Coalitions and Castles in the Air
The recent tie on a no-confidence vote in a Knesset plenum
for the second consecutive week led Ariel Sharon to lay forth
all his options to set up a new, expanded coalition as soon
as possible.
Sharon knows exactly what he wants. He wants the Labor Party
alongside Shinui, but at a good price. But he'll take what he
can get as long as in the end he has a stable enough
coalition to pass the 2005 Budget and the disengagement plan
and, most of all, to hold out until November 2006, the
official date for the next Knesset elections.
Just moments before last week's no-confidence vote Sharon
walked over to the second row of the opposition benches
directly to MK Rabbi Avrohom Ravitz' seat. "Do we have any
common ground to talk about support in the no-confidence vote
and later joining the coalition?" Sharon asked.
"Cancel the 15 percent budget cut for chareidi
kindergartens," Rabbi Ravitz replied, "and then we can talk
about being absent from the no-confidence vote."
Sharon is not exactly well-versed on the Education Minister's
budget cuts so he sent his coalition chairman, Gidon Saar, to
Rabbi Ravitz to find out more. After Saar received the
necessary explanations he demanded UTJ representatives commit
to remain absent from no-confidence votes until the end of
the summer session.
"You don't know how to conduct negotiations," said Rabbi
Ravitz. "Always carry out your first step."
And here ends this very telling anecdote about the amount of
pressure Sharon is up against.
In addition to this overture Sharon has been conducting
official negations with Labor and he also summoned Eli Yishai
to discuss having Shas join the coalition. Meanwhile, he has
also had to deal with the rebel faction in his party by
threatening to bring in the Labor Party or to hold new
elections -- both undesirable options from their
standpoint.
Thus Sharon has jumbled up the entire political establishment
and is leading everyone to believe that he is pursuing
several different channels simultaneously, when in fact
Sharon's real aim is very clear.
That Shinui will not seat in the same coalition with either
UTJ or Shas is obvious. Likewise everyone knows at this stage
Sharon does not want to part with Shinui. The last thing he
needs is to have this band of bellowers headed by Tommy Lapid
sitting in the opposition, inciting the media and the public
against the government.
What Sharon wants most is to make it to the summer recess in
another two weeks in peace. During the recess, without no-
confidence votes, embarrassments and campaigns to enlist
support it will be much easier for him to bring the Labor
Party into the coalition at a reasonable price. If he does
not have a new and expanded coalition before the holidays,
i.e. negotiations with Labor have not been completed, then
the door really will be wide open.
In any case, Sharon will have to open the winter session with
broader support than what he has now, either by expanding the
coalition or by garnering outside support from one or two
parties.
Ariel's Stunt
One morning last week Knesset members were astonished to open
their boxes to find Uri Ariel (HaIchud HaLeumi) of all people
was asking to table a bill he drafted under the heading
"Disengagement Bill." Had Ariel changed his stripes? After
all, HaIchud HaLeumi had resigned from the government because
of the disengagement plan.
Upon reading the document it turned out Ariel was tabling a
bill for the disengagement of . . . the Arab settlement of Um
Reichan in Northern Samaria. In other words he was proposing
expelling them from their homes by claiming Jewish contiguity
had to be created in the primarily Jewish area.
Ariel then sent the bill to the Knesset Legal Advisor,
Attorney Schneider, requesting a legal opinion. In response
she wrote, "The proposal is racist."
Ariel had copied his bill verbatim from Sharon's
disengagement plan, replacing the words "Jewish settlement in
the Gaza Strip" with the words "Um Reichan in Northern
Samaria." Everywhere the word "Jews" appeared he wrote
"Arabs" instead.
This entire stunt was engineered from start to finish to
illustrate that the disengagement plan is also "of a racist
nature." When Ariel pressed Schneider on the close similarity
between his bill and Ariel Sharon's plan, she was forced to
admit from that a legal standpoint the disengagement plan is
problematic as well.
