A Move to The Right

“It was a struggle between the fools and the impotents in this campaign. The fools have won.”

— Labor Party campaign manager Ezer Weizman

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres sat expressionless in his hotel suite in Tel Aviv on election night as an aide handed him the first predictions. The figures showed Peres’ left-of-center Labor Party virtually deadlocked with the right-wing Likud bloc. The small parties of right and left were racking up votes and gaining the balance of power. Peres slumped in his chair. If the trend held, his dream of an international peace conference and territorial compromise with the Palestinians in the occupied territories was doomed — and his own political future uncertain.

Less than a mile away at Likud headquarters, the party faithful watched the vote count click toward 40 and then stall. The party of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was not even close to the 61 needed to form a majority government in the 120-seat Knesset. Once again a divided electorate had voted Israel into political stalemate. Likud leaders began feverishly calculating potential coalitions. Declared a Likud activist: “My God, the rabbis have won!”

When the final results were in, no one was surprised that Likud had taken just 40 Knesset seats to Labor’s 39. Broader gauged, Likud and its allies on the right had elected 47 deputies, in contrast to the 50 won by Labor and its possible partners on the left. The real surprise winners were the four religious parties. Increasing their parliamentary representation from twelve to 18 seats, they won the deciding voice in who would run Israel for the next four years. They are most likely to team up with Likud, but only after demanding an extremely high price for their cooperation.

The ambiguous outcome of the election dismayed those in Israel and elsewhere who had hoped for clear direction. Most bitter were those who advocate a negotiated settlement for the land and the 1.7 million Arabs of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, occupied by Israel since 1967. Under the probable government lineup, the prospect was for continued Arab-Israeli confrontation and greater repression in the territories. Arabs braced for a harder line by & Jerusalem. A “fatal blow to peace,” said a P.L.O. statement. “We expect more harshness, hatred and terrorism.”

The Reagan Administration, which had tacitly supported Peres and his plans for Arab-Israeli negotiations, kept its dismay to itself and promised to work with whatever government emerges. Reagan’s successor will find it all the harder to nudge the region toward peace talks. American Jews were concerned that a right-wing Israel, markedly more religious and militantly nationalistic than before, would alienate or at least upset U.S. supporters already dismayed by Israel’s handling of the intifadeh.

Even as the votes were being counted, both Likud and Labor began a courtship of the religious parties. During the “night of the rabbis,” one religious party leader after another took center stage to air demands. “We will keep all our options open,” declared Rabbi Yitzhak Peretz, whose ultra-Orthodox SHAS Party will send six deputies to the Knesset.

It quickly appeared that Labor would be unable to outbid Likud. The morning after the election, Shamir announced his willingness to amend the Law of Return, which grants all Jewish immigrants immediate Israeli citizenship. For years the religious parties have sought to redefine “who is a Jew” by recognizing only those born to a Jewish mother or converted to Judaism by an Orthodox rabbi. The proposal to disregard all other conversions has particularly upset U.S. Jews, most of whom identify themselves with the Conservative and Reform branches of Judaism.

Peres adamantly opposes any change in the Law of Return, but the religious parties have a great deal more on their wish lists that troubles Labor. They seek to bring a far greater degree of religious observance to the largely secular state, and they want to ensure their hold on power by resisting any changes in the complex electoral laws that now favor them.

Both Shamir and Peres defined the key election issues as peace and the Palestinian question. But once the votes were tallied, Israelis found themselves plunged into debate over the religious orientation of their state. Observed Hebrew University professor Ehud Sprinzak: “Most of the results have nothing to do with peace and security problems, but with a new sort of configuration inside Israel. The people are going back to God.” Said Avraham Burg, a new Labor Deputy: “The results reflect a protest against the major blocs. The religious element is crystallizing into a third bloc, which will determine who will run Israel.”

That third bloc could materialize because Israel’s cumbersome proportional- representation system allocates disproportionate political power to small parties — a mere 1% of the popular vote, roughly 20,000 ballots, can yield a Knesset seat. Once again the system prevented the country from electing a strong, united government. As Gad Ya’acobi, a Laborite and Minister of Economics and Planning, noted, “We have institutionalized the tyranny of the minority.” To put together a slim majority, Shamir will have to accommodate not only the four religious parties but also three extreme-right secular factions whose platforms all advocate annexing the occupied territories.

If Shamir finds the price too steep, he might possibly offer Labor a junior partnership in a rejiggered grand coalition. Many Labor leaders want no part of such a deal, but neither are they willing to seek a lesser coalition with the small parties. Declared Energy Minister Moshe Shahal: “It would be better to spend some time in opposition than yield to ultra-religious and ultra- nationalist demands.” For Shimon Peres, either choice would be humiliating. After three campaigns in which he failed to deliver a Labor victory, pressure is growing on him to step aside as party leader. For now he is saved by the lack of a credible alternative.

Shamir will probably accede to a right-wing coalition whose policies reflect more extreme views than those presented by the last government. Israelis can expect a tough line on the occupied territories. Driven by a vision of a Greater Israel, Shamir has vowed never to relinquish an inch of Biblical Judea and Samaria. But he has always stopped short of going along with more extreme demands for annexation. Instead he now embraces the Camp David formula he rejected in 1978, which would grant the Palestinians a semblance of autonomy. That concession sounds to most Arabs like little more than the right to collect their own garbage.

How Shamir would quell the intifadeh, which has taken the lives of more than 300 Palestinians and seven Israelis since December 1987, remains uncertain. He might push autonomy in an attempt to disarm the rebellion but forestall any grander political or territorial concessions. If nothing else worked, he might reverse his previous opposition and adopt a strategy proposed by Ariel Sharon, one of the hawks in his party. The Sharon scheme calls for Israel to incorporate unilaterally the Jewish settlement areas in the territories as well as land deemed necessary for security. Then it would withdraw its military forces from the remaining Arab-populated areas. These actions, Sharon argues, would safeguard Israel’s military interests while granting some form of autonomy to 95% of the Palestinians living in the territories.

The choice of personalities for Cabinet portfolios, specifically the Defense Ministry, may signal Shamir’s intent. Vying for the post are two hard-line former holders of the post: Sharon, 60, who has criticized his own party for failing to take a tougher stand toward the Palestinians, and Moshe Arens, 62, a former Ambassador to the U.S.

The appointment of either would be considered bad news by the Palestinian Arabs, who fear an even harsher crackdown against the intifadeh. Aside from favoring more arrests and deportations, reliable sources say, both men will propose to close the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza, a hotbed of unrest, and disperse its 60,000 residents throughout the Strip in newly built housing. They would also push for legislation denying Palestinians in the occupied territories the right to appeal to the Israeli High Court of Justice.

It may well have been the single-mindedness of Likud’s campaign that helped carry the day. Labor talked vaguely about negotiating peace; Likud emphasized holding on to the territories. During one campaign trip this fall, 8,000 of the party faithful were bused to the Arab city of Nablus. There, standing before Joseph’s tomb, Binyamin Begin, the son of former Prime Minister Menachem Begin and a rising star on the right, told the cheering crowd, “We will be here for eternity.”

Peres ran on a platform of gambling land for peace: “If you give me the chance, I can start negotiations, and the whole picture in the Middle East can change.” He pinned his star to his long-standing plan for peace talks with Jordan and a Palestinian delegation under international auspices. That proposal suffered a critical blow last July when King Hussein severed all of Jordan’s ties to the West Bank.

The intifadeh also worked to Likud’s advantage. Two days before the election, three Molotov cocktails struck a Jerusalem-bound bus on the outskirts of the West Bank town of Jericho; a young Israeli woman, Rachel Weiss, and her three children died in the blaze, and their funeral galvanized voter sympathies. On election day a similar bomb struck a car in Arab East Jerusalem, injuring three Israelis on their way to vote. The bumper of their car bore a Likud campaign sticker.

Arab observers are convinced they face a bleak future. “There is an upsurge of religious fundamentalism in Israel,” contends Hanna Siniora, editor of the newspaper al-Fajr in East Jerusalem and a P.L.O. supporter. “The Israeli government will try to apply harsher measures, and these will backfire, as they did in the past.”

A shift to the right in Israel is already in train, and there is a certain inevitability to the course. A bold stroke that changes the progression is always possible, but none seems to be in prospect. By producing a deadlock between the two political blocs, Israel’s voters have left their country divided — and the Middle East in lockstep toward further confrontation.