Rabin Forges Coalition for a Centrist Government : Israel:Leftists and an ultra-religious party join alliance that gives Labor a majority in Parliament.

Labor Party leader Yitzhak Rabin concluded two key agreements Thursday with parties at each end of Israel’s political spectrum, clearing the way for a new centrist government pledged to slowing Jewish settlements and moving forward with Palestinian autonomy talks.

Leaders of the leftist Meretz bloc and the ultra-religious Shas party each signed coalition agreements with Labor, giving Rabin the controlling 62-seat majority in the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, needed to form a new government.

Combined with Arab and Communist parties, which will not be part of Rabin’s government but which can be expected to support him, the Labor Party presently has command of at least 67 votes in the 120-seat Knesset and could sign additional parties to the coalition before Rabin formally presents his new government Monday.

“The bottom line is that Rabin has a government; he can come to the Parliament Monday afternoon and say we can start working,” said longtime parliamentary analyst Chaim Shibi. “Labor at this point is sealing the process and is at the point of moving from words into action.”

Rabin, at a formal signing ceremony with Meretz leaders Thursday night, said Israel has opened the way for “an atmosphere of change” that will allow the new government to translate into “a framework of decision-making.”

Rabin has been able to secure a majority even without the backing of right-wing nationalist parties that have demanded support and continuation of controversial Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. The settlements are a key obstacle to progress in peace talks with the Arabs and improved relations with the United States.

But in seeking to gain as broad a base as possible for his new government, Rabin has courted right-wing religious parties and the secular, nationalist Tsomet party with a pledge that Israel would not make any territorial concessions to the Arabs without submitting the issue to the voters.

Rabin’s Labor Party campaigned on a promise to halt “political” settlements in the territories while permitting them to continue in areas vital to security and in Arab East Jerusalem. The Labor government is expected to quickly renew Israel’s bid for U.S. backing for $10 billion in loan guarantees to help settle new Jewish immigrants, held up until now because of Washington’s opposition to settlement-building in the occupied territories under current Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s right-wing Likud government.

The settlement issue has proved too great an obstacle for the National Religious Party, which indicated it would most likely not join the new government and appeared to threaten the participation of other right-wing parties in the coalition.

The NRP had reportedly sought assurances that construction would continue on housing units already approved in the territories and that the Labor-led coalition would not withdraw from the Golan Heights (captured from Syria in the 1967 war), uproot existing settlements or allow the creation of a Palestinian state.

The right-wing parties were infuriated by the awarding of the education minister’s post to Meretz leader Shulamit Aloni, a woman who has been one of Israel’s most outspoken secularists for years. Orthodox religious leaders have been irked at Aloni’s campaigns for public bus and air service on the Jewish Sabbath, entertainment on Friday nights before the Sabbath and legal sales of non-kosher pork.

Her position at the head of the Education Ministry will give her control of funding to both religious and secular schools.

Tsomet leader Rafael Eitan, although an outspoken secularist, had hoped to win the education minister’s spot himself and threatened to refuse to join the coalition when he was also denied the defense minister’s post. Tsomet has eight seats in Parliament, making it the fourth-largest party, and it is scheduled to have another round of talks with Rabin today.

Although there has been no formal announcement, Rabin is expected to offer the position of foreign minister to former Labor leader Shimon Peres, with the proviso that autonomy talks with the Palestinians be overseen directly by the prime minister’s office.

Meretz, which has 12 parliamentary seats, will be given two additional ministries, to be chosen from among the energy, communications, immigration and tourism ministries.

Arye Deri, leader of the Shas party, which has six seats in Parliament, will keep his post as minister of interior despite a two-year-old investigation into allegations of fraud, embezzlement and theft that have dogged the religious party. Deri signed an agreement earlier this week pledging to resign if indicted.

Rabin appears to have reached an unspoken agreement with other religious leaders that his government would not move quickly to undercut gains made by the religious parties in an earlier coalition with Likud, analysts said. Secularists’ demands for an end to military service exemptions for yeshiva students, for example, will likely be dealt with only slowly, they said.

“These are things that are understood by everybody, without specifying them out loud. Labor will not push all-out for bringing the boys from the yeshivas into the army. It will be very slow. There will not be any major change in the status quo between the religious and the secular,” said one analyst familiar with the negotiations. But Aloni’s designation as education minister, combined with the question of settlements, could prove too much for most of the religious parties to sign on to the coalition, he said.

Shamir’s Likud Party, which slipped to 32 seats in the Knesset after 15 years of governing, was in increasing disarray as leadership fights escalated throughout the week and formerly powerful party leaders scrambled to win relatively minor Knesset posts.

Addressing Likud’s first meeting since the disastrous elections, Shamir said Wednesday that the party’s leaders “are handing over Israel in good condition.”

“It’s no exaggeration to say that since 1948, Israel was never in a better situation. The intifada (Palestinian uprising) is on the rocks, and terrorism is on the wane. No previous government ever did so much for settlement,” he said. “The fact that it is coming to an end is a bitter pill.”

Many Likud leaders have privately been furious at Shamir’s post-election statements that he had planned to drag Palestinian autonomy talks on for 10 years. Defense Minister Moshe Arens, who quit after the voting, was said by the Israeli press to blame Shamir’s toughness toward the Arabs and his uncompromising stance on peace talks for Likud’s defeat.