books that requires that all religious conversions in the country be approved by the head of the religious community into which the person is converted. It would extend the authority to conversions performed abroad, thus effectively canceling Reform or Conservative conversions.

Another controversial proposal on today’s Knesset agenda is backed by the rightist Tehiya (Revival) party, which controls five seats and advocates annexing the West Bank of the Jordan River and other territories captured by Israel in the Arab-Israeli War of 1967.

At issue is whether to grant clemency to a handful of members of the so-called Jewish Underground still in prison for killing three Palestinian students, for maiming two West Bank mayors and for other anti-Arab terrorist acts between 1980 and 1984. The imprisoned Israelis are all part of the same West Bank settlement movement from which Tehiya derives its inspiration and much of its electoral support.

More Settlements Sought

Tehiya is also demanding that Shamir increase the extent of Jewish settlement on the West Bank. Israel Radio reported Tuesday that party leader Yuval Neeman has given Shamir only 10 days to act before he instructs his Knesset delegation to back the call for early elections.

Peres may be concerned with recent polls that show his popularity dropping significantly below the levels he enjoyed during his turn as coalition prime minister, from September, 1984, to October, 1986. Shamir, meanwhile, has gained slightly in the same polls.

“Peres for the first time was on a hell of an incentive (peace), more than any other leader before,” a Peres adviser said. “And today, the fact that he’s stuck has a very negative impact.”

Even more important than the erosion of the Labor leader’s personal standing, this source said, is the fact that “the issue of peace is losing credibility.”