Binyamin Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing nationalist Likud
party, defeated Shimon Peres by 30,000 votes - less than one
percent of the voters. Both main parties, the Likud and Labor, lost
ground to smaller lists, and the most prominent shift in the
Knesset was a steep increase in the strength of two religious
parties, the National Religious Party (NRP) and the ultra-Orthodox
Oriental (Sephardi) list (Shas). Given a national election decided
by such a slight majority, it is only natural that post-election
commentary and analyses focused on the effectiveness of various
campaign strategies and tactics.
However, the major question is why Labor's candidate, despite the
political achievements to his credit and the relative prosperity in
the country, did so poorly among entire sections of the population
- to the point that he was almost a political pariah among the
urban poor, in the development towns and in the religious quarters
all over the country (with the exception of Israel's Palestinian
citizens - but that is another story which demands separate
treatment). Though Peres and his party enjoyed the support of the
Israeli establishment and its various elites, business, financial,
economic, etc., in addition to massive support from abroad, it was
to no avail.
While it may be true that each and every vote has the same weight
in the ballot box, even the most naive advocates of liberal
democracy understand that electoral politics are determined in
large by the mobilization of institutional support and
financing.
Dismantling the Institutional Edifices of
Socialist-Zionism
The social institutions created by the Socialist-Zionist historical
project have been in a state of accelerating decay, disarray and
disintegration over the past decade. We are talking about a
large-scale complex of various institutions which had enjoyed
almost universal prestige for decades: the Histadrut (the General
Federation of Labor) which comprised at a certain stage 80 percent
of the salaried workers in a totally unionized labor force;
factories and utilities which were components of a major industrial
holding company owned, operated and controlled by the leading
bodies of the Histadrut; the renowned Kibbutz movement; the
moshavim, small-holder collective settlements; the financial,
banking and marketing arms of the industrial and agricultural
sectors of the movement; the sick fund which provided health
insurance for the great majority of the population and various
insurance funds. As a matter of record, the achievements of the
Socialist-Zionist movement in Israel, while fulfilling a central
function as the power base for the main party of the labor
movement, Mapai, were also a central showpiece and a source of
pride for social-democratic parties and theoreticians, a "third
way" between capitalism and "totalitarian communism." The
well-based critique from the left to the effect that these
institutions, with their Zionist ideological outlook, played a
central role in the Zionist colonization of the country is not
particularly relevant in the present context.
The Socialist-Zionist edifice was undermined, of course, by its
very own leadership, which saw the integration of the Israeli
economy into the world capitalist market as the crowning glory of
all its previous achievements. This neo-liberal middle-class
orientation was supposed to create a reliable new coalition of
forces (socially and electorally) that would ensure Labor's
survival and role in the new order of affairs - in the
neo-capitalist Israel of privatization. Certainly, there were
serious problems in many of the labor institutions, including the
evolution of an entrenched, top-heavy bureaucracy and the
prevalence of routine inefficiency. In the prevailing heady
atmosphere of "triumphalism" - which held that social solidarity
had died with the socialist experiments and that the market was the
one sure road to redemption - these serious weaknesses were all
diagnosed as terminal illnesses and mercy killings were the order
of the day. The last and perhaps saddest symptom of this affair is
the rapid decline of the Kibbutz movement.
Other Institutions, Other Places
But while the labor movement was busy self-destructing by
energetically sacrificing the assets and the institutions by which
it had built political and economic hegemony over more than half a
century, others in different sections of Israeli society were
building new sets of institutions ¬nurseries and schools,
yeshivot (rabbinical seminars), armed militias, local government,
political patronage and civil service appointments and jobs, jobs
and more jobs. This new institutional network began to emerge in
the territories conquered by Israel in 1967, based on some 150,000
people in more than 150 settlements and medium-sized urban
communities.
The whole operation was led and directed by a section of the
National Religious Party which organized itself as Gush Emunim (the
Bloc of the Faithful). The Bloc's identity is often submerged in
other functional institutions - like the settlement associations -
but it invariably set the tone. And the tone is rather simple: One
God, One Torah, One Land, are categorical imperatives - they know
no legitimate restraints. Least of all are they subservient to the
will of any democratically elected government. This was certainly
true of the Rabin and Peres government, and if necessary, this will
be demonstrated for the benefit of their present ally,
Netanyahu.
There are many illusions regarding Gush Emunim, especially as they
are the "legitimate" sons of the Israeli establishment and its
political mainstream. What Rabin failed to understand and this cost
him his life, and what Peres failed to understand and this caused
him to lose control of the government, was that there is a
conspiracy at the heart of the settler movement. One of the
manifestations of this conspiracy was Rabin's execution by Yigal
Amir for "collaborating with the enemy" and "handing over integral
parts of the homeland to alien hands." Since the Oslo accords in
September 1993, the Bloc brought its supporters out into the
streets, supplying the shock troops for the right's assault on the
government and the peace process, portraying the government as
traitors and even showing Rabin as a Gestapo officer. Had the
military authorities enforced the existing law against the settler
right - even without employing anything from the arsenal of
repressive measures and the brutal and unrestrained violence
perpetrated against the Palestinians, things might have turned out
differently - the resulting cleavage between the conspirators and
many on the right, who would have refused to go the distance with
them, might have prevented the assassination by isolating the most
dangerous circles on the radical right.
Peres thought that the remorse and shame over the assassination of
Yitzhak Rabin in the National Religious Party - still the mentors
of the Bloc - gave him an opportunity for reC0nciliation on the
basis of national unity. Thus, instead of drying up the cesspools
of chauvinist fanaticism, such as the Jewish settlement in the
heart of Hebron, he allowed the right to reunite without purging
itself of the hard-core conspirators. Subsequently, the Bloc
returned to electoral politics to become an essential element in
the Netanyahu success. The Bloc, having built up a power base of
institutions and other resources over the years, had no hesitation
about using every means at its disposal to topple Peres. It should
be' added that the settlers have, in addition to a strong and
expanding institutional base, all the trappings of an independent
mini-empire, including weaponry and armed forces delivered into
their hands by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) as part of the
overall "security" effort in the territories.
Yet another force emerged from the same National Religious Party a
decade ago. For years, Oriental Jewish activists in the NRP had
occupied the role of vote-getters and minor officials - the
proverbial hewers of wood and drawers of water. It was particularly
painful for them to see their beloved Rabbinical authorities
relegated to an inferior status. The Oriental split from the NRP
was and is a fantastic story in every sense. Shas quickly
established a mass base in the community and eagerly translated its
parliamentary assets into independent control and generous
financing for a new system of religious and educational
institutions. One of the many colossal (but typical) achievements
by the Shas people is the creation - in less than nine short years
- of an educational network that comprises 20,000 pupils in its
nursery and grade school levels. Once again, the Shas sphere of
influence also includes religious services, welfare institutions
for young and old, and jobs, jobs, jobs.
We cannot dwell here on the causes that channeled the bitterness of
the Oriental Jewish masses over their widespread discrimination in
Israeli society to the clericalist Shas formation. It may be true
that the anti-clericalism of the liberal left was often articulated
in an arrogant manner which insulted the sensitivities of the
Sephardi voters. The poorer Oriental Jewish masses could certainly
sense that Labor, dominated by neo-liberal technocrats, was
basically indifferent to their social needs. In addition to all
this, the ideological pressure from the radical messianists in the
Bloc was made all the more effective by the total incapacity of the
neo-liberals and the former generals who led the Labor Party to
transmit any sense of ethical solidarity or social vision. Thus, in
a 120-strong Knesset, along with 32 Likud mandates, a quarter of a
million voters gave 23 mandates to the religious bloc - enough,
along with smaller centrist groups, to form a stable
rightist-religious coalition.
Thus, structural developments in Israeli society (the demise of
Labor and the rise of new settler and clerical forces) and the
"national unity strategy" of the Labor leadership since Rabin's
assassination shaped the social processes and the political
discourse which were reflected in the May 1996 national elections.
It is too early to speculate on "Where do we go from here."
However, the first thought that comes to mind is that it is usually
much easier to slip into the quagmire than to get out of it.
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