Israel Update for October 2006

David Dolan

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced in mid-October that he was bringing another political party into his ruling coalition. His successful recruitment of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party into his patchwork government strengthened it to an almost unprecedented 78 seats. Despite this achievement, the second largest coalition party, Labour, initially threatened to bolt if Yisrael Beiteinu, headed by controversial Russian immigrant politician Avigdor Lieberman, was positioned anywhere around the cabinet table. However the centre-left party, controlling 19 Knesset seats, later backed away from this threat despite strong opposition expressed from at least nine Labour Knesset members to the party joining the coalition. The nine politicians vowed to continue their struggle against the new party even after it officially joined the government in late October.

Israel's browbeaten Premier had tried hard to include the 11 seat Yisrael Beiteinu party in his new government from the very beginning. But the 48 year old Lieberman, who first rose to national prominence as a Likud party official in 1993, and even more so when he was appointed director of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's office in 1996, firmly resisted Olmert's wooings. Lieberman insisted he could not join any government that was formed around Kadima's central plank of further unilateral evacuations of Jewish communities from Judaism's biblical heartland, Judea and Samaria. He also demanded several things that Olmert found hard to swallow, especially legalizing non-religious civil marriages in Israel and introducing a centralized American-style presidential system instead of the current parliamentary system that mirrors most democracies around the world.

While Olmert told Lieberman he could possibly bend on the governmental reform demand, he would surely be unable to convince the coalition Shas religious party, holding 12 Knesset seats, to agree to Lieberman's highly emotive civil marriage proposal (a major issue for many Russian speaking immigrants who often hail from mixed religious backgrounds and thus find it difficult or impossible to get legally married in Israel). And the Kadima party Premier stated the obvious-he could hardly abandon the central campaign pledge he had just given to the Israeli electorate to continue Ariel Sharon's unilateral land withdrawal program.

Just a few months after reaching his initial impasse with Lieberman, PM Olmert was able to seal a coalition deal with the Moldovan-born politician on Oct 23rd, due mainly to Kadima's sudden abandonment of the contested evacuation plan following the indecisive war against Hizbullah forces in Lebanon. Olmert then persuaded his reluctant Labour and Shas party coalition partners to endorse the inclusion of Yisrael Beiteinu around the cabinet table, mainly due to the fact that neither party is eager for the government to collapse just a few months after it was formed-meaning before they can reap the full benefits of political power. The Kadima Premier added a dollop of honey in his appeal to the Labour party, naming the party's current faction chairman, Tel Aviv-born former army brigadier general Ephraim Sneh, as deputy defense minister.

However both junior coalition parties made clear they were quite unhappy with Lieberman's overall platform, indicating they would only sit with him in Olmert's government for the time being at best. Indeed, Labour party leader Amir Peretz, the current Defense Minister, predicted that the new coalition would only last up to one year, and possibly even less if his internal opponents succeed in ousting him as party leader (a Labour party leadership vote is currently scheduled for next May).

Who Is He?

Israeli political analysts said the shrewd Russian-speaking politician, who immigrated to Israel as a young man in 1978 and graduated from Jerusalem's Hebrew University, realizes that the government will not enact his marriage and governmental reform proposals. He understands that Shas would create a huge coalition crisis if the non-rabbinical marriage demand was ever actually brought to a vote. He also knows that most Labour politicians, along with many Kadima legislators, are loathe to see a centralized presidential system replace the current parliamentary governmental framework. Still, he believes a stint as a sitting cabinet minister will hardly hurt his overall political career, and possibly establish him up as the main right-wing candidate to replace Olmert as prime minister the next time national elections are held, which many analysts predict could well be within a year or two, even though they are officially not due until 2010.

However many doubt that Lieberman can ever actually lead the country, given some of the controversial positions that he advocates. In particular, they point to his so-called "transfer" proposal, which envisions handing over the "triangle" area in lower Galilee to the Palestinian Authority as part of any final peace deal in exchange for Israel keeping control over major portions of Judea and Samaria, Jordan's former West Bank.

Racist Or Rationalist?

Responding to widespread contentions that his transfer plan is racist in nature, Lieberman points out that no one would be uprooted from their home. He adds that the triangle region, southeast of Haifa, is almost entirely Arab populated. It is hardly vital to Israel's overall strategic security, as are mainly Jewish populated areas of Judea and Samaria north and south of Jerusalem. The Yisrael Beiteinu ("Israel is My Home") leader maintains that it only makes sense to reduce Israel's overall Arab population, while increasing that of any small Palestinian state that might be formed in the disputed territories.

Avigdor Lieberman, whose original Russian first name is Yvette, notes that it is mostly Arab politicians and left-wing groups that vociferously oppose his plan, despite the fact that they are also the most vocal in support of the formation of a Palestinian state. He contends that Arab politicians in particular demonstrate hypocrisy in their stand, revealing that they personally desire to hold on to the valuable social, economic and political benefits of living in the democratic Jewish-run state of Israel, while insisting that their Arab cousins in the West Bank and Gaza Strip be removed from overall Israeli control and placed under radical Hamas and PLO administration.

Seeming to illustrate Lieberman's point, the most vocal Labour party opposition to his inclusion in the government was voiced by Knesset Member Raleb Majadele, a veteran Arab politician from the "triangle" town of Baka el-Garbia. He told the Haaretz newspaper on October 27th that Yisrael Beiteinu's entrance into the coalition would mark "a black day for democracy" in Israel. He went on to claim that Lieberman "denies the right of Israel's Arab citizens to exist."

The immigrant party leader rebutted his critics by pointing out that he is not calling for the revocation of citizenship for Israeli Arabs who live in Arab centers like Nazareth and Jaffa, adding that those Arabs currently residing in the triangle area who wish to remain Israeli citizens could simply move to other locations inside the country. However this "clarification" did not satisfy at least one Labour party official, Culture and Sport Minister Ophir Pines-Paz, who threatened to resign over the inclusion of the right wing party in the government.

The European Union also weighed in against Lieberman. After meeting with the nationalist party leader in Jerusalem on October 25th, visiting EU foreign policy chief (i.e. foreign minister) Javier Solana told reporters that he was "very concerned by the words of an Israeli minister who has spoken out against dismantling West Bank settler outposts despite the government's obligation to do so under the US-led Road Map peace plan." He went on to reveal that he has "disagreed with Lieberman's views all my life," which seemed slightly hyperbolic given that the Soviet-born politician has only been a prominent player on the Israeli political stage for just one decade.