Sharon Forges a Union That’s Shaky at Best

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Monday put the seal on a right-leaning coalition that is expected to be sworn in later this week as Israel’s new government. But it’s not the kind of political alliance that he or many Israeli voters -- and certainly not the Palestinians -- had hoped to see.

Unable to entice the left-leaning Labor Party into the fold, Sharon turned to the National Religious Party, the prime patron of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the centrist secular-rights party Shinui to serve as parliamentary partners of his conservative Likud. Analysts regard such a government as unlikely to push ahead with peacemaking initiatives.

Under the Israeli system, the party that wins the most votes in a general election -- Sharon’s Likud, in this case -- must join forces with enough other parties to attain a parliamentary majority if it did not win a majority on its own. The shape of the new alliance emerged over the last several days but was formalized Monday with Shinui’s signing of an agreement. The National Religious Party signed Sunday.

Talks continued Monday in an attempt to win the allegiance of a few smaller parties, but if no others join, Sharon would command the slenderest possible majority in the parliament, the Knesset -- one vote. The three parties together hold 61 seats in the 120-member body. Sharon, through his coalition negotiators, announced his intent to have the new government sworn in Thursday.

Politics in Israel are rarely neat or pretty, but even by the disorderly national standard, analysts called this a problematic outcome. A coalition of such size and makeup will be vulnerable to the competing demands of partners who would be able to bring it down at will.

“This means that Ariel Sharon will be subject to the whim of not just every party in the coalition but really every member of every party. Everyone has got veto power here,” said Reuven Hazan, a political science professor at Hebrew University. “It seems that Likud and Sharon were not able to translate such a large election victory into any semblance of control and stability.”

The country’s most respected political commentator, Nahum Barnea, wrote in the mass-circulation Yediot Aharonot daily newspaper that the new coalition looks “more like a recipe for a screaming-match TV program than a government that will pull the country out of the mire.”

In the Jan. 28 general election, Likud rolled up a better than 2-1 margin of victory over its closest competitor, Labor. Throughout the campaign, in his victory speech that night and in the weeks since, Sharon had said he hoped to form a “national unity” government including Labor, which served for 21 months in his previous government.

Such a coalition would have been more palatable to potential mediators of the Middle East conflict and would have provided closer channels of communication with the Palestinian leadership. Moreover, with a U.S.-led war on Iraq looming, this is an extremely sensitive time, in the eyes of Arab governments, for a rightist government to take power in Israel.

Although Israeli voters gave Sharon an overwhelming mandate to lead the country, polls have consistently shown that most would prefer a broader-based government in a time of national crisis. Israel is deeply anxious about the prospect of war in the region, there is no end in sight to the nearly 2 1/2-year conflict with the Palestinians, and the economy is a shambles.

Senior Palestinian political figures said they saw no chance of making peace with a government like this one. Particularly distressing to them is the role of the National Religious Party, which rejects any move to dismantle even remote settlements as part of a peace accord.

“This government will mean more settlements, more occupation and more escalation of violence,” said Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator. “It’s very, very unfortunate. I believe the Israeli people deserve a leadership that will take them on the path of peace, not this path.”

Israel’s battered peace camp, too, was dismayed.

“This is the real indication of the kinds of policies Sharon wants to pursue,” said Yariv Oppenheimer of Peace Now, the country’s oldest peace group. “With this government, I don’t foresee any moderation in his policies -- just the opposite.”

Shinui, which has said it would support the eventual creation of a Palestinian state, is probably the most liberal of the three parties in the coalition, but its chairman, Tommy Lapid, nonetheless backs Sharon’s decision to demand scores of changes to a peace plan written by the U.S., the European Union, the U.N. and Russia.

Meanwhile, the presence of Shinui in the coalition and the absence, for the first time in a Likud-led government, of ultra-Orthodox parties are causing consternation among strictly observant Jews. One departing Cabinet minister from the ultra-religious party Shas called the coalition pact an “unholy deal.”

Under the coalition agreement, Shinui would control several powerful portfolios, including the ministries of interior and justice. Both are considered key to the regulating of religious affairs. But some Shinui supporters accuse the leadership of already diluting its demands for an end to religious control over the performing of marriages and for military conscription of ultra-Orthodox youth.