Rabin Survives Major Challenge in Parliament

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s divided government survived a major opposition challenge Monday in a series of no-confidence motions in the Israeli Parliament, but he was still struggling to hold his fractious coalition together and, with it, to preserve the peace negotiations with the country’s Arab neighbors.

After a raucous debate that lasted well into the evening, Parliament voted, 56-47, to support the government and its approach to the peace talks. But that victory margin was inflated by the absence of six members of Shas, an ultra-Orthodox religious party that is threatening to quit the government.

“We survived, but it is nothing to cheer about,” Health Minister Chaim Ramon, the parliamentary tactician for Rabin’s Labor Party, said after the vote. “The basic issue--Shas’ participation in the government and the terms for it--remains to be resolved.”

Had Shas voted with the opposition, the government’s margin would have been just three votes, and its continuation in office would depend on the support from the Arab and pro-Communist parties, a position that Rabin has declared politically unacceptable.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the charismatic new leader of the right-wing opposition Likud Party, consequently used the debate in an unabashed effort to pry Shas out of the governing coalition, thus putting the brake on Israel’s negotiations with the Arabs and pushing the country toward new elections.

“What are you doing in this government?” Netanyahu demanded of Shas. “The trust between the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) public and this government has been broken, as has the trust between the general public and this government. . . .

“It’s now an open secret that this government is willing to give up all of the Golan Heights and to create the foundations of an armed Palestinian state. You think this will lead to peace? We know that it will lead to disaster.”

In cutting attacks upon Rabin, Netanyahu asserted that the government, only 10 months in office, has betrayed the mandate it received in last June’s parliamentary elections and now has no right to negotiate with the Arabs.

Defending his government’s record through a storm of heckling, a weary Rabin contended that not only are the negotiations far more promising than ever before but that security in the country has increased since his decision to limit the number of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip allowed to work in Israel.

But the hectoring continued, dramatizing the domestic opposition that Rabin faces to any concessions to the Arabs and the extent that divisions within his own Cabinet are distracting him from the peace talks.

So tumultuous was the debate that four Knesset members were ejected within the first 90 minutes.

Although it has not yet joined the opposition, Shas remains one of Rabin’s greatest vulnerabilities in the peace negotiations, because the party draws its support from low-income Oriental Jews, who are typically more hawkish than most Labor backers or the leftist Meretz Party, the other coalition partner.

With Shas, Rabin has 62 votes in the 120-member Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, and can count on five Arab and pro-Communist votes for a comfortable 67-53 division. Without Shas, he would lack the Jewish majority in the Knesset that he regards as vital for ratifying the concessions Israel will need to make in the peace talks.

Health Minister Ramon, arguing that the “chase for peace” comes before all else, urged Shas to remain within the coalition despite its anger over Education Minister Shulamit Aloni and what the Haredi Orthodox see as her sacrilegious violations of many of the most fundamental precepts of Judaism.

Quoting Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Shas’ spiritual leader, that “saving lives comes before the entire Torah,” Ramon said: “That is the reason we are making all this effort to maintain the coalition and pursue peace. It is difficult, it is not easy, but it can be done.”

Rabin hopes to secure Shas’ return to the coalition in a noon Cabinet meeting today, aides said, and he is prepared to reshuffle the government so that Aloni will be moved out of the Education Ministry to another job.

He has offered Aloni the post of minister of culture and communications with full authority over state-run television and radio; the Education Ministry would go to Amnon Rubinstein, another member of the leftist Meretz Party, who is now energy minister.

“This is a big concession for the sake of peace,” Aloni said of her willingness to change jobs. “We asked for and received compensation in the form of an active partnership in the peace talks and in security matters. . . .”

But Shas leader Arye Deri, who precipitated the crisis with his resignation as interior minister Sunday, said the proposed changes do not meet his party’s demands, which stem from disgust with Aloni’s militant secularism in a society that they want to be heavily Orthodox in its practice of Judaism.

Under Israeli law, Deri’s resignation will take effect late this afternoon; he can withdraw it before the deadline.