Israel’s coalition government collapsed on Wednesday as Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer and other Labour ministers quit right-wing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s cabinet, throwing the country’s politics into turmoil and opening the door to snap elections.
Ben Eliezer, leader of the centre-left Labour, resigned after last-minute talks with Sharon failed to reach a compromise over Israel’s 2003 austerity budget that had enraged Labour with its high subsidies for Jewish settlements.
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, Labour’s senior politician and leading dove, and Culture Minister Matan Vilnai immediately followed Ben Eliezer in walking out. Despite the revolt, parliament still passed the budget at its first reading by 67 votes to 45.
The crumbling of the 18-month-old national unity government created fresh upheaval with Israel already been bogged down in a low-level war of attrition with the Palestinians since September 2000.
It also comes as Israel’s chief ally, the United States, is weighing an invasion of Iraq, which could further jolt the region. Finance Minister Sylvan Shalom, from Sharon’s right-wing 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, Shimon Peres, and his colleagues, but unfortunately, the leader of the Labour party, the defence minister, didn’t accept it. He gave his resignation,” said Shalom. He accused Ben Eliezer of sacrificing the government for his political career as the defence minister looks to fend off his more dovish rivals in Labour’s leadership primaries on November 19.
”I must say it was only because of the internal politics of the Labour party.”
But Ben Eliezer fired back on the parliament floor: ”We were always against the budget and yet we did the impossible trying to reach a compromise.”
For his part, Sharon, a former general, vowed to soldier on, urging the country to ”make a show of unity and responsibility.” The government had already teetered on the brink of collapse with Labour threatening to vote against Sharon’s budget unless he levelled out $150-million in spending on settlements with funding for poorer sectors of society throughout Israel.
In turn, Sharon had warned he would sack any minister who voted against a budget designed to tackle the country’s worst-ever economic slump, a recession brought on at least in part by the Palestinian uprising, which has been fuelled by fury over the Jewish settlements.
But the two sides appeared briefly to move away from the precipice, agreeing to delay the parliamentary vote while they hammered out a compromise on the budget that forecast drastic cuts in social services.
Two lawyers acting as intermediaries between Ben Eliezer and Sharon told reporters they had come up with a formula whereby a matching sum to that allocated to the settlements would go towards development grants for poor sections of the Israeli population. But the talks broke down after two hours, with the defence minister tendering his resignation and storming out of the meeting. With Labour out of the government, Sharon could seek a narrow coalition dominated by the far right or ask President Moshe Katsav to dissolve parliament and call elections within 90 days, some nine months earlier than scheduled.
Public radio said Sharon had already tapped former army chief of staff General Shaul Mofaz to replace Ben Eliezer as defence minister.
While Ben Eliezer prepared to battle it out with his Labour rivals in primaries next month, Sharon looked set to win a run-off in his Likud party against rival and former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And his Likud party is also well ahead of Labour in popularity ratings.
Even as Israel’s political landscape was shaken, violence carried on. A Palestinian gunman launched a bloody attack, killing two girls and a woman at the Hermesh settlement in the northern West Bank late on Tuesday.
It was the second attack on a West Bank settlement in 48 hours. On Sunday a suicide bombing at the large settlement of Ariel killed three Israeli soldiers as well as the bomber. A Palestinian man was shot dead on Wednesday by security guards protecting Israeli labourers after he opened fire on them on a road in the northern West Bank village of Zeita.
Meanwhile, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat met his new cabinet after pushing through his reshuffled ministerial team on Tuesday. Despite harsh criticism from reformers, who said Arafat had stacked his new team with old guard from his own Fatah faction, Arafat won overwhelming support from parliament — dominated by Fatah — after arguing that a snub for him would be a victory for Sharon, who wants him dropped.
Parliament rejected his previous line-up in September, a revolt seen as a spasm of democracy in an otherwise quiescent assembly.
One of the new cabinet’s main tasks will be to prepare for presidential and parliamentary elections, scheduled for January 20 despite the fact that Israel’s four-month reoccupation of the West Bank shows no sign of ending. – Sapa-AFP