ALGERIA / ISRAEL DESPITE the euphoria of the world media, it is clear that the electoral defeat of the Likud and the victory of the Labor Party in the Israeli general elections on June 23, 1992 has not produced any exceptional change in the relation of political forces in Israel. The only significant novelty of these elections want it. Nonetheless, "reconciliation" may is the fact that the Labor Party has succeeded in become the buzz word of the moment and vanquishing Likud after 15 years of opposition. some low cost formula could be devised giving the regime the backing of the FFS,
MARCELO MEIR — July 1, 1992 Ben Bella's Algerian Democratic Movement, the HAMAS fundamentalists and other small bourgeois opposition groups repelled by Boudiaf. Ghozali's previous efforts to bring fundamentalist and FFS forces into his two governments failed to project the image of a true coalition owing to the lack of public cooperation.
Whatever the formula or level of repression or the appointed successor to Boudiaf, the government's basic programme is clear: do whatever the IMF tells us. Sell the oil fields, close or privatize industry, lay off massively and end price subsidies on basic necessities. Successive governments have tried to resist IMF dictates, using the argument of the fundamentalist danger, but every passing month makes the government's situation more and more difficult and the IMF more and more intransigent.
### Worker resistance
The working class has mounted resistance here and there. Recent struggles by teachers and other workers show a willingness to fight. However it is difficult to organize resistance when the economy is collapsing. It is hard for a sacked militant to find another job, hard for unionists to propose an alternative to save a factory when the new rules of the game condemn the whole existing edifice to demolition. Only an acrossthe-board solution can work.
The General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA) is discredited and is working closely with Ghozali. The fundamentalists, who on economic questions are ultra-liberals, can play at populism while they are in opposition. But even if they can use a social revolt for their own ends, they do not intend to organize one, and their current organizational state makes them in any case incapable of such an initiative. If the IMF continues to demand an end to price support then we may be in for a hot autumn. But if struggles are to have any hope of success they need an adequate political leadership. *
VEN if the Labor Party currently
E holds a majority of seats in the
Knesset — with the left liberal coalition Meretz, the Communist
Party and the Arab Democratic List - its leader, Yitzhak Rabin, has already said that to constitute a coalition with the forces of the left alone would represent a grave
That is why he is trying to convince political forces on the right - especially
Tsomet (Crossroads), led by the former
Israeli army chief Rafael Eitan and Mafdal, a religious nationalist party — as well as the orthodox religious parties — to participate in the new government.
The Israeli electors voted for Rabin essentially with the aim of punishing
Likud. This party has governed for the last
15 years with the support of the poor layers of the population, on the basis of a populist ideology. However, over the last decade, and particularly under the governments led by Shamir, the Likud has reverted to its original ideology, stresto preserve a Greater
Israel in opposition to the interests of the Arabs even if this means coming into conflict with
Israel's US backers. As regards social policy, the
Likud has applied austerity measures which have been reinforced with the arrival of
Jewish immigrants from the ex-
Soviet Union. The Oriental
Jewish population, the inhabitants of the poor quarters and the unemployed -unemployment now affects 15% of the active population and 40% of the new immigrants — have seen the Likud devote most of its efforts in government to the diplomatic and economic issues concerning the occupied territories, abandoning its natural electors. Faced with this, and then with the emergence of debates inside Likud on this question, it became obvious that a significant part of the electorate were going to transfer their votes to Yitz-
But it should be stressed that support for Rabin does not mean support for his party's programme. In the eyes of the popular classes, the Laborites bear the historic responsibility for the evils which afflict them. In other words, the vote of June 23 does not translate into programmatic support for the Labor Party, but rather support for Rabin himself, for a leader who is felt to possess enough charisma and strength to "resolve the most burning problems". electoral support: it centred relation to the Palestinian intifada (uprising). The Labor Party thus appeared to most people as a second Likud.
This strategy is confirmed 5
by the fact that the Labor July 20, 1992 • # 233 International Viewpoint
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Likud pays for austerity drive
No respite for Palestinians
OUTSIDE Israel, Labor's surprise success in the June 23 elections to the 13th Knesset was widely perceived as a vote for peace or even the "left". The generalized apathy and reduced tur-
International Viewpoint # 233 • July 20, 1992
ISRAEL
Party's left wing deputies were carefully kept out of the way during the month which preceded the ballot. All this reinforces Rabin's policy, which involves presenting himself first as the leanout which characterized these elections are hardly features der of the majority of the people, and only then as the standard bearer of Labor's prowhich usually accompany upsurges of pacifism or left wing victogramme and leader of all the forces active ries, but of course Yitzhak Rabin's triumph represented neither of inside the party. This position automaticalthese things..
ly implies the necessity of forming a broad
It is true that the primary elections held to select Labor's leacoalition, where the left and the right can der and parliamentary candidates before the elections revealed a counterbalance the strength of the centre, swing to the party's doveish wing, with high placings for those, that is Rabin and the deputies around him.
such as the young M.K. Avram Burg, whose politics do not vastly
Even so, the elections left the left liberal differ from those of the left Zionist Meretz coalition.
Meretz in a position to deliver an ultimatum to Rabin, by insisting that it was not
Nonetheless, Labor's election propaganda during the campaign ready to take part in a coalition with the stressed Rabin's authoritarianreputation, summed up in his right. This has not been the case: the leaboasts of having deported more Palestinians in his period as ders of Meretz have been quick to confirm minister of defence than his Likud successors. Labor's television propaganda attacked the Likud's record on "security", employing their readiness to support a broad coalition, such slogans as "Get Gaza out of Tel Aviv" (the party supported even if the parties of the right participate
Why this turn on the part of Meretz, the two week closure of the Gaza Strip enforced by the Likud which has become the third electoral force government as the reponse to the killing of a 15 year old girl by a in the country and whose electors see it as
Gaza resident on May 25). Election campaigning centred around
Rabin or military figures like Avigdor Kahalani, who claimed to be the representative of the peace movement?
further to the right than the Likud, and Amir Drori, implicated in
The answer is simple. From an ideological, programmatic and historic point of view the Sabra and Chatila massacres of Palestinians during the Lebanon war. Secret services chief and torturer Yossef Ginossar was
Meretz still adheres to the forces of Zionist responsible for party propaganda directed at Soviet Jews (which national consensus. Meretz prioritizes the interests of the central state — among was undoubtedly very successful - in contrast to predictions that the Soviet newcomers would vote massively for Likud and the which, the necessity of creating a broad right, the majority voted for Labor or Meretz).
and stable government - before those of the peace movement.
At the ideological level, Labor completely abandoned even the
The leaders of Meretz have justified vague and hypocritical references to socialism employed in the their willingness to participate in the same past, and there was no mention in its campaign of the flagship government as the rightist but secular Tsoelite institutions of Labour Zionism despised by the Oriental met by saying that the latter had received masses, like the kibbutzim or the Histradut "trade union federathe votes of an electorate which seeks a response to the pressure and influence of
Labor's election proposals advocated the continued Israeli the orthodox parties. In this sense, Meretz retention of 40% of the occupied territories, combined with a freesees Rafael Eitan, the leader of Tsomet, as ze on "political" settlements and a commitment to expanding a natural ally.
But this is only partially true: in fact, so others. Even this is now being revised in the context of attempts far as the future of the occupied territories to bring the rightist Tsomet into a new coalition - on June 30 policy guidelines drawn up by Rabin and his aides for the next goes, Tsomet has the same positions as the parties of the far right. The presence of government dropped the call for a one year settlement freeze and promised to "reinforce settlement along the confrontation lines",
Tsomet in the government could mean the
Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights. The policy indefinite postponement of essential deciguidelines made no mention whatsoever of autonomy for the sions concerning the future of these territo-
Palestinians or the acceptance of United Nations resolutions as ries. In other words, Meretz is ready to the basis for a negotiated peace - B.G. * fundamentally review its principles to take part in a coalition, even if this leaves a free hand to the Labor Party and Tsomet to decide the government's programme concerning the peace negotiations.
Betrayal of mandate
The policy of the Meretz leaders amounts to an outright betrayal of its electorate and the mandate it has received from them. It is to be hoped that the rank-and- file supporters of this coalition will eventually react, although this will not happen at once given that Meretz' supporters will at first entertain hopes of seeing Meretz ministers in the government changing the
6 relation of forces inside the latter.
Finally, these elections have confirmed the changing consciousness of the Israeli people on an important point: the future of the occupied territories. This was reflected in the debacle of the far right Tehiya (Rebirth) party. This organization did not cross the electoral threshold which would allow it to have a deputy in the Knesset -in the preceding parliament, it had three of them.
This shows the electorate's growing maturity in the face of the positions of the extremists, who advocate giving priority to Jewish settlements in the occupied territories and massive repression of the Palestinian population.
The Israeli electorate has shown that it is no longer disposed to believe that these settlements are the magic solution to all the problems of Israeli society. This constitutes a change, small and certainly ambiguous, but nonetheless real, in the consciousness of the electorate.
It is to be hoped that, with the creation of the new governmental coalition, an important political phase will open up in Israel. Both the far right and the militants of the peace movement will be forced to review their strategies as well as their attitudes towards their respective leaderships. *