JERUSALEM: With his dramatic firing of four ministers and seven deputy ministers who bucked coalition discipline in a parliamentary vote on Monday, Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon has left all options open, most commentators in Israel said on Tuesday.
This holds true both with respect to internal Israeli politics, and, more importantly to the outside world, to Israel’s relations with the Palestinians.
The general assumption among almost all commentators and most politicians was that Israel was heading for elections. This would undoubtedly impact on the peace process, since it would have to take a back seat during the election campaign, which could last as long as six months.
The premier fired the ministers — from the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party — and the deputy ministers — from Shas and the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party — almost immediately after their defections caused the government to lose a vote on a crucial economic bill.
While some commentators faulted Sharon and Finance Minister Silvan Shalom for not doing their homework prior to the vote and ensuring the coalition had the necessary support to pass the bill, almost all agreed that the premier had done the right thing in dismissing the rebels.
Saying the prime minister had acted “courageously” and calling the actions of the ultra-Orthodox legislators “scandalous”, commentator Shalom Yerushalmi wrote in the Ma’ariv daily that “Sharon resorted to the only leadership move left to him, after the degradation he was given in the Knesset (parliament)”.
The common assumption in Israel was that elections were, if not a certainty — nothing in Israeli politics can ever be said to be a certainty — then at least a far greater possibility than they had been before the vote Monday night.
The firing of the ministers and deputy ministers means the ultra- Orthodox parties, who between them have 22 seats (17 Shas and 5 United Torah Judaism) are likely to quit the coalition, leaving the government with the support of only 60 legislators out of the 120 in the Knesset.
Complicating this equation is the fact that Sharon must now rely heavily on his largest coalition partner, the Labour Party, some of whose leading members have been stridently calling for the party to quit the government, in protest at what they see as the premier’s hardline policies toward the peace process and the Palestinians.
Even if Sharon succeeds in bringing in new coalition partners to replace the ultra-Orthodox, they won’t be enough to replace all the defectors, and he will be more dependent than ever before on Labour’s 24 Knesset seats.
He himself seemed to acknowledge this after the vote when he was overheard telling Labour’s Knesset whip Ephraim Oshaya, “now we’ll really have to work together”.
The question analysts were asking on Tuesday is whether they can. Labour is far more eager to get the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process underway again than Sharon is, and the party and the premier have well-publicized differences on the timing, pace and contents of peace talks, differences in fact on just about every aspect of the negotiations.
And should Sharon placate the Labour Party and become more flexible, other hardline coalition members will likely quit, once again leaving the premier in an untenable political situation.
Given this, it is hardly surprising that most observers think Israel is heading for elections.
Political analyst Rina Matzliah thinks it is in the interest of both Sharon and Labour Party head, Defence Minister Benjamin Ben- Eliezer to go to elections sooner, rather than later.
Both men, she said, are in relatively strong positions in their parties, with leadership challengers either unready, or else in disarray. Delaying elections would give challengers more time to organize and threaten.
“Sharon is not scared of elections, and he has an ally here in Ben-Eliezer,” she said.
But, as respected commentator Nahum Barnea wrote in Yediot, “elections are a long and arduous process: it is difficult to know in advance how they will end”.—dpa
