POLITICS-ISRAEL: Russian and Middle East Jews Will Decide Elections

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - Dilip Hiro

LONDON, May 14 1999 (IPS) - The outcome of Israel’s most fateful election Monday will be decided by a contest between two ethnic groups among Jewish Israelis – the Russian- speakers from Europe and the Arabic- speakers from the Middle East.

When Israeli voters go the polling stations to elect members of the Knesset (parliament) and the prime minister, they will face an unprecedented choice: there are five candidates to lead the government, with a record number of 31 parties seeking a seat.

Since the threshold for securing Knesset representation is a mere 1.5 per cent of the total vote, most pollsters predict that around 15 parties will win seats.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, 49, leader of the Likud, aptly described as “flexible right-wing”, faces serious challenge from Ehud Barak, 57, head of Labour, a moderate left-of-centre party. To the right of Netanyahu is Benny Begin, and to the left of Barak is Azmi Bishara, an Israeli Arab parliamentarian.

The opinion polls show Barak pulling ahead of Netanyahu by a margin of 5 to 12 points.

In between Netanyahu and Barak is Yitzhak Mordechai, 54, a former Defence minister in the Netanyahu government, who defected from Likud to lead the newly formed Centre Party. Once a serious challenger, his popularity rating has now fallen below 10 per cent.

With about 15 per cent of the electorate garnered by marginal candidates, political analysts reckon that neither Netanyahu nor Barak will win in the first round. In that case that the run-off will take place against the backdrop of a newly elected Knesset.

Summing up the scene, Shimon Peres, former Labour premier who lost to Netanyahu three years ago, said, “In 1996 Netanyahu was a promise, an attractive young man, eloquent, good on television. But today he looks like a person from whom all charm has escaped, and left him alone,dry, angry, unconvincing.”

Barak is forging ahead mainly because of his success in winning the vote of the Jewish immigrants from Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS – the former Soviet Union), the ex-Soviet Jews, who are one-seventh of the total Israeli electorate.

Learning from the mistakes made by Peres, Barak – a former military chief of staff and the most decorated soldier in the country – has declined to debate the security and peace issues with Netanyahu.

Instead he presents his four-point peace plan in television commercials: The Palestinians and Israelis should live in separate “entities”; the West Bank should remain dotted with blocs of Jewish settlement under Israeli sovereignty; Israel must have exclusive control over Jerusalem; and “I will agree to a peace accord only if it strengthens Israeli security.”

To counterbalance Barak’s military credentials, Netanyahu’s propaganda has recently also highlighted the Prime Minister’s past as an army commando unit member.

Commenting on Barak’s election strategy, Yossi Melman, a senior columnist with the prestigious Ha’aretz newspaper, said, “He has skilfully shifted the debate from peace and security to domestic issues. Every night his television commercials hit Netanyahu’s government with numbers highlighting rising unemployment and declining living standards.”

This has proved effective, especially with ex-Soviet Jews. Whereas in 1996 elections, 73 percent of them voted for Netanyahu, now the percentage is down to 50, and falling.

Under the three-year old Netanyahu administration the economy has stagnated. The country is currently in recession.

“The economy is the big factor in these elections,” said Robert Rosenberg, a political analyst. “Not only have 100,000 people lost their jobs, but small businesses are going down the tubes, and there are a lot of Russians in small business.”

Also, unlike the long-settled Jewish communities, who over the past decades have formed strong political loyalties, the ex-Soviet Jews – a comparatively new element introduced into Israel chiefly in the 1990s – are relatively open-minded about politics.

“The Russians do not have tribal (political) loyalties like the more established ethnic groups,” said Rosenberg. “They vote according to their interests. And their interests keep shifting.”

Another reason for shifting loyalties, argue experts on Israel’s electoral politics, is that the largely secular Russians, many of whom do not observe the religious prohibition against eating pork, dislike the religious allies of Netanyahu also because these parties siphoned off funds which could have been used for their welfare.

It is estimated that the Netanyahu government gave 8 billion dollars in grants to a myriad of religious organisations and institutions, some of them fictitious

Russian-speakers are particularly scathing about the ultra Orthodox political spectrum, represented in the main by Shas (acronym of Shomer Torah, Guardians of the Torah), a party of the Jews from the Arabic-speaking countries, and which is now supporting Netanyahu.

The fact that Shas has run the Interior ministry for most of the past 15 years, when immigration of the Russian-speaking Jews rose sharply, has turned the party into an object of hatred among ex-Soviet Jews.

Shas leaders and activists reciprocate the feeling. In the Shas party advertisements, Eli Suissa, the current Interior minister, pledged to keep out “forgers, con-men and call girls” from Israel. This angered the ex-Soviet Jews who resented being stereotyped as criminals and prostitutes.

Netanyahu hauled Suissa before television cameras to apologise. But the damage was done.

After all, it is the interior ministry which decides who is Jewish, and therefore entitled to settle in Israel. According to the ministry run by Suissa, about a third of the male immigrants from former Soviet Union are not Jewish, mainly because they are not circumcised.

Little wonder that Natan Sharansky, the leader of the Israel Ba’Aliya (Immigration to Israel) party of the ex-Soviet Jews who is trade minister in the Netanyahu government, is publicly demanding the Interior ministry in the next administration, which was promptly offered to him by Labour’s Barak.

What is significant, however, is that Sharansky refuses to back either of the front-runners for prime minister, Barak or Netanyahu.

“I am not going to endorse anybody – even during the second round on 1 June,” said Sharansky on the day Shas backed Netanyahu. “That is the principle I chose while building this party, and I am not going to destroy it now to satisfy one or another person.’

Since Shas is expected to maintain its current strength of 10 Knesset seats and the total size of the Russian representation is expected to rise from 7 to 9, it would be a Herculean task for Netanyahu to manage to include them both in a future coalition.

In contrast, Barak has said that if he won, he would not invite Shas into his government as long as it was led by Arye Deri, who was recently sentenced to four years in jail for embezzling public funds during his tenure as Interior minister.