Up to 70,000 Rally in Israel for Political Reform : Government: Disdain is shown for back-room maneuvering. Many favor direct election of the premier.

Tens of thousands of Israelis filled a central plaza to overflowing here Saturday night and called for an end to back-room maneuvering for power and for a redesigned election system to relieve the nation’s chronic political stalemate.

Observers said that the crowd--estimates ranged up to 70,000--was the largest to gather for a political rally since the early 1980s, when massive demonstrations took place against Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and failure to prevent a massacre by Lebanese Christians of Palestinian refugees in Beirut.

Saturday, the crowd and speakers expressed open disdain for the kind of gamesmanship that has marked the current power struggle between caretaker Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and his rival, Shimon Peres.

“We’ve Had Enough,” read several banners that adorned the brightly lit Kings of Israel Square.

“In Romania, It Succeeded,” read another, in reference to the demonstrations that toppled the Communist dictatorship there last year.

“One hundred and twenty criminals are running the country,” said another banner--there are 120 members of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament.

The Knesset is scheduled to meet Wednesday to vote on a new coalition government to be proposed by would-be prime minister Peres, head of the center-left Labor Party. The government crisis began last month when differences between Peres, a dove, and the hawkish Shamir over Palestinian peace talks brought down the coalition government in which both served.

To cement a bare 61-seat majority for his proposed government, Peres won over a minor religious party as well as a defector from the rightist Likud Party, which is headed by Shamir. His tactics of offering funds and positions to religious-party politicians and a Cabinet post to the Likud defector drew wide criticism.

The Likud renegade, Avraham Sharir, announced Saturday that he will join Labor because he felt “humiliated” by Likud. Sharir had served in the Cabinets of previous governments, but in the coalition regime just ended, Shamir denied him a portfolio.

Sharir, until recently a committed hawk, has received bomb threats, reportedly from right-wing extremists angry about his defection to Peres.

Shamir has tried to block Peres by making promises of Cabinet posts to rebel Likud members and other politicians. He, too, was roundly attacked Saturday for zealous horse-trading.

“What happened in the past weeks was a total betrayal of the public trust,” said Uriel Reichman, dean of the School of Law at Tel Aviv University and one of the organizers of Saturday’s rally.

Beyond popular disgust, the reaction against back-room deals has turned into a debate over the structure of Israeli democracy. Is the current system, which gives powerful influence to the smallest of minorities, corrupting and too unwieldy? Or are proposed changes merely a device to suppress the influence of a growing and resented religious community?

The issue is complicated by a deadlock between Labor and Likud over whether to hold peace talks with Palestinians under a plan backed by the United States. Peres has expressed concern that electoral reform, which he has supported in the past, might rob him of the immediate chance to form a peace government. Shamir opposes the talks.

Leaders of the rally in Tel Aviv rejected the argument that Israel can either have peace or reform but, for now, not both. “I’m sick and tired of politicians’ excuses,” said Reichman. “I don’t see any connection between electoral reform and peace.”

Grass-roots activity in favor of electoral reform has increased dramatically during the past two weeks as a group of hunger strikers held a protest vigil outside the Knesset building in Jerusalem. Their effort ignited both a massive petition drive and Saturday’s rally.

Such a groundswell has become a recurring feature of Israeli politics. On at least two previous occasions, during the Lebanon War and after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, small groups of protesters set off mass calls for change.

As in the past, reserve military officers played a role in galvanizing protest. Most of the hunger strikers in Jerusalem were war veterans and one was the father of a young officer killed last year in southern Lebanon.

In Tel Aviv, the vigil was joined Saturday by three former army officers, including one who during his career won the Hero of Israel medal, the country’s highest military honor.

“The state of Israel is degenerating into a pursuit of money, power and rule,” said Maozah Siegel, the medal winner.

Avi Kadish, one of the Jerusalem protesters, said Saturday: “The people of Israel cannot stand any more the system we have now. We are fed up. We will not allow the politicians to interfere during the process (of change).”

The protesters propose that a blue-ribbon panel make recommendations to change the system of electing the prime minister and Parliament. Most calls for change focus on direct election of a prime minister, who would hold broad executive powers.

Notes of caution on such changes were sounded even by supporters of electoral reform. There was worry about the drumbeat for a strongman to pull Israel out of political paralysis.

Some observers also perceived an anti-democratic taint to demands that minority groups, especially the religious, be deprived of seats in the Knesset. Noticeably absent in the Tel Aviv crowd were members of pious religious communities, whose adherents would have stood out in their characteristic black hats and cloaks.

“There is a certain danger of populism, of narrow-mindedness,” warned law school dean Reichman, who heads a group called the Committee for a Constitution.

Reichman has devised a three-point reform proposal to stabilize the system: direct national election of the prime minister; district election of half of the Knesset’s members instead of by the present at-large vote for all, and a bill of rights to protect civil liberties.

“Only the combination of the three ideas will assure us that the government will not be dependent any longer on . . . the rule of the minority,” Reichman declared.

Of the two main parties, Labor has more energetically pursued electoral reform than Likud. Last year, Shamir torpedoed a Labor-backed bill to change the system on the grounds that he had made promises to religious allies to block reform.