Election: But No Mandate

By Marguerite Johnson

With the vote a dead heat, Begin and Peres put the heat on

The countdown began at 9:59 p.m. as the second hand of a clock, superimposed on the television screen and accompanied by tick-tock music, swept its way around the dial, as though a corny game show were taking place. Then, precisely at 10 o'clock, as the polls closed throughout the country, Anchorman Haim Yavin carefully read out on the state-run network the projections he had been handed half an hour earlier, which were compiled from a meticulously conducted poll of voters as they left their polling stations. The immediate TV predictions: Labor would get 48 or 49 seats, Likud 47, and the other parties would divide up the remaining 24 or 25 seats in the 120-member Israeli Knesset.

So began last week--after the bitterest election campaign in Israel's 33-year history--a struggle for power between Prime Minister Menachem Begin, 67, head of the ruling Likud bloc, and Shimon Peres, 57, leader of the Labor Party. Both men immediately started to try to put together a coalition government that would control at least 61 seats, the number needed for a Knesset majority. Begin clearly had the best chance of succeeding, but the likelihood was that any government's margin would be so slim that new elections might have to be called within a year.

It was a long night of drama following the angry weeks of the campaign. Voter turnout was a respectable 77%, down slightly from 80.3% in 1977. The first television projection showing Labor ahead, however slightly, brought a roar of delight from party politicians and supporters, who had been out of office since 1977. Peres was greeted with a thunderous ovation as he went to the podium at Labor headquarters in Tel Aviv, where he embraced his longtime rival, Yitzhak Rabin, a former Prime Minister, and received bouquets of flowers from children. An earnest, sad-eyed intellectual, Peres was uplifted by the acclamation of the crowd. Introduced as "the next Prime Minister of Israel," he declared, "I think we got a mandate to form a government, and it is our intention to do so as promptly and seriously as we can."

The moment was moving, but all too premature. Nine blocks away, the Likud headquarters greeted the first projection with gloomy silence. But as the moments became hours, the realization started to spread that Likud had a better chance than Labor of forming a whining coalition. At 3:30 a.m., protected by tense security men, Begin threaded his way through an adulatory crowd of 2,000 to reach the party building. His supporters sang He Will Make Peace and When the Messiah Comes. Once at the lectern, Begin contemptuously denied that the campaign had been the dirtiest in Israel's history--a frequent and accurate charge by Peres--and proclaimed, "I will form the next government." Rhythmic applause was stilled by Begin's raised hand. As for Peres, Begin said, with the arrogance that has become part of his public posture, "I don't know what pushed him. Mr. Peres, you have no concept of Israeli law. Go learn something."

A pale blue dawn was spreading over Tel Aviv when the Prime Minister finally made his way to the silver Dodge that would take him back to Jerusalem. As the chanting rose in volume--"Be-gin, Be-gin"--he raised his arms and grinned widely. Sweating troops struggled to hold back the crowd, which in its zeal strained to touch its frail leader.

As the vote counting continued, Labor still had 48 seats, compared with its 1977 total of 32, and Likud also had 48, as against 43. Both men strove to persuade enough of the small parties to join them to form a ruling coalition, a duel in which Begin started with an advantage.

The religious parties have been aligned with Begin's outgoing government and generally are more in agreement with its positions on social and ideological issues. Begin wasted no time in trying to preserve his hold on office. As soon as election night television projections showed the two parties roughly even, he was on the phone to his potential coalition partners. Next day he met with Interior Minister Yosef Burg, leader of the National Religious Party, which contributed twelve seats to Likud's coalition. The party is run by a troika of hard-liners who base their foreign policy on the biblical claim that Israel has a right to control the West Bank, a point often made by Begin himself. In the election, the N.R.P. won only six seats, but the party's support is vital to Begin. Burg looked like an almost sure ally once again, and Begin was smiling broadly after their talk. With the N.R.P.'s six votes, assuming Burg could control his fractious party, Begin would have 54 of the necessary 61. He would try to get most of the rest from three small and doctrinaire parties:

> The ultraconservative Agudat Israel, whose brain trust is a council of 18 scholarly rabbis, is also a present partner of Likud. Begin had rewarded Leader Shlomo Lorincz by making him the head of the powerful Knesset finance committee, a post that Lorincz used to dispense generous sums to centers of Jewish learning during the past four years. The party is concerned almost exclusively with religious issues. Although it held only four seats in the outgoing Knesset, it managed to swing enough power with Likud to pass laws that have hampered abortions and autopsies on religious grounds and freed Jews from any penalty for refusing to work on the Sabbath. The party was expected to win four or five seats.

> TAMI, a tiny, newly formed maverick group, broke away from the N.R.P. because it felt that Sephardim from North Africa and Arab countries were not being given enough ministerial positions. The party's leader is Minister of Religious Affairs Aharon Abuhatzeira, the scion of a prominent Moroccan and Sephardi family, who had been charged with accepting bribes during the conduct of his office. He was cleared in May after a lengthy trial, and decided to form his own party. Relations between Abuhatzeira and the N.R.P.'s Burg are acrimonious. Some N.R.P. officials say that Burg would not bring his party into a coalition with TAMI, which was projected to have two or three seats.

> The radically rightist Tehiya Party is made up of former Begin backers who broke away when Begin agreed to the Camp David accords, which included withdrawal from the Sinai and talks about granting autonomy to the Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Tehiya, which will hold two or three seats, is led by Yuval Ne'eman, a world-renowned physicist who once was the head of military science for the army and the president of Tel Aviv University.

Given the problems Begin faces in reconciling the divergent interests among the four parties, it was small wonder that Peres did not give up all hope of forming his own Cabinet. Labor had far less room to maneuver with the religious parties, whose following tends to be at the opposite end of the political spectrum. But the religious parties had cooperated with the Labor coalitions that ran the nation from its founding in 1948 until Begin's surprising victory in 1977. Said a Labor Party official: "We will not give them everything, but we will try to re-establish the old understanding we enjoyed with them."

One reason Labor was struggling to form a coalition was, of course, that it wanted to fight the next election with the Prime Minister's office in its control. But some younger party members were arguing that Labor should let Begin have the job again and then stand back and watch him fail as he tried to cope with the country's mounting economic problems, like an annual inflation rate of 130%. Predicts Michael Harish, 44, an energetic Labor member of the Knesset: "Soon all those who are shouting 'Begin, Begin' will be demonstrating in the streets."

The campaign had exploded in anger and resulted in new and disquieting ethnic rifts in the population. Sephardi Jews, predominantly a working-class constituency in the new immigrant cities of Beersheba and Qiryat Shemona and the grimy slums of greater Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, rejected the traditional socialism of the Labor Party in favor of the radical right-wing nationalism of the Likud. In turn, the more affluent Ashkenazi Jews from northern Europe backed Labor. Ironically, Begin, an Ashkenazi from Poland, was idolized by his more extremist Sephardi followers, who proclaimed him "King of Israel" in campaign slogans and songs.

Begin fomented intense emotions by his hyperbolic rhetoric and his uncanny ability to caricature the weaknesses of his adversaries. Some Israelis feared for the future of their young democracy when toughs broke up Labor Party rallies, threw eggs and tomatoes at Peres' car and shouted down speeches by Labor candidates. Begin undoubtedly picked up votes from his virulent anti-German campaign, his stern stand on the Syrian missile crisis, his meeting with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat last month and, above all, the surprise Israeli attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor.

Voters deserted the plethora of small, frequently eccentric parties (31 in all contested the election) that usually garnered 40 or more seats in the Knesset and thus provided a sizable swing vote on crucial legislation. This time the splinter parties got only 24 seats as voters rallied to either Labor or Likud. In the final analysis, though, it was Labor that demonstrated the most significant gains. The party managed to overcome deep divisions of its own to maintain its following among the secular-minded professional and urban population, and showed impressive strength (up to 30% in some places) among Israel's Arab citizens, largely because of a belief that Labor is more concerned than Likud for their day-to-day welfare.

The prospect of another Begin government evoked no joy in European capitals, and there was even less cause for celebration over the likelihood of many more months of political uncertainty. One senior British diplomat reasoned that even a strong Begin government would have been preferable to.a weak one that would make the Prime Minister more difficult to deal with, especially if his support comes from the extremists. "We expect him to pursue a tough and adventurous policy toward his Arab neighbors, with the threat of force never far from the surface," said the official.

Arab reaction, in general, stressed the fact that Labor and Likud have essentially the same foreign policy. In Cairo, however, there was deep concern and a more profound understanding of the damage a weak government could do the Camp David peace accords. Egyptian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Butros Ghali declared that his government had hoped that a strong Israeli government would emerge, "capable of pursuing negotiations and of implementing the provisions of the peace treaty and other agreements."

To the Egyptians, one worrisome prospect concerns the final Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, which is scheduled to take place next April. At that time, the agreement also calls for the removal of some 5,000 Israeli settlers who have moved into agricultural communes near the Mediterranean and into tourist centers along the Red Sea coast on the southern tip of the Sinai. Two of the parties to which Begin would be beholden in a coalition are in favor of keeping the settlers there. If a government crisis developed over the issue, the Israeli withdrawal might be delayed, thereby causing problems for other elements of the Camp David accords.

A difficulty that the new Israeli government may find clearing up by the time it takes office is the Syrian missile crisis. Last week Christian Phalangists withdrew from the Lebanese city of Zahle, and Syrian peace-keeping forces in turn lifted their siege of the city. The agreement could be a first step toward a settlement that would ease the crisis in Lebanon and make it unnecessary for Israel to pursue its threat to attack Syrian missiles there.

Meanwhile, the inconclusive election results from Israel were greeted with understandable caution in Washington. State Department officials agree with their colleagues abroad that a weak Begin will be unwilling to take risks for peace and will be even more aligned than now with the hard-line religious parties that would have to guarantee his majority in the Knesset. But the Reagan Administration also views Israel as a strategic asset, as Secretary of State Alexander Haig puts it, in forming a bulwark in the Middle East against Soviet influence, an aim that concerns the Administration more than reviving the Camp David talks about Palestinian autonomy. Administration officials believe that Peres would be easier to deal with, but nonetheless respect Begin for his forthright stands. As part of its plan to strengthen Israel, no matter who won the election, the Administration late last week acknowledged that it would send six F-16 warplanes to Israel on schedule later this month and would "soon" release the four F-16s that had been held up after the Israeli airstrike on the Iraqi nuclear reactor.

Israel's continuing economic problems, the prospect of weak government and the possibility of another round of elections within a year reflect a troubled and divided nation. Facing this future, Israel is potentially more dependent upon the U.S. than before. But the Administration would have to tread carefully in any attempts to influence Israel's leaders, whoever they turn out to be, since a weak Israeli government will be more anxious than ever to demonstrate its independence. --By Marguerite Johnson. Reported by David Aikman and Robert Rosenberg/Jerusalem

With reporting by DAVID AIKMAN, Robert Rosenberg

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