Labor Party Woes

Ehud Barak’s surprise exit from the Labor Party along with four senior colleagues had all the hallmarks of one of his famous military operations.

Barak the general was always considered a tactical genius; reservations that were expressed about his military achievements lay mostly in the strategic realm. His break with Labor was a most elegant tactical maneuver: not a word leaked out until a sudden email appeared in inboxes around the country (including mine), and Barak made his startling announcement. But while this may make him the envy of politicians everywhere, it remains to be seen whether it will make a positive strategic contribution to developments in the country and the broader region.

Barak certainly accomplished one thing. By bolting the party, he effectively ended Labor’s paralyzing debate over whether to stay in the coalition in the absence of an effective peace process. Significantly, the Labor MKs who did not follow him out of the party immediately resigned from the coalition, and Labor’s dissident left wing decided to remain in the party and give it a chance, rather than carry out a second breakaway.

As if to confirm Barak’s reputation for tactical genius, the Netanyahu government offered his new Independence Party the most generous coalition agreement in Israeli history- four of its five MKs will be ministers. Haaretz reported: “Barak will remain the Defense Minister, MK Shalom Simhon will be appointed the new National Infrastructure Minister replacing resigning Labor minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, MK Matan Vilnai will receive the Minority Affairs portfolio replacing Avishay Braverman, and MK Orit Noked will be appointed the new Agriculture Minister, Simhon’s former position.” Unfortunately, a new Welfare and Social Services Minister-a critically important post-has not been appointed, and Netanyahu will hold the portfolio until a proper candidate is found, evidently from Likud.

Netanyahu took the opportunity to placate rightist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman by moving the Settlement Department, with its large budgets, from the Ministry of Agriculture to the Prime Minister’s Office. Whereas Noked would have been expected to funnel more money to the Galilee and the Negev, the PMO is widely expected to spend on the settlements in the Territories.

A public debate has started over the meaning of these events. Barak and his circle represented the more center-leaning wing of the Labor party. Ideationally, it is hard to see what separates them from Kadima other than their desire to remain in the coalition. One theory suggests that Kadima may be the big winner from the schism in Labor. Those who make this suggestion believe that Barak and his colleagues will not succeed in establishing a credible independent political identity that voters will find attractive, and as a result, center-leaning former Labor voters will see no alternative but to make the leap to Kadima.

Opposition leader Tzipi Livni, who heads the centrist Kadima party, has not yet publicly addressed the prospects for the Independence Party. She has, however, suggested that this is the beginning of the fall of the government, since the departure of the Labor MKs who did not follow Barak out of the party means that the coalition will now hold only 65 seats in the 120-seat Knesset.

Other observers argue just the opposite, claiming that those Laborites, by exiting the government as they did, may have paradoxically stabilized the current coalition, strengthening it in its right-wing course. Its left flank is secure, they say, since Barak and his supporters are assumed to believe they have a role to play, and hence little to gain from early elections before they can prove their case to a broader public. At this point, then, it appears too early to tell whether Barak’s move strengthened the center/left or perhaps inadvertently strengthened the right.

It is believed that Netanyahu has long felt that the Palestinians are waiting for his government to fall in the hope that a new Israeli coalition more to their liking will take over, and that the apparent American toleration of Palestinian foot-dragging in peace negotiations over the last two years signifies that at least some in the U.S. administration agree. This may explain why Netanyahu’s first public response to Barak’s move included the assertion that “the whole world, including the Palestinians, knows that this government will be here for the coming years.”

But some wonder if Netanyahu spoke too soon. Barak may have protected the coalition from threats coming from the left, but the greater threat has always been on the right. It is no secret that Foreign Minister Lieberman expects his Yisrael Beitenu party to replace Likud as the flag-bearer of the right, much as Kadima displaced Labor as the main center/left party.

On average, Israeli governments last about three years. Will the current coalition, now ending its second year, make it until the regularly scheduled elections in 2013?

First published at http://bit.ly/1m3Nfvs