As Peace Talks Near, Barak May Lose Ally

Days before critical negotiations with Syria, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was hit Monday with the angry defection of its largest political ally and governing partner.

The religious Shas Party announced it was abandoning the government after failing to secure millions of dollars to rescue its private, heavily indebted educational network. If it makes good on the threat, Shas will leave Barak with a minority government just as he launches an uphill campaign to drum up domestic support for his peace policies.

Barak said he was confident he could persuade Shas to stay on board, and other politicians said Shas was grandstanding to get the money it wants.

While it seemed likely that Barak would be able to avert the immediate crisis, the haggling with Shas dramatizes the political difficulties Barak faces with an unruly coalition that could threaten the government’s stability at any time.

The dispute with Shas, a large grass-roots party led by ultra-Orthodox Jews, is part of an annual drama over the national budget, which must be passed by the end of the year. It routinely leads to bitter fights as parties and ministries divvy up the state treasury. Israeli governments often seem to teeter on the brink of collapse during budget battles. Failure to pass the budget is a huge blow to any government and can force new elections.

This year, however, the uproar comes as Barak prepares for a potentially decisive round of talks scheduled to begin next week with Israel’s principal remaining Arab foe, Syria. It foreshadows the struggle Barak faces in selling to the public what probably will be a peace treaty with Syria that includes relinquishing all or part of the fertile and strategic Golan Heights.

“This is mild compared to what we will see,” said political scientist Asher Arian, a senior fellow with the Israel Democracy Institute in Jerusalem. “The closer you get to an ultimate decision 1/8on peace with Syria 3/8, the higher the stakes and the more the pressure.”

The domestic political setbacks stand in marked contrast to the progress that Barak appears to be enjoying on the global diplomatic front. In addition to his moves toward ceasing hostilities with Syria, Barak last week approved a plan for ending Israel’s 21-year occupation of southern Lebanon.

And in a remarkable shift, Israel and the Hezbollah Islamic guerrillas in southern Lebanon, who have been at war for years, have indirectly negotiated two concessions in the last week: a two-day cease-fire to allow Hezbollah to retrieve the bodies of slain fighters, and the release of five Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas held by Israel for more than a decade.

The Israeli press portrayed the steps as gestures signaling a “new reality” in the Jewish state’s relations with its enemies. The Lebanese men, who were freed and whisked away on a flight to Germany before being flown to Lebanon, were among 21 Lebanese citizens Israel has held as “bargaining chips” for information on several Israeli servicemen missing in action since the 1980s.

Justice Minister Yossi Beilin said Monday that he hoped the release of the five will lead to an exchange of information concerning the fate of the most well-known MIA, airman Ron Arad, who disappeared after he bailed out of a fighter plane hit over Lebanon in 1986.

While the strides toward peace and normal relations in the Middle East have won Barak accolades in Washington and European capitals, the pace has clearly strained his governing coalition.

One day last week, three bills that went before the Knesset, or parliament, were opposed by Barak’s government but passed anyway--with factions of his own coalition voting in their favor.

Barak has been criticized by Israeli commentators for focusing so intently on the peace process that he is blinded to domestic social and economic ills. But Barak’s defenders say his goal of reaching peace deals with Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians before the end of next year will allow Israel’s economy and society to prosper.

The Shas Party is important to achieving those peace agreements, and for that reason Barak will be intent on keeping it in the government. Though conservative on social issues, Shas is generally pro-peace. It holds 17 seats in the 120-member Knesset, second within the governing coalition to Barak’s One Israel Party, which has 26 seats. (The opposition Likud has 19 seats.) Without Shas, Barak’s group would be reduced to 51 seats, 10 short of the majority he needs for easy passage of laws.

On Monday, Barak stressed the importance of Shas and said he believed the dispute could be resolved “in an honest manner.”

“It wasn’t by accident that I included Shas in my government,” Barak told a meeting of his party Monday afternoon.

Shas Chairman Eli Yishai informed Barak earlier in the day that, by decision of the rabbinical Council of Sages that runs the party, Shas was leaving the coalition. Later, Yishai agreed to give Barak 24 hours to try to work something out before Knesset debate on the budget begins tonight.

At the heart of the dispute is money at a time of severe belt-tightening, and a long-standing feud between Shas and Barak’s education minister, the staunchly secular Yossi Sarid. Shas is a party of working-class Sephardic, or Middle Eastern, Jews whose leadership has a reputation for rampant corruption. Sarid has resisted forking over more money to what is essentially a parallel school system run by Shas rabbis.

Sarid participated with a mediator and Finance Ministry experts in negotiations with Shas to work out a plan to rescue the party’s school system and pay back its debts. But Shas leaders apparently felt humiliated by the terms of the payback plan, which reflected the acrimony that has existed between members of Barak’s coalition ever since it came to power nearly six months ago.

“For half a year, we have been cut to bits, portrayed as thieves, as though I was putting the money in my pocket or my father’s pocket, and we are sick of this,” Shlomo Benizri, the health minister and another Shas leader, told Israeli radio. “You should understand that we have simply been endlessly squeezed.”