Surviving Another Cliffhanger

By Marguerite Johnson

Domestic intrigue and economic trouble haunt Begin

Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin had rarely seemed so cocky, though prudence might have suggested a different attitude. He was, after all, facing his 27th no-confidence motion since he came to office in 1977, and the seventh since he won re-election last June. But this time his chances of survival were far from certain: two members of his own Likud coalition had just defected to the Labor alignment. Still, as he wound up his 20-minute speech in the Knesset, Begin confidently asserted: "The government will not fall today." Then, bracing himself against the cane that he has been using since he broke his hip last November, Begin stepped down from the rostrum to await the roll call. He turned out to be right: by a vote of 58 to 57, the Prime Minister had once again snatched parliamentary survival from what had appeared to be almost certain defeat.

The two members who quit the Likud, Yitzhak Peretz and Amnon Linn, wanted to express their discontent with the government's policies, notably its handling of the economy and of recent disturbances on the occupied West Bank. To Labor Party Leader Shimon Peres, it seemed the right moment to deliver what he hoped would be a political coup de grace to Begin. Only two months ago, Begin had barely survived a 58-to-58 tie vote on a no-confidence motion. Peres found a new weapon in the government's latest statistics on inflation, which showed that in April alone the consumer price index had climbed by 10.7%. Over the past year inflation has been running at a rate of 117%. There were other grim economic indicators as well. Unemployment now stands at 5.4%, a troublesome figure for socialist-minded Israel, and labor relations are in an unhappy state. Late last week employees of El Al, the national airline, went on a 24-hour strike to show their opposition to a government plan that would force the airline to shut down its operations on the Jewish Sabbath.

It was not the first time that the Begin government had been accused of mismanagement of the economy. Confronted with widespread discontent over Israel's triple-digit inflation during his re-election campaign last year, Begin appointed Yoram Aridor as Finance Minister and gave him a mandate to lower taxes on such luxury items as color TVs and household appliances, a short-term ploy that helped the Likud win the election--but only at the cost of rekindled inflation a few months later.

In introducing the no-confidence motion, Opposition Leader Peres was also trying to capitalize on growing discontent with Defense Minister Ariel Sharon's brutal repression of Palestinians on the occupied West Bank. As he told a Labor Party meeting in Tel Aviv last week: "When I was Minister of Defense [1974-77], I made sure that Israeli soldiers in the West Bank kept the safety catches of their weapons on." To woo Peretz and Linn, Peres offered them safe Labor seats in the next election. He also hoped to benefit from the fact that the three-member ultranationalist Tehiya Party was wavering in its support for the Likud.

But just as Peres began to think that he had Begin's defeat ensured, the Prime Minister pulled off a few cunning maneuvers of his own. While his supporters attacked Peres in the Knesset debate, Begin unabashedly opened negotiations with the two members of the late Moshe Dayan's Telem Party to join his coalition, and offered similar talks with the three Tehiya deputies once the vote was concluded. Three of the five decided to abstain, thus robbing Peres of his victory.

Even by the rowdy standards of Knesset debates, last week's performance was noteworthy for its invective. As soon as Peres took the stand to deliver his 45-minute critique of the government, Likud deputies began charging that he had "bought" Peretz and Linn. Retorted Peres: "I bought no one. You, the Likud, weren't true to your own platform. Linn and Peretz acted with integrity." When Peres tried to resume, Likud Deputy Pinhas Goldstein shouted: "Will someone tell me where I can get some pills for nausea?" To that, Labor's Dov Ben-Meir shot back: "In the coalition agreement, there you'll find all the nausea, all the buying and all the bribery."

Begin, who had remained outside the chamber throughout most of Peres' speech, brought the audience one of its few moments of laughter with a pantomime suggesting how Peres and Peretz had conducted their deal above, and below, the table. To Peretz and Linn, however, it was no laughing matter. Later, both men received telephone threats, and Linn was assigned a police guard.

After the cliffhanger vote, Begin was confident that his government could survive for some time. But his aides said he was irritated over the constant byzantine negotiating to which he has to resort every time a no-confidence vote is called. The Prime Minister still hopes to bring the two Telem Party deputies and the three Tehiya Party members into the coalition. Failing that, Begin may have to call new elections, perhaps later this year. But for the next month, he hopes to avoid any actions that might jeopardize his government. He is scheduled to meet with President Reagan in Washington in mid-June, and thus is anxious to keep his political authority intact.

U.S. Special Negotiator Richard Fairbanks, meanwhile, was still trying to find a solution to the latest hitch preventing resumption of the Palestinian autonomy talks. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has refused to participate in any negotiations held in Jerusalem, on the premise that his presence there would be interpreted in the Arab world as tacit recognition of Israel's annexation of Arab East Jerusalem. Fairbanks has proposed that Begin and Mubarak both travel to Washington for talks. Israeli officials indicated last week that they would have no objection to that--as long as the talks were also rotated to Jerusalem.

--By Marguerite Johnson.

Reported by Robert Slater/Jerusalem

With reporting by Robert Slater

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