Tense Vigil

Early elections in Israel

As voting time drew near, the debate within the Knesset assumed the proportions of melodrama. Would one member return in time from Argentina? Would former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who had not been seen in public since he resigned last September, show up to cast the deciding ballot and thus bail out his successor, Yitzhak Shamir? In the end, it did not matter: the Knesset approved the opposition Labor Party's call for early elections, 61 to 58. Though the bill must survive three more votes, the balloting last week all but guaranteed that voters will go to the polls between late May and November, probably in July. For the Likud coalition government of Shamir, which wanted the elections held during the deadline month of November 1985, the decision was a stinging defeat.

The move has been building since the annual inflation rate approached 300% in February. It gathered steam on Monday, when the leader of the tiny Tami Party, whose three members belong to the Likud coalition, called for early elections. The sudden about-face was partly attributed in some quarters to pressure from Nissim Gaon, a Swiss-Jewish multimillionaire and Tami benefactor. After Nigeria failed to pay him hundreds of millions of dollars for a chain of luxury hotels he was building, Gaon reportedly asked Shamir's government to allow Israeli banks in Switzerland to give him loan guarantees. When Finance Minister Yigal Cohen-Orgad refused, Gaon urged Tami Leader Aharon Abuhatzeira to call for new elections. Gaon, who co-founded the Tami Party in 1981, vigorously denied any interference.

In its nose count of Knesset votes, othe Labor Party assumed that Likud Maverick Dror Zeigerman, on a fact-finding mission to Argentina, would be absent; if Zeigerman returned and Begin voted, the Likud would be able to defeat the bill. On Wednesday evening, however, word reached Jerusalem that Zeigerman was flying home. As the Knesset prepared to vote, photographers clustered at Ben Gurion International Airport awaiting Flight 332 with Zeigerman aboard, while another clutch of reporters stood vigil outside Begin's house.

Zeigerman arrived in time to cast his ballot with the Likud, but Begin never emerged. As it turned out, his presence would not have helped: another Likud member defected and gave Labor its majority. Recent polls indicate that Labor, headed by Shimon Peres, would handily defeat Shamir's Likud bloc if voting were held now. When the election date is finally set, the campaign promises to be as fierce as any Israel has seen.