Israel in Disarray

...Although it remains a mess, the pace of deterioration does not seem to be accelerating greatly Finance Minister Yoram Andor is burning up foreign currency to keep down prices in Israel currency and is transferring funds from reduced government operation budgets (including such areas as education and housing) to pay for government subsidies of essential and less-than-essential commodities and services The government keeps on printing more money, yet somehow manages to keep inflation in the vicinity of 100 per cent per annum Still, the strains are clearly showing in the numerous strikes that have been cropping up, and that the ruling Likud Party has attempted to utilize in its competition with the Labor Party There was very little public sympathy for the recent wildcat strike of the verv well-paid El Al Israel Airlines employees, the government could have had broad support for its threatened shutdown of a company long bedeviled by an extortionist union local whose chairman happens to be a Likud faithful But Deputy Prime Minister David Lew (lormer head of the Likud opposition in Histadrut) circumvented the General Confederation of Labor and negotiated directly with the union local That prompted El Al Chairman Avraham Shavitt to resign in protest, and he was replaced by an obscure businessman whose main qualification seems to be his 40-year long party association with Begin A similar populist (to put it mildly) tactic was used in a strike by workers in the diamond industry, now suffering from a world-wide slump Activists among the workers incited them to demand a 60 per cent wage increase, way beyond what the industry could bear?and much more than the Histadrut could reasonably demand When police prevented demonstrating strikers from entering the Diamond Bourse, they marched to Histadrut headquarters, conveniently located less than a mile away Finding entry barred there, too, they smashed windows and forced Histadrut officials to call the police Labor leaders calling for police protection against the wrath of striking workers was a sight worth millions in publicity for Likud, especially since it seems bent on taking over Histadrut (where the Opposition Labor Party holds over 60 per cent of the seats on the Executive) Control of the Confederation's numerous economic enterprises would reinforce Likud's hold of vital levers of the country and help perpetuate its rule for many years—just as it helped Labor to stay in power for the first 28 years of the State THE RESTRAINT displayed by Labor in the wage disputes was perhaps less an indication of its sense of national responsibility than of its inflexibility In the trade unions, as in the nation in general, five years into Likud rule Labor s leaders continue to behave as if they were the government and Likud theOpposition Voters apparently reciprocate bv fulminating against inflation, against capitulation to religious minority—and voting for Begin Indeed, the ineptness and contusion ot Labor is probablv thesingle most important factor in Israeli political lite today Decent, intelligent Labor Chairman Shimon Peres has repeatedh demonstrated that he lacks the qualities of leadership Labor's troubles at the top are also reflected m the pathologically bitter rivalry between Peres and former Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin Laborites try to comfort themselves that Likud's fortunes depend entirely on the aging Prime Minister Besides his latest hospitalization after having slipped in the bathroom, it is noted, he has been treated in recent years for various illnesses, including at least two heart attacks At the present rate of Labor Party disintegration, though, election victories are fast becoming less a matter of Likud attraction than of Labor repulsion Moreover, Sharon has been effectively maneuvering himself into position as the next in line for the Prime Ministership when Begin vacates the office In fact, Sharon's determined run for the post is the most interesting political action in town these days The job of Defense Minister has given him the second brightest spotlight, after the Prime Minister He is the darling of the Right and the nationalists, having been the main driving force behind the establishment of scores of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank He elbowed out Foreign Minister Shamir to lead the Israeli team that negotiated the strategic cooperation agreemei t in Washington He hogged the headlines with careful leaks to the press following a "super secret" arms-for-diplomatic-ties trip to Africa And he took the place of the Prime Minister, the Finance Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister in dealing w ith the barricaded settlers of Yamit, the Sinai settlement due to be handed over to the Egyptians in four months Many believe that as long as the democratic rules of the game are observed, Sharon has no chance of becoming the next Prime Minister As a former La-borite who joined the Likud via the miniscule Shlomzion Parts, he is an outsider in the eyes of the tight-knit group of Herut leaders who control the coalition They would never stand for an outsider inherit me Begin's mantle, it is said But Sharon is trying hard to prove otherwise, and at the moment he seems the man to watch in 82 ELIAHU SALPETER, a regular NL contrib-utor, is a correspondent for Ha'aretz...

...AS '82 STARTS Israel in Disarray BY ELIAHU SALPETER JERUSALEM THE SCENE last November 29 in the brightly lit intensive care unit of Hadassah hospital here was unquestionably surrealistic On one side of the room there were some potted plants and Israeli flags, in the center stood the jacked-up bed of Prune Minister Menachem Begin, on the other side, in a sort of semi-circle, sat members of the Cabinet passing around the only available copy of a draft text under discussion While Defense Minister Ariel Sharon elaborated on its merits and Foreign Minister Yitzchak Shamir and Interior Minister Yosef Burg cited its deficiencies, Begin occasionally dozed off under the influence of sedatives administered to alleviate the pain of his freshly mended broken thigh bone After less than an hour of discussion, at the doctors' urging the session broke up Sharon climbed into a helicopter waiting outside en route to Washington The next day he and Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger signed the Memorandum of Understanding on Strategic Cooperation between the United States and Israel Thus, without a formal Cabinet vote, Israel entered into what only the Prime Minister and the Defense Minister saw as one of the most important foreign relations agreements in this country's brief modern history Most other members of the government and the Israeli press attached much less significance to the document, except for the possible harm of its anti-Soviet incantations Nevertheless, Sharon's view prevailed as the Opposition maladroit-ly compelled the coalition to vote for the Memorandum in the Knesset Then, of course, on December 14 Begin arrived at the Knesset in a wheelchair and rammed through the formal annexation of the Golan Heights When a miffed President Ronald Reagan unilaterally suspended the strategic cooperation accord before it was three weeks old, and set unacceptable as well as wholly unrelated conditions for reactivation, the Prime Minister let go an unprecedented blast that accused Washington of " trying to make Israel a hostage " The whole sequence of events typified the total disarray of current Israeli politics At the start of the New Year, there is hardly a single aspect of public life that seems to fit into a recognizable pattern or a logical sequence On the West Bank and m Gaza, for example, Sharon has been trying to implement a poor man's version of the late General Moshe Dayan's "unilateral autonomy" idea Since it has become evident that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will not accept an emasculated form of Palestinian autonomy before Israel's final withdrawal from Sinai next April 25 (and is even less likely to do so afterward), Sharon devised a "civilian administration" plan Dayan advocated simply telling the Palestinian Arabs that as of a certain date Israel would restrict itself to providing security in the occupied territories and leave everything else—education, health, public works, etc —to the local towns If their own officials took care of these matters, they would have schools, hospitals, roads, and so on, if not, that would be their problem Sharon is not going that far Instead of military governors, he has appointed Israeli civilians to head the existing military governments and instructed them to replace the few Israelis still heading various departments with local Arabs Under instructions from PLO-in-spired local figures, Palestinians in both the West Bank and in Gaza expressed their opposition to " civilian administration" with strikes and demonstrations But these were effective only in urban areas In the more conservative rural areas, which still encompass the great majority of the Palestinian population, Sharon has been remarkably successful in establishing regional "village leagues" of local councils willing to cooperate with Israel in accordance with the new scheme Another surprise has been the economy...