Israeli politics upended

Editorial

The stunning midnight deal that created a new Israeli coalition government Tuesday has reshaped politics there, possibly permanently. The howls of protest from the opposition are perhaps the surest sign of the coalition’s significance.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who had indicated he was preparing for early elections, scuttled the plan publicly at about 2 a.m. Tuesday, announcing a deal with the new Kadima head, Shaul Mofaz, to form the largest coalition the country has ever seen. Together, assuming the existing coalition partners remain, the prime minister’s bloc will have 94 of the Knesset’s 120 seats. Mofaz will become deputy prime minister, but no other Kadima members will enter cabinet for now.

Relations between Likud and Kadima are akin to Canada’s Conservative and Reform parties, featuring a parallel and overlapping cast. Kadima was founded by former Likud prime minister Ariel Sharon and Mofaz himself ran for Likud leader before withdrawing from both the race and the party and joining Kadima. There are family ties, but there is also no fight more bitter than a family fight.

Some commentators suspect Netanyahu is attempting to close political ranks in advance of an attack on Iran, but Mofaz is a complex piece of the puzzle. The Iranian-born former chief of the Israel Defence Forces has resisted the hawkish rhetoric of Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak, vocally stressing that action against Iran should be done in concert with allies and only as a last resort. At least one Israeli commentator is speculating that Netanyahu brought Mofaz into the circle so he could be included in the latest intelligence on Iranian nuclear progress, on the assumption that the information would embolden Mofaz’s hawkish side.

Or, by inviting Mofaz into his government, Netanyahu may have been practising the old warrior-politician’s maxim: keep your friends close and your enemies closer. While it will certainly not be difficult for Mofaz to oppose from within the government any action against Iran, it is certainly more difficult than from without.

Also part of the deal was Mofaz’s determination to revitalize efforts at a resolution with the Palestinians.

But, while foreign affairs are a crucial issue and played a role, no doubt, in Netanyahu’s projections, the most significant early changes brought by the new coalition may well be in domestic affairs.

A cornerstone of the coalition agreement is the creation of an alternative to the Tal law, the convention by which Charedi men are exempted from military service. The law has been deemed unconstitutional by Israel’s High Court of Justice and a resolution to the issue is required by August. Intended to equalize the burden of mandatory military service, the Tal law, passed in 2000, was envisioned to draw more ultra-Orthodox men into military or national service but is widely perceived to have failed. Percentages of Charedi men enlisting in the military has changed imperceptibly since the law was implemented. Supporters of the law say it was not adequately enforced. Changes to the law will intend to ameliorate complaints of inequality by secular and non-Charedi religious Jews who view the Charedi community as not sharing equally in the obligations of citizenship. This issue was a major impetus in Netanyahu’s aborted plans for early elections, which he deemed necessary to avoid being beholden to the religious elements of his coalition while he grappled with how to amend the law. With an agreement between Likud and Kadima on this issue, Netanyahu will no longer need to worry about the 16 religious MKs in his coalition.

In the bigger picture, the Tal law is a single front in a larger conflict between secular and Charedi Israelis, and the outcome of this issue will undoubtedly help define the resolution of this schism on other fronts, including civil marriage, the conception of who is a Jew and state funding for separate educational systems. It may be, like Nixon-in-China or Sharon-in-Gaza, that only the two dominant centre-right parties can take on these issues and hope to succeed without extraordinary civil strife.

The agreement also involves electoral reform, although details seem sketchy so far on what would be reformed. If the coalition represents a more permanent rapprochement between Likud and Kadima – in similar fashion to the Canadian Conservatives’ reunification under Stephen Harper – it could mean a long-range advantage for Israel’s centre-right. If that is part of Netanyahu’s calculation, he may try to implement a systemic alteration to the electoral process to entrench his side’s advantage, perhaps by raising the bar for small parties to enter the Knesset.

This potential may account for some of the extraordinarily incendiary reaction – even by Israeli standards – to the announcement of the new coalition.

“This is a pact of cowards and the most contemptible and preposterous zigzag in Israel’s political history,” said Shelly Yachimovich, head of the Labor party. And, while such a statement may indeed reflect the magnitude of the zigzag, it may in the end speak more about Yachimovich’s increasingly frustrated opposition and likely marginalized future.

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