Israel's Younger Political Leaders: Who and of What Quality?
GOELL, YOSEF
Israel's Younger Political Leaders WHO AND OF WHAT QUALITY? YOSEF GOELL My assignment was to profile young, up-and-coming Israeli politicians, the next generation who will likely be taking over...
...He then became Israel's ambassador at the United Nations...
...The crucial drive by Arik Sharon and David Levy to succeed him will in all likelihood take place during the life of the next Knesset...
...The result has been a pattern of negative voting—with many voters voting more to stop leaders of other parties than to advance those of their own...
...If their patron goes up, so does the protege...
...But the system impedes it...
...Many veteran members of Knesset (MKs) and cabinet ministers have excellent track records in the sort of political wheeling and dealing that is essential to their political survival, but they are often unimaginative in initiating and implementing new policies...
...If he makes it into the Knesset, it is unlikely that he will win a spot in the cabinet if Likud wins before proving himself during at least one term as a Knesset back-bencher...
...The problem is not that Israel is afflicted with a shortage of capable and devoted people who would provide a better alternative leadership team...
...But the DMC shows what can happen when disenchantment with the major parties and their encrusted leaderships grows to a critical mass...
...The result has been that many problems—the economy, the deteriorating condition of the health-support system, public schools, higher education, judicial and police systems, to cite only a few—have been swept under the rug...
...Beilin headed the dovish Mashov circle of the party...
...In Likud, Menachem Begin was undoubtedly that party's unchallenged charismatic leader when, in 1977, Likud finally succeeded in wresting control of the government from the hands of Labor...
...Dan Meridor, 42, is one of the Hem...
...It subsequently failed to develop a cohesive leadership team and this led within a year to its fragmentation and near total disappearance from the political scene...
...easy, because they are so few in number...
...A former lecturer in political science at Tel Aviv University, Beilin became Peres's personal aide and party spokesman when the Labor party went into opposition in 1977...
...Perhaps of greatest concern for the long run, Israel's political establishment has failed to make life in the Jewish state attractive enough to draw large numbers of new immigrants from the West or to turn the tide of Israelis emigrating to the West...
...The DMC was organized in an enthusiastic but amateurish fashion shortly before the elections...
...but neither could it prevent Peres from pressing that idea in foreign capitals, thereby creating the impression that it was primarily Israeli, rather than Arab or Palestinian, intransigence that was to blame for the impasse in the so-called peace process...
...This widespread negative voting and the failure of the leaders of the major parties to make decisive breakthroughs to the electorate have led to growing voter alienation and to a tendency for more and more voters to gravitate to the smaller parties on the extreme left or right...
...He has been instrumental in pushing the cause of an international conference on the Arab-Israeli conflict and also led the internal cabinet fight to reduce Israel's contacts with South Africa...
...During the five years of his premiership and deputy-premiership, Shamir has had to spend a substantial part of his time and energy fending off their continuing challenges to his leadership...
...Benjamin Netanyahu, 39...
...sooner if Likud loses and somewhat later if it wins...
...What stands in the way of a much-needed rejuvenation of Israel's top political leadership is twofold: (1) For more than two decades, the vast majority of Israel's most promising young people have consciously shunned a life in politics...
...3...
...At the time of publication it was not clear whether this would happen...
...princes," a son of a former Herut member of Knesset (MK> who was a member ot the Irgun Zvai Leumi pre-state underground A close confidant of Prime Minister Shamir, Meridor stands a good chance of entering the cabinet if Likud wins the next elections...
...Dan Meridor, whom Menachem Begin brought in as cabinet secretary in 1982, has gone on to become one of the most promising younger Likud Knesset members and a close confidant to Prime Minister Shamir...
...2) The political system is rigged so that even those few who are willing to dive in and take their chances find that it takes far too long to get to positions of power where their influence could make a difference...
...he is a son of a former Herut MK who was a member of the Irgun's underground "fighting famity...
...The most promising batch of younger leaders in the two major parties today are in this category...
...Israel has much to be proud of as it looks back on 40 years of statehood...
...Yitzchak Shamir, who has formally headed Ehud 01 me it 43, a fourth-term M K, has become one of Prime Minister Shamir's closest confidants, Olmert is one ot the few Ltkud leaders fluent enough m English to have established a presence on the American Jewish scene...
...Levy and Katzav have made it into the cabinet...
...True, politicians at this age are far from senile...
...The performance of Israel's political leadership during those first 25 years can fairly be characterized by the dictum, "Nothing succeeds like success...
...Herut in the 1960s and 1970s was much more receptive to a bevy of young, unknown Sephardi mayors or local politicos of development towns...
...Moshe Dayan, Yitzchak Rabin, Haim Bar Lev and Mordechai Gur were all Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chiefs of staff who, upon retirement, "parachuted" into cabinet positions...
...Another channel of recruitment has been the party-affiliated factions in university student-union politics...
...It nevertheless went on to win an unprecedented 15 seats in the Knesset that year, the third largest number of seats of any party...
...Today, there is only one, Immigrant Absorption Minister Ya'acov Tsur...
...Voting for the Knesset is by party list, not individuals...
...For all its other advantages, a democracy— whether presidential or parliamentary—is not a model of efficiency...
...The unvoiced assumption was that the political impasse would continue, with the 1988 elections proving as indecisive as the 1984 one.* Given this picture of growing cynicism among the voters and their deepening alienation from the lackluster major parties and their current top leadership, the situation would seem to be ripe for the emergence of new political forces and of younger, more attractive candidates for political leadership who could offer new approaches to the challenges confronting us...
...A lawyer...
...If the two major parties continue to perform as poorly in the late 1980s as they have in the past decade and a half, it may well be that a new attempt will be made to shatter the existing system and create a new one...
...On the Labor side, Yossi Beilin, the current political secretary general of the foreign ministry and former cabinet secretary, who in effect has been running the ministry under Shimon Peres, is a protege of Peres, and stands a good chance of making it into the next Knesset...
...When he unexpectedly resigned and retired into silent seclusion in August 1983, it was after having led the country into two major catastrophes: the morass of Lebanon abroad and runaway inflation at home...
...He is an outspoken dove on Arab-Israel conflict issues He entered active Labor Party politics by serving as chairman of the Tel Aviv University student union and later heading the party's young guard...
...Despite the problems, Israel's political system worked remarkably well for the first 25 years of its existence...
...From my own expe* However, during his March visit to Washington, Shamir said he might call for early elections...
...The two major achievements of that government—pulling out of the quicksands of Lebanon, and the halting of an 11-year period of high double-digit and even triple-digit inflation—are admittedly impressive, but they were primarily eleventh-hour saves from catastrophes that had been wrought by the previous Likud governments...
...Similarly, those who vote for Likud are less than enthusiastic about Shamir, Sharon or Levy, but continue to vote Likud because of their fear that a left-wing Labor government would "sell out the Land of Israel to Arafat and the PLO...
...Nevertheless, few, if any, democratic governments have come close to the far-reaching internal paralysis that has characterized the inaptly named "government of national unity" that has ruled Israel since the elections of July 1984...
...But after spending half a lifetime or more as party manipulators, they tend to be burnt out...
...It is a basic fact of life in Israel that the party and electoral systems make it nearly impossible for an individual to present herself or himself directly to the electorate for its verdict...
...These included David Levy of Beit She'an, Moshe Katzav of Kiryat Malachi, David Magen of Kiryat Gat and Meir Shitrit of Yavne...
...But major changes can be expected sometime during the four-year term of the new Knesset...
...Another interesting change in Israeli politics in recent decades has been the almost total disappearance of kibbutz members from the ranks of the top political leadership...
...The principal channel for the recruitment of new personalities from outside the party machines to national political positions in the 1960s and 1970s has been the defense establishment and the diplomatic service, in the case of Labor...
...Many of those who vote Labor are not particularly enthralled by Shimon Peres, Yitzchak Rabin, or the rest of the party's leading lights, but vote that way because they are appalled by the thought of another four years of Likud rule...
...and the Sephardi mayors of small development towns, in the case of Herut (the principal party of Likud...
...He is one of Israel's highest-paid lawyers and has been criticized for using his Knesset position to advance his professional interests...
...Many of them were swept into the Knesset in the Likud's electoral victory of 1977...
...His chances of making it into the next Knesset are good, and he may even make it into the cabinet in case of a Labor victory...
...The more votes a party gets, the greater number of individuals on its list (beginning at the top) are entitled to seats in the Knesset...
...The more select individuals who make it into the cabinet, where the real power lies, are in their mid-fifties to sixties...
...Yossi Beilin, 40, is considered the leader of the younger doves He was Labor's cabinet secretary during the two /ears in which Shimon Peres served as prime minister...
...Less widely known abroad, and perhaps of even greater importance, the unity government has failed to tackle the endemic—and gigantic—trade deficit and foreign debt, the low productivity of Israel's work force or the problem of widespread labor unrest...
...None of these younger men, however, has a realistic chance of making it into central positions of power at the outset of the next Knesset...
...popular support to enable it to tackle the difficult political, social and economic problems of the era following the first heroic decades of independence...
...In this election year, both Labor's Peres and Likud's Shamir had been speaking openly of the very real possibility—even desirability— of setting up a new national unity government after the elections...
...An individual's hope of getting onto the list at all and of being placed in a realistic slot depends entirely on that person's manipulatory power within the party and on her or his relations with its bosses, rather than on the individual's public image and her or his presumed vote-getting attributes...
...has resigned as Israel's ambassador to the UN to run for a sate seat on Likud's list in the forthcoming elections He is a protege of Moshe Arens, who made him minister at the Israeli embassy in Washington in 1982...
...And, alas, these achievements have proved to be the national unity government's only ones, accomplished in its first year in office...
...A cabinet majority could not be found to support Shimon Peres' call for an international conference on the Arab-Israeli conflict...
...Perhaps it was the charismatic qualities, as well as extraordinary capabilities, of people like David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir and Pinchas Sapir, who succeeded despite the faults of the system...
...They are not being addressed by the political leadership of either Labor or Likud...
...He was chosen by the party primarily as a compromise candidate for the purpose of heading off the brewing head-on fight for succession to Begin between Arik Sharon and David Levy, which would have split Likud down the middle...
...if their big man falters and slips behind, so does his protege...
...Haim Ramon, 37...
...The survivors of this group are today the leaders of the Labor party...
...The time that political leaders of all parties are required to devote simply to the challenge of political survival has been such as to leave little energy or inclination left to deal with the basic problems of the country...
...When Peres shifted to the foreign ministry in the 1986 transition, Beilin became political director-general of the ministry...
...The current generation of political leaders simply does not command sufficiently broad The most promising channel for young men— and painfully few women— is to become proteges of top leaders...
...MK Ronni Milo, who has served in a number of deputy ministerial positions under Shamir, and MK Ehud Olmert are in a similar category...
...This proved to be both difficult and easy— difficult, because they are hard to find...
...But unless they become part of the coalition that forms the government, they will be squeezed out of any real governing power...
...the Likud for the past five years, has been the epitome of a do-nothing prime minister...
...The most common channel for making it into the big leagues has been for promising young men—and painfully few women—to link their futures to top leaders in a patron-protege relationship...
...The most interesting development, however, may well take place outside today's two major parties...
...Olmert quit the Herut party as a young student activist in 1966, in the wake of an abortive rebellion against Begin's leadership...
...The last 15 years, however, have been a period in which the political system has sunk into what seems to have become a perpetual war of all against all...
...has made a name for himself in the Knesset primarily as a member of its powerful Finance Committee, where he has become a sharp critic of many of the country's strongest financial interests, including those linked with the Labor Party and the Histadrut (Israel's largest labor union) establishment His interest and involvement in domestic and economic affairs makes him an exception among the younger corp of Labor politicians...
...If anything, Israel has a surfeit of such people...
...In the principal parties, the average politician must spend a substantial part of life climbing up the greasy pole of party politics in order to finally make it into the Knesset— usually in her or his late forties, fifties or even early sixties...
...In that three-sided fight, the young heads mentioned have already lined up solidly behind the Shamir-Arens camp...
...Both Olmert and Mendor reportedly have communicated with PLO figures, with the full though unadmitted knowledge of Prime Minister Shamir...
...The current lackluster leaders that this political system has produced has failed to elicit any widespread popular enthusiasm either for the political leaders themselves or for their parties...
...In any event, the habits of years surviving the lowest form of political infighting become a way of life...
...Benjamin Netanyahu was brought from engineering school obscurity by then-ambassador Moshe Arens to become minister at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C...
...The top people on the list of major parties are sure winners...
...But Begin failed to make use of his position of unchallenged supremacy in his party either to govern effectively or to establish Likud as Israel's preeminent ruling party...
...he is also a favorite of the foreign media as a Likud spokesman...
...This too has undoubtedly contributed significantly to the declining level of politicians and the ambience of the political arena in the 1970s and 1980s...
...This created a void that was soon filled by less capable people...
...The result has been a process of negative selection, in which the best and even the second-best among the students have shunned politics...
...There they joined other more veteran graduates of the defense establishment, like Peres and the late Yigal Allon...
...nence as a university teacher, I have seen that the best students have long treated the political parties and their student union factions with profound disdain, reflecting a feeling that they have better things to do with their lives than to become enmeshed in the shouting matches, dirty tricks and petty corruption of such bush-league politics...
...Labor was successful in blocking Likud's demand to continue with a large-scale settlement drive in the occupied territories...
...YOSEF GOELL My assignment was to profile young, up-and-coming Israeli politicians, the next generation who will likely be taking over from the old politicos who are presently directing the country's course...
...Netanyahu, an engineer by training, is also a son of an old-time member of Menachem Begin's revisionist party, and a younger brother of the late Yonatan Netanyahu, the hero of the 1976 Entebbe raid...
...Although the kibbutzim remain an important segment in Labor party politics, a glance at the leadership of the kibbutz movement today fails to uncover any candidates for national political leadership...
...In 1977, widespread popular disenchantment with the major parties and the frustration of younger political hopefuls with making it in the major parties, led to the establishment of Israel's first wholly new party, the Democratic Movement for Change...
...Like Mendor...
...Otherwise, the exquisitely balanced Likud-Labor government has succeeded only in tying itself in knots...
...In Likud, whether it wins or not, party leader Yitzchak Shamir will turn 73...
...In recent years, Labor has tried to match the Likud's stable of such development town Sephardi mayors with a similar group of its own: Aharon Nahmias of Safed, Rafi Edri of Hazor and its latest fair-haired boys, Amir Peretz of the Negev development town Sderot, and Nissim Zvilli, who was catapulted from the relative obscurity of his moshav into the position of head of the World Zionist Organization's settlement department...
...Meridor was made cabinet secretary in 1982, He was elected to the Knesset in 1984, and as a member of its prestigious Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, he headed a panel that carried out a widely acclaimed study of Israel's defense strategies for the future...
...However, its political system and the level of its political leadership over the past decade and a half would certainly not figure on a list of its more impressive attributes...
...To meet that challenge, Shamir has been grooming Moshe Arens as his preferred successor and Arens is running Likud's current election campaign...
...The lower you are on the list, the dicier it gets...
...That is why those who feel they have a strong personal appeal to the electorate often set up their own new parties...
...Yitzchak Rabin, during the three years of his premiership (following Golda Meir's resignation in the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur War), never really became the unchallenged leader of his party or of the country...
...Olmert returned to the fold after Herut became part of the Likud in 1973, but his political advance at that time was stymied by Begin...
...but Likud managed to divert significant chunks of the national budget into shoring up the existing network of settlements...
...In Labor, if Shimon Peres does not succeed in leading his party to a large enough plurality to make it possible to set up a Labor-led government coalition, he may well be seen as a four-time loser and intense pressure can be expected to replace him and the group of veteran party leaders around him with a new team...
...He became the youngest member of the Knesset when he entered it in 1983...
...If they can garner 18,000 or 20,000 votes country-wide, they will win a seat in the Knesset and avoid the strangulation of big-party politics...
...Nor did Shimon Peres, who finally became head of the party after unceasing attempts to undermine Rabin, ever attain a position of uncontested leadership of Labor analogous to that enjoyed by David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol or Golda Meir...
...Close to half of Israel's first cabinet were kibbutzniks...
Vol. 13 • June 1988 • No. 4
