Israel in Search of Leadership

...But this threat does not seem a very effective bargaining tool...

...The reestablishment of Jewish nationhood in this historic homeland was seen in part by its initiators as an experiment in building a better society...

...And within that time the Alignment should be able to chip away at the incompatible counterdemands of its potential partners, making it possible to put together the same Labor-Religious party-Independent Liberal coalition that governed before the elections...

...Otherwise a majority of the Knesset could actually compel the Alignment to form a minority government...

...Now the idea of originating initiatives, urged in the past mainly by analysts and academics, is becoming more respectable in political circles...

...The economic fools' paradise Israelis lived in between 1967-73 contributed heavily to softening their muscles and lowering the national level of military preparedness and alertness...

...Should an Alignment government decide on a hard-line policy, it could always count on Likud's votes providing an even larger majority...

...All this, it is argued, would be preferable to holding new elections that might very well bring practically the same results as the December 31 balloting...

...But that does not make finding an answer any easier...

...Now Israelis feel they must revive the primacy of these ideals over the prevailing values of "societies of plenty...

...In the area of relations with the Arabs, Israel's most important foreign policy problem, the Yom Kippur War has undermined what seemed to be the best official thinking: Time will be the main, if not sole, factor of amelioro-tion, therefore passivity on Jerusalem's part is not only justified but perhaps the one reasonable policy...

...But in the Middle East, Israelis counter, time moves today at a pace that does not allow for leisurely answers to what may ultimately, in the literal sense, prove to be a matter of life or death for many...

...That is the price they paid for their rush to attain ever higher standards of living, and for their late awakening to the social, cultural and economic disparities that persisted in the country despite everyone's improved economic condition...

...The Yom Kippur War has placed several elements of the concept in question...

...Where the military is concerned, k is generally agreed that the strategies and procedures of the past require the sharpest scrutiny...

...the four parties that joined to form the Likud opposition, headed by Men-ahem Begin, picked up those seven seats for a total of 39...

...There are even voices deploring the lack of innovative thinking here about reviving Israeli-Soviet relations, ruptured during the June 1967 war...

...The arithmetic is simple: An Alignment-NRP combination would have 61 of the 120 votes in Parliament, and even with the three held by the two small Labor-affiliated Arab parties, this is a very tenuous edge...

...An Alignment-ILP-CRP linkage would command a mere 58 seats, making such a coalition entirely dependent upon the three Arab-party votes...

...has been replaced by a new and more persistent one: "Has Israel learned its lesson from what happened last October...

...only the Knesset, through special legislation, can dismiss itself...

...But most important is the widely felt need for changes in the domestic sphere...

...Meanwhile the Independent Liberals, feeling stronger than before because of their new partners, have insisted on being permitted to introduce legislation that would weaken the exclusivity of religious laws in matters of personal status, such as marriage...

...Finance Minister Pinhas Sapir, a veteran coalition-welder, has testified to the difficulty of the operation...

...Sociologists, and certainly historians, are quick to note that three or four months constitute much too short a period to permit any serious answer...

...The desire to punish Labor for the military reversals Israel suffered during the first days of the fighting, and for what became known about the state of military preparedness in the weeks that followed, was to a considerable degree canceled out by a widespread suspicion of Likud's presumed intransigence: Many voters felt that if the right-of-center achieved power, its hawkish policies might torpedo whatever chances there were for the Geneva peace conference...

...Still, one can reasonably argue that the figures do not fully reflect the extent of popular dissatisfaction with the government's performance...

...Under prevailing conditions, they say, several additional weeks of bargaining, while not desirable, could be considered fairly reasonable...

...Added to the steady slippage it experienced in previous elections, the loss has for the first time left Labor without sufficient strength to produce a firm majority with only one of its two traditional partners, the NRP or the Independent Liberal party (ILP), which retained its four Knesset seats and has entered into an alliance with the new three-seat strong Citizens' Rights party (CRP...

...Many sea this as a "crisis of leadership...

...But this is one case where that 5 per cent decline has fundamentally altered its position...

...AFTER THE ELECTIONS Israel in Search of Leadership by eliahu salpeter Tel Aviv The question that preoccupied people here amid their shock and confusion immediately after the Yom Kippur War-"How come the Arabs performed a lot better than almost everybody in the world assumed they would, while we reacted less efficiently than everyone, including ourselves, expected...

...National Religious party leaders —already under strong pressure from their small but growing and hawkish youth segment—believe they must gain at least some concessions on religious issues to pacify those who insisted that a National Emergency Government was needed...

...There being 120 seats in the Knesset, this amounted to a shift of just slightly over 5 per cent—hardly earthshak-ing, even considering the extreme regularity of the Israeli voter...

...Israel must also think in terms of prolonged warfare, it is recognized, with all that this entails in the way of stockpiles, reserve mobilization, and methods of operating the civilian economy...

...They point out that Labor would still have a comfortable majority on any vote involving the crucial issues of war and peace: Should it take a flexible stand, it would have the support of the Left, the ultra-orthodox Agudah party and (at least vis-a-vis Egypt) the NRP...

...Rejecting the NRP's call for a National Emergency Government that would include Likud, Labor has tried to restore the outgoing coalition...

...Yet despite the fact that foreign affairs and security matters were Eliahu Salpeter is a member of the editorial board of Ha'aretz, one of Israel's leading newspapers...

...Therefore, the Alignment would need some ad hoc coalition simply to pass such a law...

...The widely reported, albeit somewhat exaggerated, strategy disputes between the top brass during the most crucial days of fighting indicate a need for changes in the top command structure, too, with possible strengthening of the direct authority of the Minister of Defense over the General Staff...

...Though the December 31 elections significantly weakened the ruling coalition and strengthened the main, right-of-center, opposition group, the results were indeed far from a political upheaval...

...In fact, as fashioning a coalition has become a more and more protracted affair, editorialists and commentators have begun to urge that the Alignment go it alone...

...Prime Minister Golda Meir's Labor Alignment dropped from 56 seats in the Knesset to 51, and its major coalition partner, the National Religious party (NRP), lost two of its 12 representatives...

...practically the only issues determining the choices of the overwhelming majority of voters, in the postelection negotiations between the parties domestic issues have entered the picture and made the formation of a new government more difficult than ever...

...Unlike the situation in Britain, an Israeli government cannot call for elections before the full four-year term of the Knesset expires...

...It has consequently become increasingly evident that the fundamental issues Israel must solve are not organizational but moral and ideological...

...Some commentators here have been pointing rather despairingly at the political scene as an indication that nothing much has actually changed in the country...

...Equality, the voluntary sharing of mutual responsibility, and the primacy of moral over material values were more than abstract notions in shaping everyday life here, at least until the past few years...

...Other political observers maintain that it is simply too early to give up on the traditional process...

...There is as yet no answer to the question of how Israel will administer to itself the remedies that are known to be necessary in the light of the accepted diagnosis of the country's ills...

...Is short, where in the past it could maneuver between two alternatives to obtain concessions and compromises from each, the Labor Alignment has now had to face the unenviable task of reconciling the conflicting demands of both of its former partners...

...There can be no doubt, though, that just below the surface the rumblings set in motion by the Yom Kippur War continue unabated: Nothing is more frequently discussed when Israelis meet than "the need to change," nor is there much dispute about what must be changed, and fast...

...The decision to sign the Sinai disengagement and withdrawal agreement, for example, was endorsed 76-35 by the new Knesset...

...The concept of intense, short wars of rapid movement, in which Israel's advantage is provided by the quality of its soldiers and officers, has been the foundation of this country's military doctrine...

...Facing what appear to be unbridgeable contradictions, Alignment spokesmen have dropped heavy hints of new elections should the deadlock persist...

...The repetition of this kind of traditional political horsetrading has added to the deep dismay of those who complain that Israel has been behaving as if nothing happened in October 1973...