Futile Exercise in Survival

By Marguerite Johnson

As Begin's coalition crumbles, Peres gets ready for an early election

"He is like a composer who does not know how to end his symphony," observed a political commentator in Jerusalem. Those were perhaps the kindest words to be heard last week about Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who seemed increasingly like a leader who neither was, nor sought to be, in control of political events in his country. Gone were the pugnacious stance and spirited oratory with which Begin once stirred his followers to action. All that remained was an almost irrational obsession to cling to power for a few more weeks or months, even if he no longer had an effective mandate to govern. Day after day, in an unseemly bid to withstand an opposition call for early elections, Begin's ministers scrambled to buy another vote or two in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset.

It was all to no avail. Leaders of the opposition, principally the Labor Party candidate for Prime Minister, Shimon Peres, plotted a parliamentary assault aimed at finishing off the government. To avoid such a showdown, the Begin Cabinet voted Sunday to ask the Knesset to call an early election on July 7, four months ahead of schedule. Begin's government had sounded its finale in the kind of unruly Cabinet session that had become a hallmark of his 3 1/2 years in office. The issue had originally seemed relatively benign: a pay raise for the country's 65,000 teachers, approved earlier by a blue-ribbon committee. In the Cabinet, however, the salary question provoked a collision between two stubborn antagonists: Finance Minister Yigal Hurvitz, who was determined to forestall any new wage spiral that would further boost the country's 140% hyperinflation, and Education Minister Zevulun Hammer, who felt equally committed to the teachers. Each vowed to resign if he lost the battle, taking precious parliamentary votes with him. Thus either way Begin's coalition would be left without a majority in parliament.

The debate in the Cabinet dragged on for 7 1/2 hours as both sides sought to stave off the inevitable. At one point, one of Begin's aides reminded Hurvitz in a note that his resignation would help bring a Labor Party successor. Hurvitz scribbled back: "Yes, I know things will be worse, but I don't want to be responsible for the economic collapse." Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon, who is renowned both for histrionic outbursts and for an unyielding determination to plant more Jewish settlements on the occupied West Bank, lashed out at Hurvitz. Said he: "If you want to hand Greater Israel over to Shimon Peres so that he can pass it on in its entirety to [Palestine Liberation Organization Leader] Yasser Arafat, why don't you say so instead of making all this economic talk?" Hurvitz, who had resigned from the Cabinet once before in opposition to the Camp David peace accords, was not about to relent. When the Cabinet finally voted to give the teachers the increase, he made good on his threat and tendered his resignation. His defection and that of four other Knesset colleagues reduced Begin's coalition to 58 votes in the 120-seat Knesset, three short of the 61 needed to carry a majority. "I am not disappointed," Begin unconvincingly remarked later. "This is a democracy."

Next day the Cabinet met again to discuss whether to present its own bill to the Knesset for an early election, which would save Begin and his government from the ignominy of being forced to resign on an opposition motion of no confidence. The government would thus be able to stay in place through the election campaign. Most Cabinet members favored this comparatively graceful course, but it was decided to hold off until a small clique of diehard Begin supporters--led by Sharon and Housing Minister David Levy--had time to embark on their last-ditch exercise in vote bartering.

Levy took the initiative in the buttonholing campaign. His recruiting centered on half a dozen independents. One was Samuel Flatto-Sharon, a businessman who had been convicted in France on fraud charges and is currently on trial for bribery in Israel. Another was Shafik Assad, a Druze member from Galilee. The independents were courted with a wide range of inducements: for Assad, a new community center for his native village; for others, promises of deputy ministershlps. Even among Begin's own aides, the reaction to the brazen corridor bargaining verged on outrage. "It's never happened before that people are so open about being for sale politically," said one aide. Added another: "It's a joke. What have they gained, another week?"

As it happened, the Begin government's unbecoming exit was even accompanied by a last-minute scandal. The Knesset voted to lift the parliamentary immunity of Cabinet Minister Aharon Abuhatzeira, head of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, so that he could face criminal indictment. Abuhatzeira had been under investigation for months as an alleged recipient of bribes in return for having funneled government funds to phantom religious institutions.

In an unrelated incident, the Knesset was also shaken by the assassination of its only Bedouin member, Sheik Hamad Abu Rabiya, 51, a courtly, popular legislator who was gunned down in his car outside Jerusalem's Holyland Hotel. He was the first member of the Knesset to be murdered in its 32-year history. Police subsequently arrested five suspects, including two men who were members of the Druze religious sect, which has often been at odds with the Bedouins.

For many Israelis, the new elections could not come early enough. They are deeply worried about the prospect of the country being in the hands of a rudderless government. Said Meron Medzini, a lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem: "We have here a terrible crisis of confidence. There are some people who are worried about the future of democracy." Said Knesset Member Uri Avneri, a longtime critic of the Israeli political Establishment: "The government is breaking apart. It's like metal fatigue."

Begin himself seemed strangely detached, almost as though he were observing his government's disintegration as a spectator. Reflecting on his listless response to the most important political crisis of his career, an Israeli academic noted: "I've watched three or four Prime Ministers in their decline. Begin used to be a superb parliamentarian and a very effective speaker. The situation today is a very pathetic business." One possible factor was Begin's questionable health. Over the past four years, he has suffered two heart attacks and a stroke, and he is under the constant supervision of his doctors. Some politicians speculate that the medications he is required to take have had a depressing effect on his normally ebullient behavior.

The judgments on much of Begin's term in office have turned severe. For all his initially feisty style of governing, many observers feel that he has never really managed to wield effective control over his Cabinet. From the first, it had been a patchwork quilt of first four and then five different parties. Many of Begin's ministers were chosen not so much on the basis of capability as on patronage. Cabinet sessions became notorious for squabbling and name-calling. Hurvitz was the sixth Cabinet minister to resign, setting a new precedent even in a country used to coalition governments.

Begin's signing of a peace treaty with Egypt was unmistakably the high point of his career. It won him justifiable plaudits both at home and abroad. But his bungling with regard to the precarious Israeli economy became his undoing. Soon after he took office, he decided to give the economy a boost with the monetarist methods espoused by Conservative Economist Milton Friedman. Begin gave Israelis, for the first time, the right to hold up to $3,000 in foreign currency. In his first budget, he increased spending in the already swollen public sector and, most damaging of all, provided greatly expanded credit to exporters. Israelis went on a buying spree, gleefully snapping up imported luxury items with their newly acquired dollars. The result: an inflation rate that was already an ominous 39% when Begin took office shot up to a rate that, if not stemmed soon, could rise to a staggering 300%.

Israelis are shielded from inflation by one of the most sophisticated systems of indexation in the world. Under the complex plan, wages are automatically adjusted by an employer to compensate for 80% of the inflation rate; the same kind of adjustments are made for personal savings, pensions, State of Israel bonds, life insurance policies, mortgages and accounts. Thus, the real strains did not really start to show until this past year. Says Arnon Gafny, governor of the Bank of Israel: "This is not the type of crisis that brings you to a state of collapse. But it puts restraints on our standard of living, and it makes it much more difficult for us to take care of a variety of other needs." Gafny and other economic experts are just as worried about the fact that Israel's gross national product is now almost static. Last year, it rose by a mere 0.9%, the lowest increase in six years. To make matters worse, unemployment, never a worrisome phenomenon before, grew by 67% in 1980 alone, and now stands at 4.7%.

As though on the rebound, many Israelis are turning back to the Labor Party, which was ousted in the last election after 28 uninterrupted years in power. The polls now show Labor the overwhelming favorite in elections, with some findings pointing to an absolute Labor majority. To take advantage of that lead, the Labor Party ideally would like an election as early as March, but it has indicated that it would go along with June.

Leader Peres, 57, is a careful pragmatist given to governing through well-wrought political alliances rather than by dint of personality. A protege of David Ben-Gurion, Israel's founder and first Prime Minister, Peres got started in politics as a youth and by 1974 had risen to become Defense Minister. In a recent interview with TIME, Peres outlined his plan to deal with Israel's economic crisis. He said that his first priority would be to slash funds for settlements in the occupied Arab territories. Next he would try to obtain an agreement among labor, government and industry to freeze wages, salaries and taxes under a "social contract." He would reimpose tight currency controls and, in one of his most innovative programs, make it mandatory for all university students to combine half a day of study with half a day of work. Says Peres: "We are going to revolutionize the whole administration of the country."

The Peres plan is clearly highly ambitious, but many Israelis appear to be in a receptive mood for change. They now seem to realize that only a vigorous new demonstration of political will can pull Israel out of its economic morass and political malaise.

--By Maugerite Johnson. Reported by David Aikman/Jerusalem

With reporting by David Aikman/Jerusalem

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.