Israel’s Labor Party Defeats Itself on a Victorious Day

To understand how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stays in power despite stagnant relations with the Arabs, strained dealings with Washington and Europe and numerous enemies inside his own Likud Party, it is instructive to look at the alternative.

The Labor Party.

Israel’s main opposition party shot itself in the foot again Wednesday, the very day it should have been celebrating a significant victory--winning a preliminary vote, 60-6, on a bill that would dissolve the Knesset and force national elections two years early.

Instead, Netanyahu managed to snatch a moral victory from the jaws of moral defeat.

Labor’s untimely stumble came in the form of an interview given by a senior Labor legislator, retired Maj. Gen. Ori Orr, who told the Haaretz newspaper that Israel’s Sephardic population--descendants of Jews from North Africa and the Middle East--tries to exploit its history of discrimination at the hands of Israel’s Ashkenazim, or Jews of European origin.

Interviewed about his party’s difficulty making inroads into the Sephardic community, Orr accused Moroccan-born politicians of turning every battle into an ethnic one.

“I can’t speak with these people like I speak with others who are more Israeli in their character,” he said. “You can’t carry out a normal conversation with them. . . . They interpret every legitimate criticism as driven by ethnicity.”

He accused Sephardic political leaders of wanting “to hold on to their feelings of ethnic frustration as much as possible, so they can exploit them for political gain,” and seemed to disparage the country’s large Moroccan community, saying: “There isn’t in their ranks the curiosity to know what is going on around them.”

The reaction was electric and immediately overshadowed the opposition bill, which called for new elections with the aim of removing Netanyahu from power because of what his foes call his mishandling of the peace process. Discrimination against Sephardim is a hot-button issue in Israel. Comprising about half Israel’s Jewish population, the Sephardim complain that they were mistreated by Israel’s early Labor governments--suffering bias in housing, education and employment--and that the residual effect has kept them on the bottom rungs of society to this day.

Labor leader Ehud Barak, who a year ago acknowledged the wrongs and issued a historic apology to the Sephardim on behalf of his party, was forced to denounce Orr’s comments and said that Orr would be barred from a Labor delegation visiting Washington next week.

But that was too late to stop Netanyahu from capitalizing on the remarks. “I opened the newspaper this morning and I was very sad. . . . I didn’t imagine that after 50 years . . . we’d hear these terrible things that again divide the nation,” Netanyahu told the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

Opposition members were amused at the image: “Sad? He burst out dancing. He danced on the table,” Labor’s Haim Ramon said later.

Netanyahu said Labor has alienated so many groups that sooner or later it will have no supporters left.

“Disperse the Knesset, if you have the courage,” he taunted. “Who will go to the elections with you? You have already removed the religious public from your realm, and the haredim [the ultra-Orthodox], them you have declared untouchables. The Sephardim are not even Israeli, and the Moroccans can’t tell right from wrong. So who do you have left?”

The imbroglio, which dominated the news and radio talk shows here, drew attention away from what otherwise would be a serious setback for Netanyahu on the last day of the Knesset session before it recessed until September.

An alliance of lawmakers unhappy with Netanyahu’s policies took the first step toward approving a bill to dissolve parliament--a move that would be tantamount to toppling the government. But to be enacted, the bill still needs committee approval and three more parliamentary votes.

As part of Likud’s strategy to play down the vote’s significance, some of the party’s lawmakers boycotted the vote after it was clear they would lose.

But eight members of Netanyahu’s coalition voted for the bill, defying the prime minister. Among them was Dan Meridor, who quit as finance minister last year and is seen as a potential challenger for the Likud leadership.

Labor members were exultant about the vote.

“The fact that we have 60 members of parliament on our side, including members of the Likud, shows the disillusionment with the prime minister and the fact that people understand that he is not leading us toward peace,” the opposition’s Yossi Beilin said.

But Meir Shetrit, leader of the Likud coalition, scoffed. “There is no meaning to this vote,” he said, predicting that the bill will never get past its remaining hurdles.

The vote nevertheless was a shot across the bow of the prime minister, who holds a tenuous 61-59 majority in the Knesset.

Netanyahu remains in a tight place. Some members of his coalition say they will leave unless he embraces a U.S.-offered compromise in negotiations with Palestinians that calls for an Israeli withdrawal from another 13% of West Bank land to keep the peace process alive. At the same time, other coalition members threaten to bring him down if his government proceeds with the pullback.

But with the Knesset now in summer recess and no discernible outcome one way or another in the direct talks that are sputtering along with the Palestinians, Netanyahu appears to have survived again--at least until September.