Last update - 02:01 20/05/2004
Labor pains
By Yossi Verter
On Sunday morning, the day after the successful protest in Rabin Square, the Labor Party woke up to a new reality. Suddenly, for the first time in a long time, it was being written about and spoken of, as if it were a living organism. Alive and kicking.
Labor looked in the mirror and was alarmed: it didn't know that things could be like this. A year and a half since its electoral defeat, it has been rotting at the roadside. Pathetic, battered, a party that is a shadow of its former greatness. And now, after the Saturday night show of force, there are expectations of it.
The masses who filled the square, 150,000 according to the estimates, responded to the call and turned out to demonstrate for an exit from Gaza and a dialogue with the Palestinians. Great, we succeeded, but what do we do with this success, Laborites were asking themselves the next day. Do we keep on demonstrating? Work the street, in the street? Start to act as an opposition, or resume the pose of waiting for establishment of a national unity government?
Since the Likud referendum, the question of a unity government has been consuming Labor leaders less. True, based on his own statements, Prime Minister Sharon is committed to bringing his original plan, dressed up in one form or another, to the cabinet for a vote. If he gets it passed and the right withdraws, he will turn to Labor. But after the referendum, it is doubtful that the Likud faction would backSharon in the Knesset. Without the Likud faction, he could not form a national unity government and a functioning coalition. Sharon needs the support of at least 30 MKs from his faction, and at the moment he doesn't have it.
In his speech at Rabin Square, Shimon Peres said that the state does not need a national unity government without a policy. One might understand then that the state needs a national unity government with a policy. Conversely, Peres spoke of the need to turn the majority in the public into a majority in the Knesset, which means elections. What exactly did Peres mean? "We are not in Sharon's pocket," he said this week. "We have no intention of joining the government. Our program is different from his and is accepted by a majority of the people: leaving Gaza and starting to talk. The proposal of leaving Gaza without cooperation with the Palestinians is tantamount to remaining in Gaza."
At first glance, there's a clear stiffening of the Peres line. He has reembraced his original position against unilateral disengagement and wants dialogue with the Palestinians. Is Peres signaling thus to the left because he has sobered up from the dream of national unity, and lost his faith in Sharon's ability to push the plan through his party? Or is he simply upping the ante as the possible formation of a national unity government grows closer?
If Sharon gets his new program for a graduated evacuation passed in the cabinet and the Knesset, and then makes an official offer to Labor, he will find a sympathetic partner in Peres. Peres could say to his party that the graduated evacuation, in fact, requires Labor's entry into the government, because only such an alignment - Likud, Labor and Shinui - could ensure the continuation of this evacuation.
Some observers believe that Peres has been painting a pessimistic picture of the chances of Labor's entering the coalition due to the recent rapprochement between the prime minister and his foreign minister, Silvan Shalom. If in the previous round, on the eve of the referendum, Shalom was thought of as someone who would pay the price of national unity, then in the current round he is once more considered the trusted ally.
If Shalom will not pay and Shaul Mofaz will not pay, who will? Netanyahu? Sharon perhaps would want to be rid of him, but it is doubtful whether he is capable. The economy that is beginning to recover bodes for Netanyahu's staying in the Finance Ministry. Suppose Netanyahu would be fired. Would Peres agree to enter as finance minister, or would he deign to serve as a minister for peace affairs? He would hand over the finance portfolio to Avraham Shochat - the only person in Labor who can step into Netanyahu's shoes, not to mention his socks, without any significant aftershocks. However, it may be that the national unity government option will not be relevant at all.
It turns out that a graduated withdrawal might not be sufficient to pry the right wing out of the coalition. The National Religious Party could always tell its constituents that it has to stay in in order to impede any continuation. It is not clear what Avigdor Lieberman would do.
In the meantime, until the government decision, and until the decision of Attorney General Menachem Mazuz in the Greek island affair, the folks in Labor are enjoying the feeling of awakening, of renewed energy. "The party headquarters in the Hatikva quarter has never been so lively," said Yoram Dori, Peres' spokesman, this week: "From a cemetery, we've turned into a nerve center."
"On Friday night I was in Rabin Square," related MK Isaac Herzog, "and I saw the young people. The Labor youth. They were there all night long. They didn't move. It wasn't the Labor of a non-functioning party. On Saturday night, it was proven that the party is able to be a hub for movements and organizations, able to maintain a centrist line, influence the message and persevere for it, enlist activists and attract people. The rumors of Labor's death were premature."
Barak, the strategist
Ehud Barak also feels that Labor has not completed its agenda. In the festive meeting he held last Thursday with his most devoted activists and admirers, he left no doubt as to his intentions. It is only a question of timing, Barak said, in response to a question about when he might announce his return to political life and the race for the Labor chairmanship. I know, he said, that you can't simply drop into the prime minister's seat out of thin air, that you have to lead a party, a movement.
In the session that was attended by about 30 people, most of whom are not familiar to the general public, Barak spoke of the political "time-out" he'd taken after losing the election as if it were a thing of the past. The time-out has helped me more than I thought, he admitted, because it proved that anyone who has tried since then to lead the party has failed. He mentioned the names of Avraham Burg and Haim Ramon, who lost in the race, and of Amram Mitzna and Binjamin (Fuad) Ben-Eliezer, who won in the race but failed in the position. When his minions urged him to declare, Barak replied that he does not believe in declarations. I believe in doing, he said. There is no need for complex strategic planning.
In the framework of this doing, Barak intends to embark soon on a series of visits and encounters with small groups of political activists. A few weeks ago he met with a political figure who asked him how he would overcome the resentment against him among large segments of the public, primarily on the left. Three months of media work would do the job, Barak answered. Similarly, at a meeting with his activists that was held at the home of Dana Zeidman, his contact person with the party, Barak was asked how he would deal with the expected objections to his return to the party. I know the "over my dead body" triumvirate, said Barak, and mentioned the names of Burg, Ramon and a certain female journalist, who declare at every opportunity that they will do everything possible to prevent his resumption of a leadership role. If there is no other choice, we will have to go over their heads, he said.
He did not conceal from the gathered supporters his assessment, which he has already shared with numerous political figures in recent months, that the race for the premiership in the next election would be between him and Netanyahu. It may be, Barak said Thursday night, that a situation could come to pass in which Netanyahu replaced Sharon, in one constellation or another. At that point, Barak added, it will be easier for us to run against Bibi, after he is in office for a year or a year and a half. For us, Barak told his field operatives. Not for me.
In a nutshell, then, this is Barak's uncomplicated strategy: after a year, a-year-and-a half in which Netanyahu serves as prime minister, perhaps even in a coalition with the Haredim and the right, without any diplomatic progress and with an economy that will shrink, history will repeat itself, and Barak will be called in to rescue the people. In the past year Meretz-Yahad MK Avshalom Vilan, a friend of Barak, has against his will become a sort of contact person between the two. Vilan has met with Barak by virtue of their long-standing friendship, which goes back to their days in the elite commando unit Sayeret Matkal. Vilan has regularly met with Bibi, whom he also knows from the commando unit, to discuss the economic needs of the kibbutz movement. He gets the impression that both men are interested in what the other is doing, in each other's plans. Netanyahu, and not only Barak, sees that in the next elections they will once again be going at it, head to head.
"Rubbish. He's not coming back," said Haim Ramon. "He only enjoys misleading people. And if he does come back, he'll find me facing him. What I did to him that week, in which he withdrew his resignation [following the defeat in the February 2001 election - Y.V.] will be nothing, a measly preview of what I would do to him now."
Peretz has the spoils
The Labor Party meets in Tel Aviv this afternoon to decide on bringing in the One Nation party headed by MK Amir Peretz, chairman of the Histadrut labor federation. Peretz, who left Labor several years ago, fought the party and succeeded in hurting it and is coming home with the spoils: Approximately 250 pro-Peretz people will be added to Labor's Central Committee. Presumably, most of them are Histadrut employees, meaning that they are on the chairman's list of salary recipients. This guarantees their total loyalty to Peretz, their attendance at every meeting for every vote. Peretz is coming in with a complete, well-oiled machine, which works on his behalf. "If I ask my activists to come to a meeting that begins at two o'clock in the afternoon, they do so, at the expense of their work. So in the best case, 40 percent of the people come to every meeting," one Labor leader said this week. "For Peretz' representatives, it will be part of their work. Part of the payroll. Everyone will come, always."
As of yesterday, there are three high-ranking Laborites who actively oppose Peretz' return: Ben-Eliezer, Ephraim Sneh and Matan Vilnai. (On Tuesday, Ben-Eliezer and Sneh met with Peretz in an attempt to reach agreements.) All three see themselves as future contenders for the party leadership, and Peretz, who has plans of his own, is an intruder. They suspect that a secret deal has been woven between Peretz and Shimon Peres, in which as long as Peres wishes to continue functioning as party chairman, Peretz and his cohorts will support him. "The whole idea is to slaughter us, the next generation, and to crown Peres as the candidate for the premiership in the next election," one of the three objectors said this week.
"My problem is not with Amir Peretz," said Ben-Eliezer. "Three times I've called on him to return home. My problem is Shimon Peres and the payment that he's willing to deliver to someone who left the party."
In the past few weeks, there has been a lot of bad blood between Peres and the leaders of his party over the step of bringing One Nation into Labor. Even Peres' supporters have recently told him that he has been behaving with a forcefulness that reminds them of Ehud Barak. "After every Thursday comes a Friday," Labor faction chair Dalia Itzik told him.
This week, Ephraim Sneh quoted an old American senator who on the eve of his retirement said that the most important thing that he'd learned in his many years in the Senate was that sometimes someone wins when he loses, and sometimes someone loses when he wins.
(c) 2004, Haaretz
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