Religious, Rightist Gains in Israeli Voting Aid Shamir

Impressive gains by religious and extreme right-wing parties appeared to give Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s Likud Party the best chance to assemble a ruling coalition in close, possibly pivotal national elections here Tuesday.

With nearly 99% of the vote counted, Likud held a narrow, 39-38 seat edge over its arch-rival, the more dovish Labor Party of Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. The religious parties emerged with a firm grip on the balance of power, increasing their Knesset strength to a surprising 18 seats from 12 previously, according to the still unofficial results.

The religious parties have generally supported the Likud-led “nationalist camp” for the last decade, and if they do so again as expected, parties backing Shamir’s hard line on issues of security and conditions for peace talks would control a 64-seat majority in the 120-member Parliament.

Shamir Victory Speech

“The situation at the moment . . . enables Likud to form as soon as possible the new government of Israel,” Shamir told cheering party loyalists in a victory speech at his campaign headquarters in Tel Aviv.

Peres, nevertheless, refused early today to concede defeat, holding out what independent analysts said was a thin possibility that his party could entice the religious parties into a Labor-led government.

“I am a little surprised at how quickly Likud supposedly formed a government,” the Labor leader commented in a somber early-morning speech to his campaign workers.

Israel Radio reported “growing signs” this morning that Shamir and Peres would meet before either holds contacts with religious parties. It said the religious parties are making “very tough demands” as the price of joining either Labor or Likud in a ruling coalition, and that as a result, the possibility of another national unity government like the one that has ruled since the last elections, in 1984, “is apparently being considered.”

“One expert assessment is that at the very least the large parties are trying to underline the national unity alternative to frighten the religious parties into moderating their demands,” Israel Radio reported.

Shamir earlier appeared to reject another Labor-Likud partnership like the one under which he and Peres have shared the premiership during the last 50 months. The Likud leader told his followers that their efforts paved the way for “Likud and only Likud” to take charge, and that he did not fear a coalition with the religious parties.

Other Likud leaders were similarly optimistic that Shamir could form a government with what one called “a clear line” in favor of a free enterprise economy and holding on to all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip territories occupied since 1967.

Irreconcilable Split

The national unity government has been increasingly paralyzed during the last 18 months over seemingly irreconcilable differences between Labor and Likud over the proper approach toward peace talks.

The Labor mood, meanwhile, was gloomy, and while not conceding, Peres hinted that his party may spend time in opposition.

“Our flags will not be folded,” he said. “We will continue to fight for the things we see as important. . . . The real problems of the State of Israel exist not only until the government is formed, but also afterward. What waits ahead is so serious that we must keep our heads.”

Labor’s second in command, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, said of the results: “Personally, I expected something a little better.” And the party’s general secretary, Uzi Baram, said it would be better for Labor to go into opposition than to humiliate itself in negotiations with the religious parties, which favor new laws that critics say would make Israel more of a theocracy.

Unofficial returns indicated that Labor and parties of the center and left could muster only 48 seats, with the eight remaining seats divided among mostly Arab parties, two of which are considered anti-Zionist and therefore held traditionally to be unfit as coalition partners for the mainstream lists.

Army Vote to Come

Those returns do not include some of the army vote, which takes an extra day or two to count and which, if it follows past patterns, could add another seat to the nationalist tally. The results, if confirmed by a final count expected in several days, would seemingly sink the U.S.-backed Middle East peace initiative based on an international conference and the principle of Israeli withdrawal from some occupied land. They may also mark the beginning of the end of Peres’ political career, according to some analysts. Peres, who had previously led his party to two electoral losses and one tie, had committed himself to the conference plan. Shamir has said he is unalterably opposed.

The Likud leader declared early today that his government would “make every effort” to obtain peace with Israel’s Arab neighbors, but not at the cost of giving up any occupied territory. “The people of Israel want to safeguard the greater Land of Israel,” he said, using a term encompassing Israel proper, the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Winners on Right

Big winners on the extreme right, judging from early returns, included the Moledet (Homeland) party of a former army general, Rechavam Zeevi, who advocates the “transfer” of Palestinian Arabs out of the occupied territories. Many Israelis believe that transfer is a euphemism for expulsion. Voters apparently gave Moledet two seats in the next Knesset and put Zeevi in a strong position to demand a Cabinet post should Shamir form the next government.

Tzomet (Crossroads), headed by a former army chief of staff, Rafael Eitan, also won two seats, according to unofficial results. While he stops short of advocating expulsion of Palestinians, Eitan says Israel should “encourage Arabs to look for someplace else” by “making it difficult for them.”

“Fascism won,” asserted a bitter Mordechai Virshubski of the leftist Citizens’ Rights Movement.

‘Transfer’ Scored

“The Likud, if it wants to act to form a government, depends on the noble and great idea of ‘transfer,’ ” Peres said with evident sarcasm.

Pollsters said both Moledet and Tzomet gained votes after the Supreme Court declared Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Kach Party to be racist and barred it from the elections. The Brooklyn-born Kahane, who founded the Jewish Defense League before emigrating to Israel in the early 1970s, campaigned on a promise to expel not only West Bank and Gaza Strip Palestinians but the 750,000 Arab citizens of Israel proper as well.

The rightist trend has gained strength from nearly 11 months of Palestinian unrest in the occupied territories.

Analysts said the right benefited particularly from a fatal firebomb attack on an Israeli bus near Jericho last Sunday that killed a 26-year-old teacher and her three small children. Three Likud campaign workers were injured in a similar attack Tuesday in an Arab section of Jerusalem.

Response to Attacks

“I think what happened the day before yesterday in Jericho--the terrorist action against Israeli civilians--was the main reason why we lost two mandates (seats), not to the Likud but to the extreme right,” commented Chaim Ramon, a Labor member of the Knesset.

Labor officials held out hope that they might still pull victory out of apparent defeat by enticing the religious parties to their side. Energy Minister Moshe Shahal, a Labor member, indicated in an Israel Radio interview that his party would be ready to make significant concessions to do so.

Leaders of the leftist Citizens’ Rights Movement, an expected ally of Labor normally opposed to what they term “religious coercion,” said early today that they would not stand in the way of a Labor-religious alliance if it could prevent the right wing from taking power.

Options Open

“We are keeping all our options open in order to negotiate with the left too,” Rabbi Yitzhak Peretz, head of the ultra-orthodox Sephardic Torah Guardians, or Shas Party, told Israeli Television early today. Shas was projected to take six seats in the next Knesset, up from four in the current Parliament.

One concession Shas will seek is Labor’s pledge to support the so-called “who is a Jew?” amendment, which would deny automatic citizenship to people converted to Judaism by Reform or Conservative rabbis. The controversial measure is bitterly opposed by American Jewish leaders--most of whom belong to the Reform or Conservative movements--as an attempt by Israel’s Orthodox establishment to depict them as second-class Jews.

Asked about the prospects of another coalition government, the Shas leader, who joined the last coalition, was clearly unenthusiastic. “I don’t think we have to turn this formula into a permanent one,” said Peretz, whose television interview was interrupted by a telephone call from Shamir’s office.

Hard Bargaining

“I suspect there will be a lot of efforts at very hard bargaining on the part of the two major parties (for the religious vote),” commented Daniel Elazar, director of the Jerusalem Institute for Public Affairs. “But here the Likud strategy of the past four years, to do nothing to upset the religious parties--to support them on the ‘who is a Jew’ issue, to oppose electoral reform, to do nothing really to upset them--may pay off in establishing a sense of confidence that Labor now would be hard put to match.”

Elazar said Labor’s campaign suffered because “Peres had a very difficult time in trying to convince voters, even voters who very much want peace and negotiations, that his plan would work. . . . If the voters had been convinced that his plan would likely be accepted by the Arabs, I think he would have made some real headway.”

While saying they would not consider forming a coalition with the far-left Israeli Arab parties, Labor officials had hoped that those parties would attract enough votes to help assure Peres a blocking majority. With that, party strategists calculated, they would have enough leverage to negotiate a deal with the religious parties.

However, it appeared from early returns that the Communist-led Hadash and the Progressive List for Peace, which supports the Palestine Liberation Organization, would capture only seven Knesset seats--one more than in 1984, but not enough to give Labor a block.