The emerging coalition follows a call by Peretz to establish an “emergency government without Kadima.” Kadima is the party headed by Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a former Likud minister, who broke from the Likud along with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to form the new party shortly before Sharon suffered a debilitating stroke.
Kadima won the most seats in the Knesset, 29, in last Tuesday’s general election, with Labor taking second place with 20 seats. Labor’s sister party, Meretz, garnered five seats.
Four right-of-center parties, National Union – NRP (National Religious Party), Shas, United Torah Judaism, and the Likud, Labor’s erstwhile rival for nearly 40 years, which together hold 38 Knesset seats, have the potential to provide a Labor-Meretz coalition with a solid parliamentary majority.
Under Israel’s parliamentary system, the country’s president, Moshe Katzav, will ask the party leader who appears to have the most backing, to form a government.
On Sunday night the National Union – NRP party told the president it preferred Amir Peretz over Ehud Olmert for prime minister of Israel.
With another right wing party, Yisrael Beitaynu, saying it will remain neutral regarding its preference for prime minister, Peretz’s chances of being asked by the president to form a coalition and become Israel’s next prime minister appear to be growing.
Although Rafi Eitan, the leader of the Retirees' party and former close associate of Ariel Sharon, leans toward the Kadima party, the party’s other six MK’s are former supporters of Mapai, the forerunner of the Labor party, making a coalition with Labor (which has promised to provide every citizen with a pension) an appealing possibility.
A coalition between Labor and the right would represent an abrupt turnabout for nationalist and religious parties which from 1977 up until the recent Sharon government generally sought refuge in Likud led coalitions.
Sharon began to change that trend when his Likud government set up a coalition with the Shinui party in 2001, excluding haredei-religious parties from his coalition, while keeping the door open to the nationalist National Union and the National Religious Party (NRP).
When the disengagement plan ultimately pushed out the National Union and the NRP, the Labor party quickly came in to fill their spots.
Aside from their mutual distrust for Olmert and Kadima, an emerging coalition between Labor and the nationalist and religious parties bears no small measure of irony, since the two camps have been at odds for three decades over the policy of settling Jews in Judea and Samaria, and issues relating to the role religion in state policy.
Strangely enough, Labor’s preference for reaching a negotiated settlement with the Palestinian Authority, rather than making unilateral withdrawals from territory, may provide the raison d’etere for the nationalist right’s rapprochement with Labor.
With the Hamas in power in the Palestinian Authority and the chances for a negotiated settlement based on territorial compromise looking more and more remote, many right wing leaders reason they have nothing to lose by hooking up with Labor. Labor’s platform, moreover, calls for implementing the U.S. backed road map plan, which was accepted in principle by the nationalist right.
Up until the mid-1970’s, Labor’s calling card was providing infrastructure for settlement throughout the country, including Judea, Samaria, and Gaza (Yesha). The founders of Gush Emumim, the movement that spawned most of the settlements in Yesha, originally looked for backing among leaders of the Labor party.
Such support was not in short supply. Veteran party leaders, including Shimon Peres (now in Kadima), spent millions setting up numerous communities in Yesha, such as Kfar Darom and Netzarim in Gaza, and Kiryat Arba, Ma’ale Adumim, Gush Etzion, Ofra, in Judea and Samaria, as well as a half dozen agricultural communities in the Jordan Valley.
Unlike the Likud, which destroyed Jewish communities in Sinai following the peace treaty with Egypt, and last summer in Gaza and northern Samaria, Labor has never taken down a single Jewish community in the land of Israel.
While negotiating the Oslo accords in 1993, the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin steadfastly refused to consider removing Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, rejecting the advise of prominent government and military officials. Rabin even insisted on retaining control of remote outposts which had been set up as communities by the IDF, but never succeeded in attracting residents.
Though the Oslo accords, which attempted to lay the groundwork for a Palestinian state by setting up and arming a self-governing authority for Arabs in Yesha, ended in disaster, not every development during the Oslo period proved negative.
Rabin, while curtailing Jewish settlement with one hand, spent billions of shekels linking the outlying Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria with a network of modern highways that bypassed Arab populated cities, with the other. Those roads provided the impetus for expanding the migration of Jews into those territories.
By the time the next Labor government took office under Ehud Barak in 1999, the Jewish population of Yesha had doubled. Though Barak had attempted to reach a negotiated settlement with the PA that would have left all of Yesha under its control, in practice, the Labor party witnessed a further expansion of settlements.
When the movement to establish unofficial community outposts between established communities in Judea and Samaria began to take hold, Barak’s government reached an agreement with Yesha leaders, pledging not to remove the communities. Many of the outposts set up by Jewish residents under Barak’s administration have since become full-fledged communities, fully connected to utilities and entitled to government services and military protection.
A rapprochement among the religious parties, the nationalist right wing and the Labor party, if it comes to fruition, might set the stage for the first major realignment of Israeli politics since the first Likud government took office in 1977.
Kadima won the most seats in the Knesset, 29, in last Tuesday’s general election, with Labor taking second place with 20 seats. Labor’s sister party, Meretz, garnered five seats.
Four right-of-center parties, National Union – NRP (National Religious Party), Shas, United Torah Judaism, and the Likud, Labor’s erstwhile rival for nearly 40 years, which together hold 38 Knesset seats, have the potential to provide a Labor-Meretz coalition with a solid parliamentary majority.
Under Israel’s parliamentary system, the country’s president, Moshe Katzav, will ask the party leader who appears to have the most backing, to form a government.
On Sunday night the National Union – NRP party told the president it preferred Amir Peretz over Ehud Olmert for prime minister of Israel.
With another right wing party, Yisrael Beitaynu, saying it will remain neutral regarding its preference for prime minister, Peretz’s chances of being asked by the president to form a coalition and become Israel’s next prime minister appear to be growing.
Although Rafi Eitan, the leader of the Retirees' party and former close associate of Ariel Sharon, leans toward the Kadima party, the party’s other six MK’s are former supporters of Mapai, the forerunner of the Labor party, making a coalition with Labor (which has promised to provide every citizen with a pension) an appealing possibility.
A coalition between Labor and the right would represent an abrupt turnabout for nationalist and religious parties which from 1977 up until the recent Sharon government generally sought refuge in Likud led coalitions.
Sharon began to change that trend when his Likud government set up a coalition with the Shinui party in 2001, excluding haredei-religious parties from his coalition, while keeping the door open to the nationalist National Union and the National Religious Party (NRP).
When the disengagement plan ultimately pushed out the National Union and the NRP, the Labor party quickly came in to fill their spots.
Aside from their mutual distrust for Olmert and Kadima, an emerging coalition between Labor and the nationalist and religious parties bears no small measure of irony, since the two camps have been at odds for three decades over the policy of settling Jews in Judea and Samaria, and issues relating to the role religion in state policy.
Strangely enough, Labor’s preference for reaching a negotiated settlement with the Palestinian Authority, rather than making unilateral withdrawals from territory, may provide the raison d’etere for the nationalist right’s rapprochement with Labor.
With the Hamas in power in the Palestinian Authority and the chances for a negotiated settlement based on territorial compromise looking more and more remote, many right wing leaders reason they have nothing to lose by hooking up with Labor. Labor’s platform, moreover, calls for implementing the U.S. backed road map plan, which was accepted in principle by the nationalist right.
Up until the mid-1970’s, Labor’s calling card was providing infrastructure for settlement throughout the country, including Judea, Samaria, and Gaza (Yesha). The founders of Gush Emumim, the movement that spawned most of the settlements in Yesha, originally looked for backing among leaders of the Labor party.
Such support was not in short supply. Veteran party leaders, including Shimon Peres (now in Kadima), spent millions setting up numerous communities in Yesha, such as Kfar Darom and Netzarim in Gaza, and Kiryat Arba, Ma’ale Adumim, Gush Etzion, Ofra, in Judea and Samaria, as well as a half dozen agricultural communities in the Jordan Valley.
Unlike the Likud, which destroyed Jewish communities in Sinai following the peace treaty with Egypt, and last summer in Gaza and northern Samaria, Labor has never taken down a single Jewish community in the land of Israel.
While negotiating the Oslo accords in 1993, the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin steadfastly refused to consider removing Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, rejecting the advise of prominent government and military officials. Rabin even insisted on retaining control of remote outposts which had been set up as communities by the IDF, but never succeeded in attracting residents.
Though the Oslo accords, which attempted to lay the groundwork for a Palestinian state by setting up and arming a self-governing authority for Arabs in Yesha, ended in disaster, not every development during the Oslo period proved negative.
Rabin, while curtailing Jewish settlement with one hand, spent billions of shekels linking the outlying Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria with a network of modern highways that bypassed Arab populated cities, with the other. Those roads provided the impetus for expanding the migration of Jews into those territories.
By the time the next Labor government took office under Ehud Barak in 1999, the Jewish population of Yesha had doubled. Though Barak had attempted to reach a negotiated settlement with the PA that would have left all of Yesha under its control, in practice, the Labor party witnessed a further expansion of settlements.
When the movement to establish unofficial community outposts between established communities in Judea and Samaria began to take hold, Barak’s government reached an agreement with Yesha leaders, pledging not to remove the communities. Many of the outposts set up by Jewish residents under Barak’s administration have since become full-fledged communities, fully connected to utilities and entitled to government services and military protection.
A rapprochement among the religious parties, the nationalist right wing and the Labor party, if it comes to fruition, might set the stage for the first major realignment of Israeli politics since the first Likud government took office in 1977.