Stubbornness Contest Between Shas and Yesh Atid

Prime Minister Netanyahu is facing difficulty in forming the large coalition which includes as broad a span of political views as possible such that the result will not be dependent on any single party other than Likud-Beytenu. The problem he has struck is the contest between Shas, the Hasidic Party and Yesh Atid headed by Yair Lapid who refuses to compromise on any of the party platform issues he and his list had campaigned upon. One issue which has become a hot button issue finds the religious parties including Shas in direct conflict with Lapid’s Yesh Atid stand that only the top four-hundred Torah students be allowed a deferment from IDF or National Service a part of the share the burden solution. Shas, needless to point out, wishes for an equal or at least very similar style deferment law as the Tal Law which was ruled to be against the constitution by the Supreme Court in a decision made in the final days under Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch, a strange concept as Israel has no constitution. Neither side wishes to budge on this issue and Lapid, who is entering the Knesset for the first time as are all the people on his list, will likely be introduced to the concept that if you demand everything you will often end up not in the coalition and you get nothing, such is the way of parliamentary governance. My feelings are that Yair Lapid knows full well that at some point he will need to give in order to get but is going to play hard and stiff for as long as it serves to further his ideals and ideas and bend only at the last moment. Shas will not bend and will need to be bludgeoned into accepting any form of compromise but that is their way and is expected.

Yair Lapid might be playing a dangerous game believing that Netanyahu cannot permit him and his nineteen Knesset seats to join Shelly Yachimovich and the Labor Party in the opposition. He had best do the math and realize that Netanyahu can form a sixty-one seat coalition simply by including the two purely religious parties, Shas and Yahadut HaTorah with eleven and seven seats respectively along with HaBayit HaYehudi which has twelve seats. Add in the thirty-one seats of Netanyahu’s Likud-Beytenu Party reaches the sixty-one seats out of the Knesset’s one-hundred-twenty total seats, the minimum necessary for a majority to form a coalition. Netanyahu has even spoken with Tzipi Livni and Shelly Yachimovich and even the leader of Meretz, Zahava Gal-On, even though the likelihood of their parties joining the coalition are minimal, as the Prime Minister had stated he wishes to form as broad a governing coalition as possible, even a unity government, though that is next to impossible. All told, the forming of the coming coalition very well may prove to be more interesting than the usual cut and dry same old expected coalition of traditional allies. With some of the difficulties which may come to a head and have to be faced by the coming government, a large and stable coalition that is not dependent on any one party is something that is definitely desirable. I do not envy the members of this Knesset, especially having a fairly good idea of what challenges are coming down the rails like an out of control train.

Back to the tug-of-war between the Hasidic Parties and Lapid’s fairly secular party over exemptions may be the most evident battle ongoing but is not the only and may prove not to even be the most critical or vitally important debate that forming the coalition will need to address. Another of Lapid Party’s concerns that I feel is likely even more important concerns the economy and the price of living. One of the major segments of the economy which needs the magic touch of Netanyahu’s economic miracle workers is housing prices and rents. During the last Knesset Netanyahu took aim at the cell phone monopolies and he opened up that market to greater competition and the prices dropped like an anchor. Hopefully Netanyahu will be able to work similar miracles with housing and rental prices, then taking aim at food prices, especially dairy and the other areas where the number of vendors is quite limited. What makes this area even more important is that much could be gained in relieving some of the upward pressures on food prices that could be attained through annexing at a minimum Area C of Judea and Samaria, the area already under total Israeli rule and control. The additional farm lands and expanded area would serve as a stimulus to the Israeli economy, an economy that is already one of the most robust of the Industrialized West. Another possible benefit from such a move would be to place some pressure on the Palestinian leadership which might be sufficient a shock to bring Abbas to the negotiation table and remove from United States President Obama’s list of misconceptions about Israel, namely that it is Netanyahu who refuses to negotiate and Abbas the willing partner. In the meantime, let’s just relax and watch the barter and other fun that goes with making a coalition. I wonder if there were a way of making coalition forming the national sport of Israel after all, they do it far, far too often.

Beyond the Cusp

Requiem for Kadima

Late yesterday afternoon Shaul Mofaz, the leader of Kadima, announced that due to unbridgeable differences between Kadima’s views and the views held by Prime Minister Netanyahu and the ruling coalition in the Israeli Knesset towards drafting new legislation to replace the expiring Tal Law, Kadima has found it necessary to withdraw from the coalition they had joined only nine weeks ago. An entirely new law was necessitated by the unconstitutional ruling striking down the existing Tal Law by former Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch in the final weeks of her term of service. It is likely that the mainstream Israeli media will play up the split from the coalition by Kadima a mere two months after joining the coalition as a failure in the leadership of the coalition by Netanyahu. The reality is very likely to prove otherwise, but do not hold your breath waiting for the media to reach such a conclusion as they are heavily invested in casting Prime Minister Netanyahu as incompetent and ruining the coalition of the people by his support of the extreme Orthodox and Haredi communities and the illegal settlements in Judea and Samaria. They will use the ill-fated end to retaining Kadima in the coalition as further proof of Netanyahu, Likud, and the settler fanatic extremist parties in the coalition, especially should the Knesset vote to accept and enact as Israeli policy the recent results of the Levy Commission. This was a report on the legality of the existing settlements and any further Jewish settlement activities in Judea and Samaria under International Law, the Geneva Conventions, and numerous treaties which were signed and ratified by numerous European governments, the United States and the United Nations in its founding documents pertaining to respecting and implementing all agreements from the League of Nations, all of which defined the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as belonging to the Jewish State once it had been formed and allowed, encouraged and insisted even, Jewish settlement in order to facilitate such formation.

The real question is whether allowing Kadima to join the coalition and revealing their anti-religious fanaticism and anti-settlement dispositions served the coalition or not. The near future will prove that by allowing Kadima to join the coalition and tasking them to lead in crafting a new law establishing a universal draft, which they had demanded they be allowed in order to join the coalition, and then refusing to moderate their poisonous demands victimizing the religious communities as the Plesner Committee recommendations held. Members of the coalition accused Plesner of attempting to wage war on the religious communities while ignoring any service commitment by Arab Israelis and other minorities by pressing for severe sanction on solely religious Jews who refused service. Kadima leadership stood fast demanding near total drafting of all Hareidim with drastic penalties to be imposed on any refusing to comply without addressing the fact that a sizeable portion of the secular community also tend to go to extremes to avoid service. The end result of allowing Kadima to force this confrontation will likely be a split in the Kadima membership with the larger part leaving the coalition while a possibly sizeable remainder declining to leave with the rest and remaining in the coalition. This will result in making Likud the majority party and will reduce the size and following of Kadima. How anybody can call strengthening the coalition by making the best of an unpleasant confrontation forced by Kadima Chairman Shaul Mofaz who overplayed his hand in an attempt to destroy the coalition thus leaving him and Kadima weaker and Likud and Netanyahu strengthened a failure escapes me. Most rational people would look at how this will eventually turn out and congratulate Prime Minister Netanyahu with pulling a virtual coup against Shaul Mofaz and the strongest of the opposition parties by allowing them to push their hand too stridently and dashing themselves against the rocks of public opinion and political realities.

The main fallout from this overstated coalition crisis is the remaining need for crafting a replacement draft law for the soon expired Tal Law. The advantage now is that the entire controversy over how to craft the new law and whether service should be strictly applied solely upon the Haredi and Orthodox communities and enforced in a vicious manner or whether the solution should be applied humanely and with reasoned and crafted steps allowing for a gradual adoption of the new standards will be discussed and implemented in an adult manner instead as by the spiteful insult of childlike adults throwing a fit. The public was treated to a full disclosure of the original intent of former Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch to subvert the universal Torah Study by the Hareidim by pressing them into mandatory military or community service in place of Yeshiva studies. The debate being made public will allow a more reasoned approach which will retain the best of the Yeshiva studies of Torah, a vital and important pursuit in the service of Israeli society, while still making arrangements to allow and eventually require a larger percentage of Hareidim and Orthodox to perform IDF or community service bringing these communities into closer alignment with the service rates of the rest of Israeli society. It has also opened up the discussion on whether the Arab Israeli society should also be called to do at a minimum some form of community service if they prefer to refuse IDF enlistment. Despite the media claims which are sure to come decrying the death of Israeli democracy with the exit by Kadima from the coalition, the Israeli people will have been given a greater voice and a closer inspection of the machinations of the debate on this vital and definitive issue. If that is not real democracy and a healthy attitude of governance, then I don’t know what is. We must tip our hat and credit Prime Minister Netanyahu with having played a smarter game of politics than his opponents while also including the will of the majority of people in deciding the path for the government on of the the most vital and momentous legislations before the Knesset.

Beyond the Cusp

Kadima’s True Colors Exposed Over Hareidim Enlistment Demands

Kadima leader and Vice Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz with the able assistance from Tal Law Committee and Knesset Minister Yohanan Plesner have disclosed their true intent for joining Prime Minister Netanyahu and the governing coalition, namely to break up the previous coalition in order to gain the ability to force elections and use such a threat to enact their views and hijack the government. The Kadima Ministers in the Knesset have individually and collectively threatened to break away from the coalition they recently joined this May if their demands for stringent enforcement with harsh penalties for all Hareidim into IDF service. This move was designed to force Prime Minister Netanyahu to acquiesce to this demand which would cause a number of other parties from the original and much narrower coalition to quit the coalition. The parties this was aimed to tear away from the coalition included Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu, Yaakov Litzman’s United Torah Judaism, Eli Yishai’s Shas, and Daniel Hershkowitz’s Jewish Home; which would leave a coalition consisting of Likud, Ehud Barak’s Independence Party and Kadima which would give Kadima the leverage to control the agenda. The only miscalculation was their believing that Prime Minister Netanyahu was so concerned about retaining the support of Kadima as a measure of moderation against the media had criticism that the original coalition as too right wing. As it turns out, Prime Minister Netanyahu appears to have little problem in having Kadima exit the coalition if they do not get their leftist extremist IDF Hareidim draft legislation worded exactly the way they proposed it.

So, what is the hang-up over between a large number of original coalition members and the Kadima proposals? Oddly enough, it all comes down to something that the left is supposed to favor, diversity. The Kadima proposal for legislation for a new draft law to replace the old and ruled unconstitutional Tal Law was to include strict enforcement with strident calls for severe punishments for any Hareidim who refused to serve when called to enlist in the IDF or participate in some form of national service. When it came to Arab Israelis and other Israeli minorities, who currently are not forced to serve similarly to the Hareidim, they had vague and undefined language which would allow these deferments to remain unaltered. Most of the rest of the coalition members were demanding that if the Hareidim were to be forced into some version of national service with few if any allowed to be deferred for fulltime Torah study as was previously allowed, they also wanted the same exacting requirements for the nearly one and a half million Arab population in the name of fairness rather than diversity. Kadima refused to allow equal treatment for Arab Israelis and Haredi Israelis, they wished only to subject the most orthodox and religious Jews to face minimally eighty percent enlistment, an even higher rate than secular and moderately religious Jews currently serve, while allowing Arab Israelis a complete pass on any form of national service. This was the wedge which Kadima had nefariously planned to divide the coalition then hijack control over the coalition and the national agenda. Now Kadima is making one last stand on their demands and it appears that Prime Minister Netanyahu will be perfectly content for them to fall on their swords and leave the coalition they had joined with such fanfare all the way back in May. So soon, you really have to go? Aww, we will really miss you, well, not so much.

Beyond the Cusp