Why a Coalition Could Help Peace Prospects : Israeli primary raises option of national unity government

There now seems to be a good chance that Israel’s national elections on June 23 could lead to a coalition government that no longer has to depend on far-right support to keep its parliamentary majority. That welcome prospect could produce a moderation of Israel’s policies in the disputed territories, and maybe even invigorate the American-sponsored peace process that is now under way.

The prospect has been bolstered by intraparty elections this week. In Israel’s first-ever party primary, Labor activists replaced Shimon Peres with Yitzhak Rabin as party leader. A few days later Likud’s Central Committee voted to keep Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir at the top of his party’s ticket. Housing minister Ariel Sharon, among the party’s most extreme leaders, ran a distant third.

Rabin is a former prime minister and defense minister. On security issues he is tough. On political matters, including the question of trading West Bank land for peace, he can be moderate and conciliatory. Shamir, though he stands firmly by his ideological commitment that the West Bank should be Israel’s forever, has nonetheless involved Israel in a peace process that could ultimately produce an agreement under which Israel would give up much of the territory it has controlled for the last 25 years.

What might well work to bring these two party leaders together, in a revival of the “national unity” coalition that governed for four years in the 1980s, is the peculiarity of Israel’s electoral system.

No party in Israel’s history has won a majority of seats in the 120-member Knesset; the June election is highly unlikely to break that pattern. Instead each election sends one of the major parties scurrying to enlist coalition partners in order to form a government. Historically, the small religious parties have filled that role, earning political rewards far out of proportion to their limited electoral appeal. More recently Likud has allied itself with tiny ultranationalist factions. The election four months from now could see a major change.

Rabin, so the polls say, is the most popular politician in Israel. But his party trails Likud in opinion samplings. By appealing to some centrists who might otherwise vote for Likud, Rabin can probably boost Labor’s tally. If Labor and Likud end up anywhere close in the voting, there is a good chance that the grand coalition will be reconstituted.

If the experience of the earlier national unity coalition holds, that would almost certainly mean a freeze on West Bank settlements, something that Congress and the Bush Administration in any event are rightly moving to insist upon as a condition for U.S. housing guarantee loans. It should also mean a more flexible Israeli position in peace negotiations, always assuming reciprocity from the Arab side. It might even encourage greater efforts to suspend the mad cycle of killing and destruction along the border with Lebanon--again, assuming cooperation from the other side. Israelis were comfortable with their previous national unity government. While broad-based coalitions can lead to a degree of political immobility, on the positive side they can also keep extremism in check. That may well be what Israel most needs in the years ahead.