Begin's Farewell Symphony
SALPETER, ELIAHU
AS LIKUD UNRAVELS Beginfc Farewell Syinprioriy by euahu salpeter YIGAl HURWITZ Tel Avrv Most political observers here predicted a different climax to Menachem Be-gin's career as Prime Minister....
...Highly respected Justice Minister Schmu-el Tamir resigned, claiming the now diminished DMC was disproportionately represented in the government...
...Then came the scandal involving a young Minister of Religious Affairs, Aharon Abuhazira, one of the three National Religious Party (NRP) members in the coalition government...
...What made things sticky was the fact that the Minister of the Interior and Police, Yosef Burg, is the senior NRP member in the cabinet...
...In addition, immigration is down, while emigration is probably the highest it has ever been in the 32 years of Israel's existence...
...Abuhazira was indicted last December 1, and Attorney General Yitzchak Zamir asked the Knesset to lift the minister's immunity so that he might stand trial on similar charges...
...The pressure mounted, and on December 31 Berg fired the Inspector General for "improper behavior" and "insubordination...
...Internationally, Israel faces severe isolation and erosion of its support...
...An open attack was directed at Inspector General Herzl Sha-fir for having sanctioned some devious (though not illegal) methods to obtain testimony against Abuhazira...
...Since it is a middle-of-the-road, pragmatic party, Labor by its very nature has no grand answers??only plodding solutions and freshened up appeals to the old-time pioneering spirit...
...The closest the Labor Party ever came to such an embarrassment was when its candidate for governor of the National Reserve Bank was convicted for misappropriating funds in his job as head of the Histadrut Health Insurance...
...Begin and Zevulun Hammer, the Minister of Education, for all practical purposes promised that its recommendations would be binding...
...But it was a less patriotic issue, the crumbling economy, that finally forced early elections...
...By contrast, the NRP, key partner in Likud, solidly backed Abuhazira, contending that the charges against him were part of a frameup plotted by his enemies inside the party...
...In all probability the Labor Party will be returned to office, but with less than general jubilation...
...Shafir, a former Army general, did not take this lying down...
...say, a head-on fight with Jimmy Carter over Palestinian autonomy...
...Considered until recently a possible successor to Begin, he was kicked out of the Herut Party, too...
...Finance Minister Simcha Ehrlich followed when the Cabinet failed to back his austerity proposals to curb inflation, and was replaced by Hurwitz (who is known for his toughness in economics as well as politics...
...The first fissure in his governing Likud coalition, in fact, developed in August 1978, on the eve of the Camp David meeting...
...When the campaign starts this spring, the outgoing Prime Minister undoubtedly will charge the Labor Party with planning "a complete sellout of Judea and Samaria to the PLO...
...Eliahu Salpeter, a regular NL contributor, is a correspondent for Ha'aretz, one of Israel's leading newspapers...
...The Finance Minister immediately resigned...
...Hurwitz warned that approving the committee's figures would boost the present 135 per cent inflation rate to 200-300 per cent...
...What the committee eventually urged was a fundamental upgrading of the teaching profession at a cost that nobody could figure out exactly, but running anywhere from $50 million to $375 million, depending on the pace of implementation...
...Besides triple-digit inflation, a victorious Labor will inherit a stagnant GNP and staggering debts...
...But its departure from his already slim coalition left Begin without a workable majority to thwart a vote to advance to date of the elections, originally scheduled for next November...
...Begin's troubles at home have been brewing for some time...
...Moreover, since Carter is gone and it will probably take the Reagan Administration a while to formulate a detailed Middle East policy, let alone raise Israel's hackles, domestic concerns are likely to remain dominant through the actual balloting...
...Even Communications Minister Yitz-chak Modai, who continues to serve in his second capacity of Minister of Energy, handed back his portfolio when telephone workers threatened a general strike over reorganization plans intended to improve efficiency...
...At the moment, though, it would appear that the Labor Party may well come close to winning the absolute majority in the Knesset that has eluded it for so long...
...Soon the disintegration accelerated...
...More than a year ago, to end a national school strike, the Cabinet appointed a committee of experts to study the situation...
...The second half of the script will probably still prove correct...
...Of course, one should not automatically count Begin out...
...This is Begin's strongest card, and he will play it to the best of his considerable ability...
...Some outrageous event might turn the tide in his favor...
...He leaked a story to the press that Berg had asked him to put the file called "Operation Peach" (a dossier containing intelligence on suspected financial malfeasance by various political bodies??including some in the Ministry of Interior) on ice until after the elections...
...The scenario that was favored only a few months ago, when his support in the Knesset began to slip away, had Begin managing to bring about the showdown on a crucial foreign policy issue...
...This was the first time in Israel's history that a Cabinet member was accused of criminal conduct...
...Chairman Shimon Peres is not a charismatic leader, and the party's image was sullied by former Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin's mudslinging in his fight to regain the leadership (which he lost by a crushing 4-1 vote at the party convention in December...
...Moreover, Labor has not offered the electorate any dramatic ideas on how it intends to reverse the ill for-tunesthathaveplaguedthe country since the high point that was reached with signing of the peace treaty with Egypt...
...Initially, three of his closest aides were arrested on suspicion of having channeled public funds to existing and fictitious religious institutions in exchange for kickbacks to NRP coffers, and possibly private pockets...
...Defense Minister EzerWeizmann left in a noisy public row over Begin's support of the defense budget cuts demanded by Hurwitz...
...THERE MATTERS StOOd when they were overshadowed last month by Hurwitz' second resignation, this time over teachers' salaries...
...Or he might yet convince Israelis that Peres and Labor are too soft on foreign policy matters and prone to giving up too much of the West Bank to the Arabs...
...The Labor Party tried to dissociate itself from its black sheep as quickly as possible...
...The recommendations were finally approved January 11...
...He kept his hands off the police investigation, which brought him under discreet but very heavy fire from Abuha-zira's supporters...
...Last year, Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan made his exit??after having deserted the Labor Party in 1977 to accept the post??because of Begin's inflexibility in the autonomy talks...
...Nevertheless, the majority of the Cabinet (as a few frankly admitted) felt that in an election year 200 per cent inflation was less dangerous than the reaction of millions of parents to having their children's schools closed for weeks, as the teachers had made clear they would be if the Cabinet vote were negative...
...Most Israelis today seem to feel that anything would be better than four more years of the same...
...When Hurwitz quit, it was like one of the last musicians taking his candle away in Haydn's Farewell symphony, except that nobody was sure whether the conductor really wanted to go home early...
...Next, Yigal Hur-witz, the then Minister of Trade and Industry and a hawk, walked out in protest against the terms of the peace treaty with Egypt...
...There is no great enthusiasm for Labor, however...
...Then he would wave the flag at the voters and warn of the opposition capitulating to international pressures, with the direst consequences for Israel's survival...
...With the imbroglio over teachers' salaries adding to a steady decline in the popularity of Begin and his government ??thanks to the inflation and a general sense of malaise??there is a very broad consensus in the country that the elections will result in a resounding defeat for Likud...
...Transport Minister Meir Amit, aleader of the Democratic Movement for Change, quit the cabinet and ultimately took with him eight of his party's 15 members in Parliament...
...The Cabinet had to act on this by the end of 1980...
...Hurwitz's Rafi Party (the remnants of a splinter group that was largely led back into Labor's ranks by Moshe Da-yan several years ago) has only three seats in the Knesset...
...The scandals surrounding that affair cost Labor the next elections and were largely responsible for bringing Begin to power...
Vol. 64 • February 1981 • No. 3
