Labor Near Israeli Coalition With Likud : Peres, Rabin Accept Shamir Offer; Party Leadership Votes Today

Israel’s monthlong political impasse took a major step toward resolution Tuesday as the center-left Labor Party drew close to forming a broad new coalition with the rightist Likud Party of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who has been besieged by angry American Jews.

Labor’s 120-member executive committee votes today on an offer accepted publicly by its two senior leaders, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, that would defuse the “Who is a Jew?” issue that has stirred up American Jews and riveted Israel since national elections earlier this month.

Small, Orthodox religious parties demanding a much narrower alliance--and questioning the legitimacy of non-Orthodox conversions to Judaism--had made the issue their price for supporting Shamir before their coalition talks with him broke down.

But now “the public is worried about the country and not about settling small scores,” Rabin said Tuesday in an Israel Army Radio broadcast. “The reality we are facing requires the party to seriously examine the possibilities of establishing a broad-based government.”

Rabin added that “in the first stage after the elections, the two large parties pursued the religious parties in an exaggerated way. . . . It is clear to us now that this included promises to change things that could create a rift between Israel and the Jewish nation.”

On Monday, Shamir reportedly offered to Labor two of the top four Cabinet posts in a new government. Political analysts said that Peres and Rabin appear to have the votes within the executive committee to accept Shamir’s offer.

Likud won 40 of 120 seats in the Knesset, or Parliament, while Labor captured 39, bringing the ultra-Orthodox parties center stage.

Soon after the elections, Shamir held intensive talks with the leaders of the four parties, and it was considered likely that they would join him in a coalition. Peres declared that he would not compromise Labor’s principles by agreeing to the religious parties’ demands, chiefly that Israel’s so-called Law of Return be changed so that immediate citizenship would be granted only to those immigrants who converted to Judaism under Orthodox rabbis.

American Jews, most of whom adhere to the Conservative or Reform strains of Judaism, have directed heavy criticism at Shamir for considering giving the ultra-Orthodox what they want in return for their votes in the Knesset.

Tuesday night, however, Shamir said: “It is very possible that a narrow government is easier, but we decided on this (broad coalition) step in the clear awareness that it’s better for the state of Israel.”

Two of the religious parties squabbled publicly Tuesday with their erstwhile ally Shamir.

Rabbi Yitzhak Peretz, a leader of the Sephardic Torah Guardians, an ultra-Orthodox party, stormed angrily away after Shamir refused to commit to writing his pledge to give the party, known as Shas, two Cabinet portfolios and to support amendment of the Law of Return.

The proposed amendment has been referred to as the “Who is a Jew?” law. Although the number of people affected by the amendment would be minimal, many American Jews say the change would symbolically challenge their status as Jews. Peres shares the conviction of most American Jews that such an essentially religious question has no business on Israel’s political agenda.

In seeking originally to forge a narrow right-wing and ultra-Orthodox coalition, Shamir apparently miscalculated the depth of opposition to the fundamentalists.

“The initiators of the idea of a narrow rightist and clerical coalition under Shamir have become frightened at its prospect,” political commentator Isiah Ben-Porat said in Yediot Aharonot, Israel’s largest Hebrew-language newspaper. “Public reaction in Israel, the protests of world Jewry and international concerns have helped them to wake up and understand the kind of catastrophe they would bring to the country.”

On Monday, while groups of American Orthodox rabbis flew in to argue on both sides of what has become a consuming national debate, about 100 women attending an international conference of Jewish feminists rallied outside Shamir’s office.

“Democracy, not theocracy!” they chanted.

“We’re all Jews together,” said Stella Epstein, a delegate to the conference from Los Angeles. “This is going to separate Diaspora Jews from Israel.”

The arguments continued Tuesday, as conference delegate Elizabeth Holtzman, the district attorney for Brooklyn, declared, “The definition of who is a Jew was decided at Auschwitz, and not by these rabbis.”

Israel Radio observed Tuesday night, “The American organizations have Shamir worried.”

“We are witnessing a grass-roots uprising of American Jewry, an intifada (uprising) of American Jews,” said Harry Wall, director of the Israel office of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. “I think Shamir now understands that the price to the ultra-religious would be the alienation of large numbers of American Jews. That’s too high.”