Will Barak Try to Square the Circle With a Vengeful Shas?

No less important than the results of the election of Israel’s prime minister is the look of the political map after the elections to the Knesset.

I don’t want to fatigue the American reader with the intricacies of Israeli politics, but allow me to point out two important factors:

A solid majority voted against the extreme right-wing ideology that has, up until now, resented compromise with the Paliestinians. A majority of the Israeli public has come to terms, even if unenthusiastically, with the idea of dividing the land into two states. And second, the Sephardic religious party, Shas, has once again sharply raised the issue of ethnic and religious tension in Israel.

This time there is an additional threatening shadow of war between two societies--even between two different cultures--one that prefers the rule of rabbis and Jewish religious law, and another that prefers the rule of law and democracy. Shas, a social-religious movement, rose as an authentic protest against the Ashkenazi establishment’s discrimination during the 1950s and 1960s against the Jews who came to Israel from the Islamic world. It set up its own alternative educational and welfare institutions and skillfully exploited the longstanding 50-50 split between the country’s right and left to strengthen itself and gain huge amounts of money from the public purse.

But the movement’s political leader is a man who was recently convicted of theft and of taking bribes, for which he has been sentenced to four years in prison. An outside observer might innocently think that the party would immediately disassociate itself from its criminal leader, but the logic of the Shas leadership is the vengeful logic of the insulted: They announced that they did not accept the verdict and called on their supporters to voice, in their vote to the Knesset, their opposition to the legal system. And in fact Shas’ supporters cast a huge protest vote, almost doubling the party’s strength. Today, Shas, a party that dreams of a country ruled by Jewish law, a party that denies representation to women, that bribes its supporters with bottles of holy oil and talismans, is the third-largest party in the Knesset.

Ehud Barak is coping with a very difficult dilemma: On the one hand, he has announced that he will not negotiate with Shas so long as it does not rid itself of its criminal leader and accept the authority of Israel’s legal system. On the other hand, Barak fears what might happen if he does not allow this large segment of the population to participate in government. Shas supporters are already threatening that if the new government “starves” the thousands of institutions it has established, they will take to the streets in demonstrations of dimensions never before seen in Israel.

It is hard to see how Barak can square this circle. Many of his supporters are tensely watching his behavior on this key point and the depth of his commitment to the rule of law and to democracy.

More than a quarter of the members of the Knesset today are Orthodox Jews. There have never been so many religiously observant people in the Knesset and never has hostility to religious people been so potent among the nonreligious public. The Shinui Party, which ran a one-issue campaign based on secular rebellion against religious coercion and blackmail, had unprecedented success.

Apparently, as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict works itself out, Israel’s internal conflicts will grow worse, especially those conflicts surrounding religion. Israel is quickly approaching a point of decision with regard to its attitude toward religion, and to the pathological mingling we have here of religion and state. While Barak has not, since being elected, ceased to quote verses from the Bible, he must remember that it was primarily nonreligious people who voted for him, and that his government is the sole and perhaps last chance to bring Israel to the year 2000 as a state that is secular in character, with a powerful connection to Judaism, with respect for religion and for the true needs of its religious citizens, but without an artificial and imposed obligation to religion and its institutions.

In this context, another important question needs to be asked: Will Barak act with integrity and fairness, and for the first time in Israeli history appoint a Palestinian citizen of Israel as a government minister? Will Barak be brave enough to hold out his hand to that fifth of the country’s population that has never had representation at the Cabinet table?

Very quickly, all too quickly, Barak’s actions and decisions will give evidence of his leadership, and of how Israel will look under his administration.

During the coming four years, Barak must: complete the implementation of the Oslo accords; persuade the Israelis to agree in a referendum to the establishment of a Palestinian state; withdraw the Israeli Army from Lebanon; and reach a painful territorial compromise with Syria. A narrow government, one that includes only the parties of the center and left, and that tries to carry out even one of these measures, will encounter fierce, perhaps even violent, opposition from the half of the nation that feels that the measures are being imposed on it without it having even been consulted. In contrast, making the most significant elements of that half of the nation a party to government will reveal what every sane Israeli has long known: that on all these issues the majority is today ready to make compromises, and that in fact the ideological difference between the two large political camps has become blurred. Withdrawal from the occupied territories will require steps that are incomparably painful for the great majority of Israelis: withdrawing from holy sites, dismantling some (a small number, true) of the Israeli settlements in the territories, a compromise on Jerusalem. These steps have political and military significance, but they also have symbolic, historical and religious meaning, and Israel will have to live for many more years, perhaps for many more generations, with the thought that it took these steps of its own free will. For this reason, it is necessary to give a majority of the nation responsibility for them.

It can be described in this way, if you like: The Six-Day War, during which these territories were conquered, was the war of Israel as a whole. In order to complete it, finally, there is a need--practical and symbolic--for the agreement and cooperation of as many Israelis as possible. From this point of view, Barak’s victory is a huge achievement for the Israeli left. The ideology of the left has now become, more or less, the consensus. Ideas about the need for coexistence with the Palestinians, with the division of the land into two states, Israeli withdrawal, the reduction of the settlements, ideas that five or 10 years ago were considered treason, are now accepted by a majority.

Ehud Barak won. Israel is now waking up to the hope that we can finally begin to live full lives in this country and not just survive from catastrophe to catastrophe. May we have a life of security and peace with our neighbors, and also peace among ourselves. Now everything depends on Barak’s leadership and vision.

Yitzhak Rabin showed, during his three years in office, how difficult it is to build something new. Benjamin Netanyahu proved how easy it is to destroy. Barak will have to prove now that he is indeed the real, worthy heir of Rabin.