The popular uprising in the occupied territories in December 1987 was to radically change the political situation and put the need for finding a solution to the question of the occupied territories back on the agenda. The electoral campaign for the recomposition of the Knesset thus opened against the backdrop of the intifada. Labour as well as a substantial part of Israeli public opinion, expected the elections to put an end to governmental paralysis and allow one of the two major parties - Labour or Likud — to carry out a coherent policy towards the Palestinian national struggle.
This time, the interest generated by the Knesset elections went far beyond the boundaries of the state of Israel. Whether in Washington or Moscow, Amman or Cairo, various interested parties hoped for a Labour victory, which in their estimation was the only thing that could defuse the explosive situation in the Middle East.
The Palestinian nationalist movement, whether in the occupied territories or not, was itself not indifferent to the elections, and many of its leaders took stands on the various options on offer, more specifically in favor of the supporters of an internation-
Unlike the preceding elections, the central theme of the campaigns waged by most political formations revolved not around social or community issues but around the Palestinian question and the future of the occupied territories. The intifada was the focal point of a debate between the right and the left of major importance not only for its immediate consequences but its long term implications.
The extreme right's "final solution"
On the extreme right, the Tehiya, Somet and Moledet parties outbid themselves to propose radical means of bringing the uprising to an end: mass deportations of supposed ringleaders, destruction of villages, authorization of a shoot-to-kill policy, formal annexation of the territories and so on.
The prize in this contest goes without doubt to the Homeland Party, Moledet, led by General Rehavem Zeevi, whose only platform was "transfer," that is, the expulsion of the Palestinian people as a whole from their land. Its campaign advertisements, in which one sees Israeli children wandering happily in an Arab-free pastoral environment with a slogan in the back-
Yitzhak Shamir (DR) ground proclaiming "At the very most it is a removal in the interests of two peoples," would not have been out of place in Goebbels' propaganda arsenal.
It is true that, because of the vulgar racist appeals of its leader, Rabbi Meir Kahane which aroused general revulsion, the Kach slate was banned by the Knesset. But on the other hand, Moledet's program sends chills down one's spine precisely because unlike Kahane, Zeevi is no fanatical new immigrant, but comes from the ranks of the country's elite. Moreover, Moledet counts among its supporters a militant working class component. The legitimazation of Zeevi's Nazi propaganda is far more dangerous than the two seats it finally won.
At the other end of the political spectrum, the intifada's impact is just as evident. The left Zionist parties, the Mapam - which for the first time in ten years ran on a slate independent of the Labour Party - and Shulamit Aloni and Yossi Sarit's Civil Rights Movement (CRM) decided to break with one of the three taboos in the national consensus. They called for negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). This break with Labour Party tradition brought results — the two organiza tions together went from three deputies to eight.
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However it was the Labour Party that took the biggest gamble, choosing to mount a campaign distinguishing itself from the Likud. Under pressure from Shimon Peres and the young guard who will be sitting in the Knesset, the bet was
The Labour Party's election propaganda concentrated on two things. One was the "demographic danger" represented by the Likud's annexation schemes. The other was the "generals' plan". Labour stopped at nothing to illustrate the nature of the demographic danger. Day after day, they brandished birth certificates and other statistics to prove that public enemy number one of the Jewish state were the Palestinian women's wombs. If the Israeli state did not get rid of the Palestinians, it would soon be a bi-national state. (God save us!) For many voters, it was the Labour Party that convinced them to vote for Rehavem Zeevi's transfer party.
Likud concentrated its fire on the economy
As for the "generals' plan", it was a fairly run-of-the-mill project of withdrawing from the populated regions of the West Bank and Gaza after negotiations between Israel and a Jordanian-Palestinian delegation (from which the PLO would obviously be excluded), preceded by a brief international conference designed to lend credence to these bi-lateral negotiations. Day after day, reservist generals, topographical maps in hand and chests bedecked with medals, showed how a demilitarized West Bank would be less dangerous than hundreds of thousands of Palestinians under Is-
The Likud essentially centered its campaign around an attack on Labour positions, not hesitating to present Peres as Yasser Arafat's ally, and Ezer Weizmann as willing to make a coalition with the CP and the Progressive List for Peace (PLP). But sensing that it did not really have much to offer politically, except perhaps an escalation of the repression, and in fact a continuation of the status quo, the Likud concentrated its fire on the economy. It effectively exploited the serious crisis in the Histadrut enterprises and the health services managed by the labor federation.
Shimon Peres' moderate talk had little impact; it seemed to moderate voters to lack coherence as long as the idea of an independent Palestinian state and the PLO were clearly being rejected. His words seemed all the more dishonest coming at a time when the Labour right wing, with Yitzhak Rabin in the lead, were boasting about having done more in repressing the intifada than all the Likud governments together. For the voters wavering between Labour and Likud, the generals' be a final surrender to the strength of the uprising in the occupied territories.
Labour Alignment, that is the Labour
Party and the centrist groups that are close to it, lost nine seats, going from 50 to 41. Five went to the Zionist left parties, three to the Likud, and one seat went to the Arab Nationalist slate of ex-Labour deputy Ab-
However, while the Labour bloc lost three seats to the right, the latter still did not benefit over all. The right and the extreme right wing together dropped from 49 to 47 deputies. If you take into account the three seats it won from Labour and the fact that the extreme right (Tehiya, Somet and Moledet) went from six to seven deputies, it appears that Likud lost five of its
In short, the Zionist left was substantially strengthened, the extreme right improved its position slightly, and both Likud and the Labour Party suffered setbacks. But more than anything, what marked the recent Knesset elections was the jump in the vote of the religious parties.
Out of seven religious parties that ran, four received over 1% of the vote, which is the minimum required to elect someone to the Knesset. Together they have 18 deputies, which is 50% more than last time, and got an even greater increase in votes. The religious parties are not only an essential component of any parliamentary majority formed either by Labour or Likud, but a political force that will mark the social life and the political system of Israel for years
Liberal and secular opinion has not yet recovered from the shock of the religious parties' breakthrough. They hastily analyzed it as the expression of a convergence between religious fundamentalism and political fascism. This is cheap impressionism, typical of the secular Zionist liberal
Mystical messianic forces
First of all, the religious parties are not all extremist with regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The National Religious Party (NRP) is today an extreme right Zionist party, and is very influential in Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faith) circles. However, far from gaining ground, it actually lost a seat. The real winners were thus not the mystical messianic forces that lead the militia forces in the occupied territories but the non-Zionist fundamentalist parties.
There also, a distinction must be made between the parties with an Ashkenaze base (which have seven deputies), whose leaders and electoral base are considered moderate, and the Shas (a 1983 split-off from Agudat Yisrael) led by the ex-High Sephardic Rabbi of Israel which has ten seats and is close to the secular right and extreme right wing. Therefore, the religious parties cannot be considered identical, and it is not out of the question that some of them at least will block with the Labour Party, if promised a large enough appropri-
ISRAELI STATE ation for their social and scholarly
Contrary to what most commentators have been saying, the growth of the ultrareligious parties does not reflect merely the growth of fundamentalism or the tightening grip of extremely reactionary ideas. Above all it represents a communal vote for, and expression of, one or several social and ethnic identities.
Many votes determined by communal interests
In the 1977 and 1981 elections, the Likud's gains revealed the revolt of the oriental Jewish communities which were casting a protest vote against the parties of the establishment — the Labour Party and the National Religious Party. What began to emerge in the 1984 elections, with the first breakthrough by the Shas, has been confirmed today. A large part of the Sephardi electorate is no longer satisfied with casting a negative vote, but is trying to express itself through parties that claim to represent the oriental tradition, its values and
Shas, an orientalized and reformed NRP and even the "new look' Agudat Yisrael have captured a part of the ethnic and communal sentiments of the Israeli Sephardi
And this is the real paradox of the election: the secular parties' electoral campaign revolved around the intifada and various solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian question. But what determined the vote of a large section of the population, and the only significant change in the composition of the Knesset, had very little to do with the central political questions. Orthodox and Sephardic Jews voted above all for those who most authentically represented their own identities, and what they believed to be their social and communal interests.
That said, it is undeniable that the communal identity of hundreds of thousands of Israelis who voted for fundamentalist parties has been expressed through symbols that Zionist disciples had believed buried
Every night for a month, the television screens were filled with scenes of a mystical ecstasy worthy of the middle ages, with fanatic preachers who brought to mind the worst anti-semitic propaganda and rabbis calling down the wrath of God on whomever voted for their opponents. We have come a long way since the era when Zionism proclaimed its desire to build a society free from rabbis and religious prejudices. Fundamentalism is more than ever a component of Israeli society, and elections, its influence in the state apparatus will be even greater.
Because of demographic factors; the weight of the Israeli Arab population's vote increases at each election, and today represents about fou pen seats. rise in to ice 5 why all of the political parties, including
International Viewpoint #152 • November 28, 1988 the extreme-right and fundamentalist Jewish parties go after the Arab electorate. Mapam, the CRM, the Center Movement, and the Labour Party all included Arab candidates high on their slates in the hope of winning some of the Arab electorate.
Against the backdrop of the intifada, commentators were unanimous in predicting a nationalist wave in the Israeli Palestinian population. This community's big mobilization together with their compatriots in the occupied territories had made it plain that the Zionist independent left slates stood to gain substantially.
Moreover, the unity developed through the Israeli Arab Representative Committee during the course of the mobilizations had fostered a strong current of opinion in favor of a united nationalist slate. The political platforms of the Israeli Communist Party, the Progressive List for Peace, and of the Palestinian leaders who had earlier been members of Zionist parties were identical — a pull out from the territories occupied in 1967, recognition of the PLO, international conference, division of Palestine into two states and equal rights for Israeli Palestinians. Moreover there were strong pressures for unity. So, it seemed that for the first time, the Israeli Palestinian population was going to express itself by lining up behind an independent political leadership.
For their part, the PLO spokespersons had expressed their firm support for the united slate several times. The Revolutionary Communist League, (RCL) Israeli section of the Fourth International had also fought a serious campaign for the formation of such a slate.
But this was to reckon without the sectarianism of the Israeli Communist Party,
LIKUD
which decided one month before the start of the election campaign to run its own slate. It did not even try to negotiate, and stated, in defiance of truth and good sense, that it was the sole defender of an international peace conference.
Consequences of the
CP's sectarianism
In order to reassure their members, the CP leaders let it be known that the composition of the slate was to be radically new and of course younger. Instead of younger candidates, the CP members got exactly the same slate as put up in the last four elections, including the Wilner-Touby duo who are the Knesset elder statesmen. For the Israeli CP, perestroika is not translateable into Hebrew or Arabic.
With the perspective of unification definitively buried, the other left and nationalist groups called for the three independent slates — the CP, the PLP and the Arab Democratic Party (ADP) led by the ex-Labour deputy Darousha — to sign an accord on the division of the remaining ones. The CP rejected this outright. The consequences of the CP's sectarian line were twofold. One effect was that the united nationalist dynamic was strangled at birth. More than 42% of the Arab population voted for Zionist organizations (which is still a few points better than the results of the last election). Secondly the three independent slates only won six seats (4 CP, 1 PLP, 1 ADP) whereas an accord between them would have netted them eight deputies.
In losing its second deputy, Matti Peled, the Progressive List appears to be becomlagram Pi ing openly what it has been for some time in spirit — a Palestinian nationalist grouping that agrees 100% with the Arafat line in the PLO.
The formation of an internationalist Jewish-Arab party able to offer a perspective of common struggle to the hundreds of Arab militants breaking with the CP and the hundreds of young radicalizing Israelis, a party distinct from the Zionist left, remains a goal to be attained.
For a month and a half, the rabbis have had the upper hand over the generals, whether they be champions of the final solution, or tinkerers of territorial compromise. For a few weeks to come, the representatives of the religious parties will stay in the limelight, negotiating over ministerial portfolios, subsidies, and other spoils with the big political formations. Likud may be the best placed to form a new coalition government, but the game is not over yet, and Labour has never had any problem negotiating the troubled waters of talks with the religious parties. But whoever the government turns out to be, it will quickly be obliged to turn to more important things than the appropriation for the ministry of religion and whether cinemas should be open on Friday night in Jerusalem.
The Palestinian National Council in mid-November will give a new lift to the popular mobilizations in the occupied territories, forcing the Israeli political class to make some crucial decisions.
If the intifada has little weight in the talks on the formation of the next government, the rebellion will on the contrary be decisive for the political choices this government will have to make. *