Israel in electoral deadlock; economic crisis worsens

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The 1984 elections in Israel produced a virtual stand-off between the two principal Zionist parties, the governing Likud of Yitzhak Shamir and the opposition Labor Alignment led by former Minister of Defense Shimon Peres.

These elections took place in a period when the Israeli army of occupation was under increasing attack from the population of the Lebanese South. They occurred as well at a time when the official rate of inflation was 400 percent, turning the shekel into a photocopy of the German mark of 1931, when a wheelbarrow was needed to carry enough currency to buy a loaf of bread.

Under these conditions most pundits predicted a major victory for the opposition Labor Alignment. Instead, the Alignment won 34.9 percent of the votes and 44 seats in the Knesset, in comparison with 31.9 percent and 41 Knesset seats for the governing Likud. Labor won three less seats than it had in 1981.

Labor, however, had run a campaign that was considerably to the right of Likud. Campaigning in Efrata, part of the militant and right-wing West Bank settlement complex of Gush Etzion, Peres pledged his support: "It is important that you know and people in other parts of Israel know that we regard Gush Etzion as part of the State of Israel" (Jerusalem Post, July 15-21).

Peres elaborated his pledge to annex the West Bank to other settler audiences. He also attacked Likud for not maintaining Zionist settlements in the Sinai. "The Likud... gave back all of Sinai, uprooted settlements, burned Yamit-all for what Shamir calls 'non-belligerency. Now we had talks Yitzhak with Hussein and reached a state where hardly any terrorists cross the border. All this was done ..without giving back an inch."

Labor takes off mask Pandering to the right is not a new tactic for Labor. Part of the reason lies in the fact that past Labor policies have been no less ruthless or extreme. Placing a reasonable face upon Labor brutality may serve to deceive people abroad, but Labor is quick to shed this mask when it comes to proving its credentials at home.

"We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to remaining here as slaves."

This statement was made by Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for Reelection of General Lahat when he was the Labor mayor of Tel Aviv. There is scant difference between such rhetoric and that of Rabbi Kahane of the Kach movement.

In the television debate preceding the election, Peres cited "the strengthening of the Israeli defense forces as the Alignment's primary task, claiming credit for the development of Israel's armament industries. The July 15-21 Jerusalem Post quotes him: "We pushed Jordan out of the West Bank and we will never permit a single Arab soldier to enter. We pushed the Syrians out of the Golan and they will not be allowed to return."

In Ha'aretz of June 22, a full-page Labor ad reads as follows: "Labor says NO. NO to a return to the 1967 borders. NO to the uprooting of any settlements. NO to negotiations with the PLO. NO to a Palestinian State."

A collapsing economy It was within this climate that the debate about the economy took place. Labor's nominee for the position of finance minister, Gad Yacobi, put the cost of the Lebanese war at $2.5 billion to date. Over $2 billion were being invested in West Bank settlements. The unfavorable balance of payments had cost a further $3 billion.

In an emergency meeting called by the president the Federation of Israeli Industrialists, Eli HoroSOCIALIST ACTION witz, the director of one of Israel's largest banks, declared that "the present government is wrecking the country in its attempts to run an election economy" (Ha'aretz, June 21).

His attack on the government, however, centered on rumors of a wage agreement said to be planned between the government and the Histadrut, the Israeli labor federation, which would give workers wage increases of up to 15 percent. This, said Horowitz, would "push up inflation to 1000 percent per annum."

The Shamir government's Ministerial Economic Committee froze all hiring in the public sector for three months and halted all governmental purchases except for food, fuel, and medicine. It was an absolute halt for 75 percent of the budget of the government for an outlay period of three months.

Histadrut denounced the freeze on government contracts. Histadrut Secretary-General Yisrael Kessar called foul: "It is immoral for any government to Shimon Peres heal the economy by taking jobs away from people and causing them to lose their self-respect" (Jerusalem Post, August 5-11).

But if the Histadrut leaders were posturing publicly, they were winking as they wailed. Kessar informed the government that the Histadrut was ready to talk to any government and proposed "a social contract or package deal, as long as it was not an excuse for putting the whole burden of economic recovery on the workers." (emphasis added)

The potential significance of this economic crisis cannot be overemphasized. Both major parties are now tying the continued expansion of Israel, the sustaining of its military-industrial complex, to a major assault upon the living standards of Israeli workers. The continued subjugation of the Palestinian people is being explicitly linked to the willingness of Histadrut functionaries to impose both dramatic cuts in living standards and draconian measures to enforce them on the most exploited sectors of the Jewish work force.

On the American dole One measure of the seriousness of the situation is the abandon with which the role of the United States in Israeli politics is discussed. Wolf Blitzer, writing in the August 5-11 Jerusalem Post, reveals that for two years Secretary of State George Schultz has told Israeli officials in many meetings that their "basic structural problems" must be "addressed urgently."

American officials told their Israeli counterparts that they see Israel "as a country living, in large measure, on the American dole."

They instructed Israel "that it should drastically cut back its standard of living before seeking more U.S. aid."

This order to cut drastically into the living standards of its citizens is not a recommendation or a request. It is a marching order. Israel has received $48 billion in the past 30 years from the United States. The Israeli state has thus been put directly under the command of its U.S. patrons. According to Blitzer, "The measures envisaged by the Americans will be very painful in Israel. But, according to informed U.S. officials, avoiding the issue is going to make matters even worse in the long run."

U.S. capitalism would impose upon Israel what it has inflicted on American workers during recent years. But the capital base in the United States and the place of its economy in the world market cushioned considerably the blow, severe as it was, to the working and ethnic poor in America. There was no inflation rate of 400 percent when unemployment soared. Nor was there a Vietnam-scale war at that conjuncture, the equivalent in Israeli terms of the occupation of Lebanon in cost and attrition. Israeli officials are unsure whether the "class peace" can be maintained under such blows.

SEPTEMBER 1984 Labor proposes an austerity budget that will freeze wages at a time of runaway inflation, while expanding settlements, maintaining the occupation of Lebanon, and building up the armed forces.

At the same time, Shimon Peres repeated on television his pledge to include the religious parties in a governing coalition. The program of the religious parties is unaltered. The National Religious Party, which lost votes to even more right-wing political formations and whose strength fell from 12 to four seats, insists on holding the Ministries of Interior, Education, and Religious Affairs. But the ultraorthodox Shas (Sephardi Guardians of the Torah) also won four seats and demands the Ministry of Religious Affairs.

In its program, Shas calls for ruling out all nonorthodox conversions to Judaism, amending the Law of Return to impose orthodox criteria on the definition of a Jew, eliminating abortions, ending military service for women, instituting a legal prohibition ending archaeological research, and banning all public transport on Saturdays.

Shas, like Rabbi Kahane of the openly fascist Kach Party, calls for the release of all Jewish underground terrorists who carry out armed attacks on Palestinians. The Jerusalem Post confirmed that the power of the religious parties "will be enhanced in the forming of any ruling coalition."

On August 23 the New York Times reported Shimon Peres had signed an agreement with Ezer Weizman, former defense minister of Menachem Begin, an aspiring leader of the Likud, whose Yahad Party had won three seats.

Other small parties were "moving to Labor's side."

Weizman, meanwhile, urged Shamir to "do his best to form a national unity government under the "Both major parties tie the expansion of Israel to an assault on Israeli workers."

Labor Alignment. Shamir was competing with Peres "to form a government with the help of small rightwing parties and with the religious parties that have always served in Israeli governments."

All the left parties that won Knesset seats have entered into the coalition bargaining. The Israeli Communist Party, Rakah, polled 60,000 votes through its Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (DFPE), losing 5 percent of its 1981 vote. The Progressive List for Peace (PLP) won 30,000 votes and two seats.

Programmatic differences between the two were small. Both call for an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank. Both call for an international conference including the Soviet Union, Israel, the United States, and the PLO. Emile Touma of the political bureau of Rakah accused the PLP of being "anti-Soviet" and a rival of the DFPE. Both groups stated that they would support a Labor Alignment coalition under specified conditons.

Elections and Zionism

Although Palestinian reaction to the elections varied, Al Fajr, the Jerusalem Palestinian weekly, on July 27 expressed widely felt Palestinian mass sentiment in summing up the election results as follows:

"Labor and even Likud are losing votes to parties and movements which move even faster to the extreme right... The elections have proven again that the Zionist ideology can only lead its followers in one direction: a good lesson for all those who believed in and counted on a Labor Party victory, whether they be among the Israelis or among the Arabs.... The latest Israeli elections have brought Israel several more steps to the right, but along the path to a precipice-the brink of economic and political disaster for Zionism."

As the economic crisis deepens and military expansion unfolds, the authoritarian rule and daily repression visited upon the Palestinian people will be generalized within Israeli society."

No coalition with Zionist parties will retard the process. Only a program which offers an alternative to Zionism and the capitalist economy on which it absolutely depends, can provide a way out for masses of Jews who will be adjoined by harsh suffering to their Palestinian co-victims.

PALESTINE HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIQN NATIONAL CONFERENCE CHICAGO, IL., SEPT. 29-30, 1984 "SCARS OF OCCUPATION"

Panols: • Israel-The International Context • Israel in Lebanon and the Occupied Territories Israel and Palestinian Prisoners respectives on ralestinian Human Mignis Holiday Inn-Mart Plaza, 350 N Orleans St., Chicag For more information: PHAC. 220 S. State St.

One Quincy Court, Suite 1308. Chicago 60604 Or call. (312) 987-1830

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ACTION guard the buildings and materials of the cooperative. All of this is done voluntarily and without pay. Much of this work is done at the expense of production.

In the hamlets, the militia must prevent the contras from entering and