OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 31 October — Israel’s coalition government collapsed yesterday as Ariel Sharon’s main Labour party partners resigned, leaving the country in political confusion even as a US war on Iraq loomed.
Sharon now faces a choice between calling early elections, or trying to struggle on with the support of the hard right, which would give him a tiny majority.
An alliance with the hard right would be bad news for the little that is left of the peace process — they are even more opposed to compromise with the Palestinians than Sharon. There could be months of uncertainty ahead.
A succession of ministers from the left-wing Labour party handed their resignations in to Sharon yesterday, including the party leader, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, one of the architects of the all-but-defunct Oslo peace accords.
By all accounts Peres left with regret. It was Ben-Eliezer who insisted on leading his party out of government, after three hours of crisis talks. Shouting was heard coming from the room where he was meeting with Sharon, and at one point the Labour leader stormed out in rage.
At first sight, the dispute which prompted Ben-Eliezer to quit the government, a disagreement over the spending of some 700 million shekels ($150 million) in the budget, seems slight. Sharon even mocked him for it yesterday in a speech to the Knesset, saying: "For this you are breaking up the national unity government. Enough, there is a limit to contempt".
Finance Minister Sylvan Shalom, from Sharon’s Likud party, blamed Ben Eliezer for sabotaging a compromise which the two parties were on the verge of clinching. "There was an agreement. It was accepted by the foreign minister, Mr. Shimon Peres, and his colleagues, but unfortunately, the leader of the Labour party, the defense minister, didn’t accept it. He submitted his resignation," said Shalom.
But Ben Eliezer shot back on the floor of the Parliament: "We were always against the budget and yet we did the impossible trying to reach a compromise."
But what tore Sharon’s government apart yesterday were the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, a vexed subject that goes to the heart of the political divide in Israel — it was to the settlements that the disputed 700m shekels of state funding were to go.
Ben-Eliezer objected to the money going to the settlements in a budget that was cutting state funding elsewhere, to pay the increasing costs of fighting the intifada. He was demanding the money be diverted to the elderly and university students.
But Sharon’s supporters accused Ben-Eliezer of breaking up the government for purely political reasons, because he is behind in the polls for the Labour leadership election, due in some three weeks. His rivals oppose staying in the government, and attacking the settlers will play well with Labour’s core constituency.
The settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are illegal under international law, because they are built on occupied land. Palestinians say they are one of the biggest obstacles to peace, because they are built on the 22 percent of mandated Palestine which is left to them. The settlers say that all the land, both in Israel and in the occupied territories, was given to them by God.
Sharon is a keen supporter of the settlements. But the depth of resentment toward the settlers among left-wing Israelis is hard to overstate. Settlers get generous tax breaks and housing grants that are unavailable to ordinary Israelis. Many settlers refuse to serve in the army for religious reasons. The settlements are front-line targets for Palestinians and Israeli conscripts have to risk their lives to defend them.
Sharon must now decide whether to ask the president for early elections. If he does, they will have to be held within 90 days. The polls indicate Sharon’s Likud party would come out on top, but first he will have to face his own leadership contest, against former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Sharon told the Knesset yesterday that he would continue to "lead the state responsibly". Ironically, the fateful budget passed, despite Labour’s exit from the government, with support from other parties.
On Tuesday night, two girls and a woman were killed by a Palestinian who infiltrated the settlement of Hermesh in the northern West Bank and was later shot dead.
The Palestinian crept into the settlement and opened fire on two girls who were sitting outside their house. Both died of their wounds. The attack was claimed by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of the Fatah movement. The Brigades identified the Palestinian as Tareq Abu Safaka, a 22-year-old from Tulkarm.
A woman who heard the shooting came out of her house and fired at the Palestinian with a pistol, but he got away and entered another house where he shot at a couple, killing the woman and wounding her husband. Settlers and soldiers who arrived on the scene shot the man who was armed with an automatic weapon, Israeli military sources said. (The Independent)
