Internal divisions in Israel

ISRAELI society is composed of people from several different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, entertaining different political orientations and levels of commitment to religion. Conflict with the Arabs has done much to sweep the nation’s internal divisions under the rug. They will probably flare up if and when the conflict ends.

Israel has an area of approximately 7,200 square miles, and the West Bank, which it still occupies, consists of nearly 2,800 square miles. According to an August 2002 census, Israel has a population of 6,592,000 of which a little more than 80 per cent are Jews, about 15 per cent Muslim, and four to five per cent Druze and Christian. The Arab population on the West Bank is somewhere between two and three million.

Jews from the Middle East and Africa, the Sephardim (also called “Oriental Jews”) constitute the majority of Israel’s population. They are resentful of the discrimination they have suffered at the hands of the European Jews (Ashkenazim), who dominated the country’s government and politics, through their dominance in the Labour Party, for more than three decades.

Sixty-six per cent of the Sephardim voted for Likud in the 1977 election, enabling it to defeat Labour and form the government. In subsequent elections their support for Likud has been even greater. A substantial majority of the Ashkenazim, on the other hand, have continued to support the Labour Party.

Most of the Sephardim, and those of the Yemeni and Moroccan origin more than the others, are poorer and a lot more conservative than most of the Ashkenazim. They adhere strictly to the Jewish codes of personal behaviour, and they dislike the Arabs even more than the Ashkenazim do.

The system of proportional representation governing Israeli elections makes it exceedingly difficult even for the major parties, such as Likud and Labour, to win a majority of seats in the Knesset. The larger party has had to make coalitions with numerous other groups, often including the religious parties, to form the government. The concessions the religious parties have obtained in return for their support include the following: a separate religious education system and the introduction of religious studies in public schools, exemption of seminary students from military service, banning of public transportation on the Sabbath and public holidays, awarding to religious courts jurisdiction over all personal status questions. A dual system of education has been instituted. A substantial number of Israeli young people are enrolled in seminaries. Religious law applies in the Jewish citizen’s personal life. There is, for instance, no secular marriage, and women cannot initiate divorce proceedings. The larger outcome is that “Israel has become more religious, both in terms of personal beliefs and in the institutionalized power of religion.”

As mentioned earlier, Israeli elections for the Knesset are held on the basis of proportional representation. The entire country is one single constituency that sends 120 persons to the Knesset. People vote for parties rather than for individual candidates, and each contesting party gets seats in proportion to its share of the total number of votes cast. There is no formal limit to the number of parties that may contest. Proportional representation does generally lead to the multiplicity of parties, and also to their fragmentation, as it has done in Israel.

Fifteen of the Jewish parties entered the race in the elections held in January 2003. Two of them (Herut and Centre Party) got no seats in the Knesset because they failed to obtain the required minimum two per cent of the total votes cast. Five of them ended up with less than five seats each. Four Arab parties also contested, and together they won seven seats. The parties that got five or more of the 120 seats in the Knesset are listed below. In each case the figure in parentheses refers to the party’s winnings in the 1999 election:

Likud: 38 (19); Labour: 19 (26); Shinui (“change”): 15 (6); Shas (Sephardim religious party): 11 (17); National Union (ultra-nationalist): 7 (7); Meretz: 6 (10); National Religious Party: 6 (5); Torah and Shabbat Judaism: 5 (5).

The Likud began as a coalition of several political groups under the leadership of Menachem Begin in preparation for the 1973 elections. They belonged to “Revisionist Zionism,” which had initially advocated “Greater Israel,” including territory on both sides of the Jordan River. Subsequently, these groups dissolved their separate identities and Likud emerged as a unitary party in 1988. It has been in power either as the leader or as a partner in ruling coalitions since 1977, except when Labour ruled (1992-96). Ariel Sharon has served as the party leader and as prime minister since March 2001. A number of rightists in Likud left the party in 1988 because they thought it was no longer rightist enough.

Likud supports free market capitalism, lower taxes, free trade with the European Union and the United States, dissolution of monopolies, and privatization of state-owned corporations. It wants to preserve and promote Jewish culture and advocates teaching of Jewish values and codes of personal behaviour in elementary schools. With regard to the occupied Palestinians territories the party is currently divided. Its “platform,” published in 1996 and then again in 1999, stated that the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza “were a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the land.” The party, it said, would continue to develop and strengthen them and prevent their disestablishment.

The “platform” went on to say that the party “flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan River. The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule but not as an independent and sovereign state.” In matters of foreign affairs, security, immigration, and ecology their action would be limited by the “imperatives” of Israeli security and national needs. Jerusalem must remain the “eternal united capital of Israel and only of Israel.” No part of it would be ceded to any other entity.

At this time, however, Ariel Sharon and his supporters in Likud are willing to allow the emergence of a Palestinian state. The final status and dimensions of this state, he says, are to be negotiated. But a substantial segment of the party does not go along with him. He survived a no-confidence vote in Likud’s central committee on September 26 by the skin of his teeth. There is no support in the party for total Jewish withdrawal from the West Bank. Sharon’s own “disengagement plan” calls for withdrawal from no more than half a dozen of the smaller settlements.

Mapai, the party of Israel’s founders, absorbed two smaller worker-friendly parties in 1958 and the combination came to be known as the Labour Party. It ruled the country, often in coalition with other groups, from 1948 to 1977 and between 1992 and 1996. At times it has been, as it is now, Likud’s junior partner in a ruling coalition. It stands to the left of centre on domestic issues. It supports the enhancement of the social and economic well-being of all citizens, and a free market economy. It is pragmatic in its outlook and willing to make compromises in both domestic and foreign affairs.

A party “platform” says Labour will pursue peace with the Arabs, but it will stay ahead of them in terms of military capability. It will prevent Iraq and Iran from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. It will maintain united Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, but it will allow Arab neighbourhoods “municipal rights.” It will accept a Palestinian state with limited sovereignty. But the major Jewish settlement blocs on the West Bank will remain Israeli territory.

Labour believes that the Arab areas on the West Bank should all be contiguous, and that there should be no Jewish settlements within or adjacent to them. It would separate the Palestinians from the state of Israel. It says that the sources of water, its protection, and use will form part of any peace agreement that is made with the Palestinians.

Shinui, the third largest party in the Knesset, is a liberal, democratic, modernistic party that stands for pluralism and would treat Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Israel equally well. It regards religion as each individual’s private affair with which the state should have nothing to do. It would repeal all religion-related laws already on the books. It advocates a free market economy, privatization, and lower taxes. It does not object to a Palestinian state and favours Israeli withdrawal from most of the West Bank, and dismantling of some, but not all, of the Jewish settlements. It supports the erection of a barrier between Israel and the West Bank.

Next in order is Shas, the party of the more orthodox among the Sephardim. Its attitude towards the Arabs can be gauged from some of the recent (April 2001) observations of its top spiritual leader, Rabi Ovadia Yosef. He wants all Arabs out of Jerusalem and Israel. They are, he says, snakes and should be annihilated. It is forbidden to show them mercy, and may the “Holy Name (God) visit retribution upon their heads, cause their seed to be lost, and cause them to be cast from the world.” Shas opposed the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

It should be clear that with the partial exception of Shinui no political force in Israel supports complete withdrawal from the occupied territories. Any differences that there may be are differences of degree only. Nor is there any sentiment in Israel in favour of a fully independent and sovereign Palestinian state. It seems to me that if there is ever to be a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, each side will have to settle for less than its currently professed goals.

Similarities between Israel and Pakistan, especially with reference to the role of religion in politics and governance, are striking. Can they do business to their mutual advantage? Israel and Turkey have had a thriving relationship. It may have something to tell us and we will look at it next Sunday.

Email: anwarsyed@cox.net

Politics overtakes governance

As the local councils begin their second term amid a hail of accusations and contradictions, the question that arises is whether General Musharraf’s devolution drive, as he had promised, has “empowered the impoverished” or merely created a new political elite which is neither less corrupt nor more accountable but has subverted the established political cadres.

Linked with this question is the suspicion widely expressed all along that Musharraf’s real motive was, and remains, to gain a permanent foothold for himself in national politics which he couldn’t see himself achieving through national politics through the local councils.

The motives aside, the reality is that the local councils as they are shaping up are not what their founder or the law had intended them to be. They were expected to be non-political organs for development and for providing civic services at the grassroots level. In effect they have become extensions of central party politics. The people in the villages and towns should have been choosing their own leaders. Instead, they have them foisted on them by the central or provincial political governments or by the party chiefs at those levels. The councillors are thus promoting the interests of the authority or the party they represent and not that of the community as a whole.

The essential principle of Musharraf’s local council system was that the political parties were to be kept out of it. That principle has been flagrantly violated without the courts or the election commission taking any notice of it. To the contrary, the president too approved it by presiding over the ruling Q League’s “election strategy” meeting.

The maverick Majid Malik of Chakwal who insisted on abiding by the original non-party rule defying the party high command had to suffer harassment and incur litigation expenses to stay in the contest. In the polls he was pitched against the might of his own party’s chief minister. He stood up to it because he is a former minister and a retired general with a fair name in both capacities. No one else could have his kind of standing in the community. Though beaten, Gen Majid Malik has made a point for the future.

A councillor can stand and win on his own without being nominated by a political party but not a nazim. The influence of the party in power when backed by the “establishment” can be overwhelming. Some chief ministers, in fact, made it clear before the polls that the councillors who do not vote for their nominees for nazim would not be given funds. That was inducement as well as blackmail.

The spirit of the system that requires that councils at all levels, more particularly the district government, should manage and develop the resources of the community and resolve conflicts in a cordial atmosphere without political stresses thus stands totally negated.

The existence party governments in the province and at the centre is an accepted phenomenon because the electorate vote for their manifestoes on laws and policies. In the towns and villages, the people whatever their political views or affiliation (the majority has none0, expect even-handed treatment from the head of the administration. That expectation is belied when the nazim represents a political party which now every nazim does. The neutrality of a district nazim is absolutely imperative because he is required to “perform functions relating to law and order”. That brings the police and criminal courts under his administrative control. A political nazim will politicize both.

Discrimination in the provision of civic services like water supply, roads, schools and dispensaries may be tolerable but not when the liberty or dignity of citizens is at stake. Now that the nazims elected are nominees of political parties and are thus expected to carry out the instructions of their political bosses it would be appropriate to withdraw from them all functions relating to law and order by amending the law. This duty, as in the past, should be entrusted to permanent public servants.

Making the district nazim responsible for law and order is in itself a flawed concept. No nazim was able or permitted to perform this function. Even if a non-political and competent nazim were to try to perform this duty, he would not succeed for he would have no executive or quasi-judicial establishment to support him. With the nazim as a political figure, the exercise of this power by him would be wholly undesirable.

Almost every provincial subject has been transferred to the districts but how far the nazims are permitted to handle them depends on the relationship of each nazim with the minister and chief minister or the advice or admonition they receive from the president. Some nazims entertain exaggerated notions about their role, not realizing that they possess neither the resources nor the capacity to perform well. They spend time and energy pursuing plans that are grand but unachievable and neglect what may be a modest plan but one which is of benefit to the community.

Karachi may be taken as an example. Its city government for 2004-05 budgeted an expenditure of Rs. 32.7 billion and publicized the even larger sum of Rs. 37 billion. All of its income, including the provincial and federal grants, added up to half of that. Its representatives signed scores of MoUs with local and foreign investors on mass transit, mono rail, CNG buses, sewerage treatment, desalination of sea water, low cost housing, fast food chains, etc. No project was backed by plans or resources. Amid all this, the water supply, sanitation and the public transport system kept on deteriorating, and garbage remained piled on the streets. Hard work, not MOUs were needed, to set it all right.

The city government tried to establish a cardiology hospital with 10 satellite diagnostic centres while its dispensaries did not have drugs for children dying of contaminated water. Then it dreamt of a women’s university while its primary school buildings were crumbling down.

Now that the district governments embark on their second term with the changed nazims and parties at the helm, they should cut down their ambitions to match their competence and resources. The president should help them perform their basic tasks by relieving them of the terrible law and order responsibility. Their role should be confined to the provision of municipal services and the implementation of development projects that directly benefit the local community.

Above all, the new leadership should be wary of treading on provincial toes. The president designed the district governments as his power base and viewed the nazims as his direct votaries. By now he must have discovered that the provincial governments and parliamentarians can be equally pliant.

End the abuse

THE Senate has taken a major step toward stopping the most damaging and shameful American conduct during the war on terrorism. An amendment to the defence appropriations bill offered by Sen. John McCain and approved Wednesday night by the resounding vote of 90 to 9 would end four years of uncertainty about the rules for the military’s treatment of detainees.

It would also close the loophole that administration lawyers improperly opened for the CIA in an anti-torture treaty the United States ratified a decade ago, by prohibiting “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment for all prisoners held in U.S. custody.

If upheld by the House, Mr. McCain’s amendment would curtail, at last, the policy of abuse adopted by the Bush administration for detainees in the war on terrorism. It would mandate an end to the hundreds of cases of torture and inhumane treatment, many of them qualifying as war crimes, that have been documented by the International Red Cross and the Army itself at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan and Iraq, and elsewhere.

Improper practices approved by Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for the Guantanamo Bay prison and subsequently exported to Iraq, such as stripping prisoners naked and threatening them with dogs, would be out of bounds.

Such conduct is not permitted by the U.S. Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation, which conforms with the Geneva Conventions and which, under the McCain amendment, would set the standard. Also out of bounds would be the even harsher methods approved by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and used by the CIA on detainees it is holding in secret locations abroad, such as simulated drowning and mock execution.

—The Washington Post