Israel Election Being Fought Along Nation’s Fault Lines

It all comes down to tribes.

In this nation of immigrants, politics is tribal--Sephardic, Russian, Arab Israeli. Political parties compete for votes from the tribes, which compete for power in Israel’s increasingly splintered society.

And never has that been more evident than now.

With only a week to go before the May 17 elections for prime minister and parliament, the political debate here is not about peace, the economy or education. It’s about pork and prostitutes, con men and counterfeiters, and other issues that turn up the heat under Israel’s simmering ethnic and religious stew.

“We are living in a tribal society,” said Daniel Ben-Simon, a veteran journalist with the Haaretz newspaper. “If you are an Ashkenazi, you don’t trust the Arabs. If you are a Russian, you don’t trust the Moroccans. . . . We’re talking about irrational behavior and sectarian thinking.”

Thus, leaders of Israel’s Russian and Sephardic, or Middle Eastern and North African, Jewish communities were busy hurling insults and accusations at each other last week. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was knee-deep in a different controversy, accused of playing his own brand of ethnic politics by stirring up old resentments between Sephardic Jews and those with European, or Ashkenazi, backgrounds.

And Natan Sharansky, a Russian immigrant leader whose support is viewed as crucial to attracting the huge Russian vote, was at the center of a fervent courtship by both Netanyahu of the Likud Party and the prime minister’s main opponent, Labor Party leader Ehud Barak.

“They’ve finally realized I’m a handsome, tall man with thick curly hair,” the short, balding Sharansky joked in an interview with the Maariv daily. He has yet to endorse either candidate.

Commentators say one reason for the election’s focus on tribal politics this year may be that there are few substantive differences between the major Israeli parties on once-overarching issues of peace and security. Barak and Netanyahu both promise a cautious approach to negotiations with the Palestinians and vow to keep Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty and maintain most existing Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Polls show that most Israelis believe a Palestinian state is inevitable and are focused in this election on internal, not external, issues.

Each Social Grouping Has Subdivisions

A nation of 6 million, Israel is riven along almost every conceivable fault line: Jewish and Arab, religious and secular, left and right. Each group is then subdivided: Jewish Israelis are ultra-Orthodox, Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and secular--the latter making up the vast majority, while Arab Israelis are Muslim and Christian. And every subgroup seems to have at least one political party.

The Balkanization is evident in the record number of parties, 32, registered for this month’s election. Five candidates are vying for prime minister: Netanyahu, Barak, Yitzhak Mordechai of the new Center Party, Zeev Binyamin Begin of the far-right National Unity coalition, and Azmi Bishara, Israel’s first Arab candidate for prime minister, who heads the leftist National Democratic Alliance.

Sometimes, however, appealing to one tribe can cause problems with another.

Netanyahu’s outgoing government coalition, for instance, includes political parties that are linked to two big ethnic communities, Russian immigrants and Sephardic Jews. He needs support from both to win reelection but last week found himself in the middle of a nasty squabble between them.

The leading Russian party, Sharansky’s Israel With Immigration, fired the first shot, announcing that it would try to wrest control of the powerful Interior Ministry from Shas, a religious party of Sephardic Jews.

Shas hit back, hard. Interior Minister Eli Suissa accused the Russians of seeking control of the ministry to import “forgers, counterfeiters and call girls” into the Jewish state. Suissa said the Russians also hope to prevent Shas from closing churches and “shops that sell pork,” a slam at the many secular Russians in Israel.

Israel With Immigration was outraged. Party leaders said the Shas minister had repeated every negative stereotype Israelis hold against Russian immigrants. Suissa later apologized, and the two parties, prodded repeatedly by Netanyahu, declared a truce.

The spat, however, remains a headache for the prime minister. In trying to woo Sharansky, Netanyahu told reporters that he didn’t rule out offering him the Interior Ministry or “a more important” Cabinet post. Shas promptly declared that it too was open to negotiating with any new government.

On another recent occasion, Netanyahu plunged into the furor over ethnically charged statements by a Barak supporter, actress Tiki Dayan. Speaking to a Labor rally, Dayan referred to working-class Likud backers as asafsuf, Hebrew for “rabble.”

Netanyahu seized on the slur, using it in a raucous campaign appearance in Beersheba to remind voters of Labor’s long history of discrimination against Sephardic Jews, especially in the state’s early years. “I too am proud to be ‘rabble,’ ” the prime minister told the crowd, which roared with delight.

Labor traditionally has been dominated by Ashkenazi Jews, and Barak has worked hard since assuming its leadership to make up for old slights. Last year, the Labor leader offered a public apology for the party’s historic ill treatment of Sephardic Jews.

That appeared to matter little last week. Likud leaders were delighted with Dayan’s embarrassment of the opposition party--”The mask slips again!” one crowed--and with Netanyahu’s use of the incident. But many others were critical, calling both sets of remarks deplorable.

Candidates Court the Russians

With just a week remaining in the campaign, Barak has a slight edge in the polls. And both for him and for Netanyahu, the key challenge now is how to appeal to the most important ethnic blocs, any of which could tip the balance in a close race.

Of these, the most critical and unpredictable is the Russian vote, which makes up about 14% of the electorate. About 800,000 immigrants have arrived in Israel from the former Soviet Union since 1989 and are known collectively here as “Russians.”

In 1992, about 60% of these immigrants voted for Labor under the late Yitzhak Rabin, giving him a narrow victory; in 1996, they shifted in similar numbers to Netanyahu, pushing him to victory by an even narrower margin. Now, recent polls show a move toward Barak, but many Russian voters remain undecided.

Barak and Netanyahu are feverishly courting the Russians with compliments, promises and assiduous attention. They have been running campaign ads in Hebrew with Russian subtitles and, more recently, in Russian with Hebrew subtitles. And both candidates, especially Barak, plan numerous appearances before Russian forums.

The immigrants tend to be relatively hard-line on peace process issues, viewing territorial concessions to the Palestinians as a sign of weakness. They are generally moderate on social issues, especially questions of religion and equality.

Another key factor in the race is the Sephardic vote, which is estimated at about 40% of the electorate. Pollsters say a strong majority of Sephardic voters, who tend to be religious or traditional Jews, is likely to support Netanyahu for prime minister and vote for a Likud or Shas candidate for parliament.

Some Sephardic voters, however, may be drawn to Mordechai, the first serious Sephardic candidate for prime minister, or even to Barak, said veteran pollster Hanoch Smith of the Smith Research Institute, one of Israel’s top public opinion firms.

On the peace process, Sephardic voters tend to range from hard-line to moderate, with Shas leaders often urging faster progress in negotiations with the Palestinians. Most are conservative on social and religious issues and often care deeply about the ongoing Sephardic struggle for equal rights in Israeli society.

Arab Israelis, who make up about 10% of the electorate, typically have supported Labor’s candidate for prime minister, although some stayed away from the 1996 election to protest a disastrous military offensive in southern Lebanon by the Labor government of Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

Arab Israeli support often is split among Arab parties as well and is likely to be divided further this year with the candidacy of Bishara, a member of the Israeli parliament.

Bishara said Thursday that he knows he has no chance of winning and may yet pull out of the race. But his aim has been to raise the profile nationwide of issues important to Arab Israelis--questions of equality, increased funding for housing and education, and a halt to expropriation of Arab land.

The central question involving Arab Israelis is whether they would turn out to vote in a second round, if there is not a clear winner May 17. Labor consultant Ron Pundak said he fears that, with the parliament lists already decided by then, Barak is not such an attractive candidate to Arabs that they will show up a second time to vote explicitly for him.

A low second-round turnout could significantly help Netanyahu.

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Batsheva Sobelman of The Times’ Jerusalem Bureau contributed to this report.