(Continued from p.4)
and there is no one in Likud who is an obvious replacement. There are almost no people of talent or integrity left in the party. The Likud today is less of a political movement than it is a welfare office for the unemployable.In other election developments, the Shas party increased its strength incredibly (going from 10 to 17 seats), despite (or because of) the conviction of its leader Aryeh Deri (who has since resigned from the Knesset but continues to lead the party) for bribery. Shas came close to overtaking Likud and becoming the second largest party in the country. Its increased strength in part stems from the collapse of David Levy, the demagogue politician who once upon a time brought the Moroccan vote to the Likud. Jumping to Labor, Levy was unable to deliver the same to Barak, and instead this vote joined Shas. But part of Shas' increased strength also came from Arab votes--no, that is no misprint. This is because Arab voters figure Shas will again be in charge of the Ministry of the Interior with its control over the purse strings of local-governmental finance. The number two item on the agenda of Israeli Arabs, after destroying Israel, is milking the system effectively for local funding.
Barak's "Israel One" strategy was a clear debacle. Barak had broadened the Labor list by adding a handful of outsiders and deserters from other parties, hoping to boost Labor's Knesset showing. But despite the landslide in the vote for Prime Minister, Labor won far fewer Knesset seats with the "One Israel" expanded party than it did in the previous election: 26 seats, including several that now belong to Labor's alliance partners, David Levy's Gesher party and Meimad. Labor alone had 34 in the last elections. The public was not voting for Labor, it was voting against Netanyahu. The Likud went down with him, sinking to 19 seats (it had 32 last time), only two more than Shas.
In the end, all Barak accomplished with his One Israel expansion was to enrage part of the Labor faithful who lost their Labor Knesset seats to the outsiders, and to saddle himself with David Levy's team as a hump on his back. Moreover, if Barak does not give Levy the Foreign Ministry, and Beilin wants it, Levy could well take his minions and abandon Barak, leaving him with even fewer Knesset seats. Who says there was no poetic justice in this election?
The Arab parties pretty much kept their same strength. The Russian vote was somewhat stronger. Netanyahu had pushed Avigdor Lieberman to challenge Sharansky's hegemony over the Russian vote. But this enraged Sharansky, who appears to have whispered orders to his constituents to vote Barak.
After all its hoopla, the Center Party of Yitzhak Mordechai came out with a pathetic six seats (out of 120), after earlier appearing to promise to get 20% of the vote in the polls. The National Religious Party lost its gamble; it had tried to place itself in the dovish center or further left, driving out the party Right, and lost strength. The party, which in living memory had 12 seats, is down to five.
The complete disappearance of the Third Way party led by war hero Avigdor Kahalani (who quite literally saved Israel from destruction single-handedly in the 1973 war) in one sense is a pity. The party had run as a one-issue "Keep the Golan" list, and offered the prospect of a lobby within the Barak government for sanity regarding the Golan. The party, like disco, is dead, and there is no one to take its place. This raises the odds that Syrian tanks will be parked next to the Kinneret before the end of the Barak government. On the other hand, the Third Way became contaminated with the Oslo bug, pressured Netanyahu for withdrawals in Judea and Samaria, and had announced prior to the elections that it would join no government coalition after the elections unless it was based upon an immediate unilateral withdrawal/surrender in Lebanon. The Third Way insisted that such a unilateral surrender would force the Syrians to make peace out of embarrassment, since Israel's
Syrian tanks may be parked next to the Kinneret before the end of the Barak government.
The rightist Tsomet Party of Raful Eitan also disappeared from the map forever. The National Union party, led by Benny Begin, which brought together most elements of the Right in hopes of making a strong showing, won a pathetic four seats, and Begin himself resigned from politics in disgrace. At least one National Union seat came from voters from the right wing of the National Religious Party (which dropped from 9 to 5 seats) and two came from one of its components, Moledet, which had obtained two seats in the last elections.
All in all, the biggest change in the Knesset is the creation of an Israeli Ku Klux Klan faction with six seats. Just a few weeks before the election, the Shinui party, which had been a faction within Meretz and then split off), was defunct. It was led by Avraham Poraz whose most notable cause consisted of animal rights and protecting circus animals. A Meretz dropout, Poraz gambled by bringing in the Jerry Springer of the Israeli media, Tommy Lapid, to head the party and convert it overnight into a one-issue party -- bashing the Orthodox. Lapid is
(Continued on p.6)
June 1999 - 5 - Outpost