Toward a realignment of Israeli politics

For many on the Israeli left it is the only issue. While previous generations of leftists made the occasional reference to social justice and equality, for several decades now the difference between left and right in Israel has been defined, as Amos Oz put it, as a question of geography. Leftists were prepared to concede more territory (to the Palestinians or Syria) than rightists were. One was more leftist if one was prepared to cede more territory. A person like myself, who was prepared to cede all of the Golan Heights to Syria in the context of a peace settlement, would be considered 'far left' because of that position.

This is a slight over-simplification, because there is one other issue which has in recent years awakened some passion in the country - the struggle between secular and religious Jews. Secular Jews have grown increasingly defensive and fearful of the power of the religious parties - ironically at a time when the power of those parties is in sharp decline. I say that because the wave of immigration which brought in some one million Jews from the former Soviet Union immensely strengthened the secular camp. Very few of those Jews are religious. If the religious parties have been more vociferous and aggressive than in the past, it is perhaps because they are fighting a rear-guard action, knowing that their days as holders of the balance of power are numbered.

A very small section of the Israeli left, too small to even be represented in the Knesset, has latched on to a kind of third-world-vanguardism, seeing in the local Arab population a substitute for the revolutionary proletariat. Unfortunately, the 'Israeli Arabs' (meaning, Palestinians living under Israeli rule since 1948, who have accepted Israeli citizenship) don't seem willing to fit this role, and divide their votes among Islamic fundamentalists, hack politicians from the various Zionist parties (including the religious and right wing ones), and Stalinists.

For more than 20 years now, Israeli politics has been locked into paralysis by the split between a 'right' and 'left' who argue about geography. Whenever the issue is posed before Israeli voters, some - understandably - will vote for candidates and parties willing to take risks for peace, while others - understandably - fear terrorism and the next war and are unwilling to take those risks. Among Jewish voters, the clear majority fall into the latter category.

For those who care about peace, who want to see a resolution of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians (meaning an independent Palestinian state), and between Israel and Syria (meaning an Israeli withdrawal, in the context of a peace treaty), the only way out is going to be a realignment of Israeli politics. Instead of voters focusing on their hopes or fears about peace - their views on 'geography' - were they to cast their votes according to social class, we might see the Gordian knot finally slashed open.

Like so many countries in which war and peace or ethnic rivalries play such decisive roles, in Israel social class has simply not been the most important or even a significant factor in voting. That is not to say that there are no class parties. Indeed, there are even several parties that could be legitimately called workers' parties. Unfortunately these are all headed up by various kinds of charlatans and have been misleading their followers - usually in the direction of collaboration with the most anti-worker parties around, such as Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud.

'Shas' - the Sepharic Torah Guardians party - is a textbook example of false consciousness. It is undoubtedly a party of working class and poor people. It maintains a network of schools, day care centres and other social institutions in the poorest neighbourhoods. Its politicians talk endlessly about the suffering of the country's poor, the problem of unemployment, and so on. But the party is lead not by trade unionists and certainly not by socialists, but by extreme orthodox rabbis.

The same may be said about the Arab parties, and in particular Islamic fundamentalism, which leads the poorest of the poor into a political dead end.

Not all of the misleaders of the Jewish and Arab working class are religious. David Levy, himself a former construction worker living in the impoverished town of Beit Shean, for many years led working people to support the Likud, even while the Likud was pursuing the most vicious anti-worker policies (and destroying any hope of peace with the Arabs). Levy eventually broke with the Likud, and with only a very small following left he eventually linked up to Ehud Barak and the Labour Party. Any attempt to portray this as a historic reconciliation between the middle-class-led Labour Party and the mass of the Jewish working class is ridiculous, though this is certainly how things are being portrayed by Labour.

Faced with this problem of false consciousness, with a working class (both Jewish and Arab) misled into supporting nationalist and religious charlatans - and the prospect of peace diminishing year by year - the only hope is a politics based on social class. To put it as bluntly as possible, the only way to woo working class voters away from Shas, David Levy, the Likud and other misleaders is to offer them a class alternative that speaks about the real issues which concern them: unemployment, health care, schools, etc.

The formation early in 1999 of an independent workers party headed up by Amir Peretz, the leader of an increasingly combatitive trade union movement, could therefore be seen as an event of historic importance.

For several years now, leaders of some of the more important works councils have been calling for such a party to be created. Interestingly, some of those leaders have been Likud supporters, disillusioned with the Netanyahu government and its openly anti-worker policies. Though they have shown a combatitive spirit, they are not necessarily infused with revolutionary class consciousness. Some tend to see the workers as just another special interest needing its own political voice, like farmers and pensioners, and have no broad social vision.

Peretz inherited from his predecessor, Haim Ramon, a decimated Histradrut labour federation. It was twice destroyed, first by an ossified bureaucracy associated with the Labour Party, later by Ramon's 'reformist' insurgency which managed to drive more than one million workers outside of the unions and bankrupt the federation. Things got so bad that the Histadrut was unable to pay its own employees, and began selling off the federation's remaining assets to cover its massive debt. Some of the trade unions affiliated to the Histadrut now talk openly about seceding - grabbing whatever assets they can before Peretz sells them off. Some critics of the Histadrut leader claim he is deliberately neglecting the trade union's concerns while pursuing a political career at the head of his own little party. (Peretz has replied that if all he wanted was a seat in the Knesset, it would have been easiest to have remained in the Labour Party.) Recently a group of pensioners publicly accused Peretz of using Histadrut funds to back the new party, claiming that he had returned to the old, corrupt Labour Party way of using the trade unions as a cash cow for political activities.

But proof of Peretz's effectiveness as a workers' leader may be found in the public sector general strike which took place at the end of March 1999. For four days, 500,000 workers shut down all public services in the country. Though Netanyahu denounced the Histradrut for holding the government 'hostage', polls showed over 40% of the population supporting the strike. In the end, the government backed down and the workers received a 4.8% wage increase - substantially more than the Treasury had said it could pay.

Peretz has been quick to use the strike weapon in the past, once even shutting down the country's main airport for several hours in order to get a Histadrut official freed from jail.

Peretz launched 'Am Echad' - one people - several weeks ago, but as I write these words, less than six weeks before the election, there is no sign of the party getting off the ground. There has been a virtual media blackout, with much more attention devoted to the party of cosmetics millionairess and former model Penina Rosenblum than to the new workers party. Public opinion polls focus only on the 'major' parties, and thus we have no indication of how many seats in the Knesset the new party might win. (Seats are won by proportional representation.)

But it is not only a media blackout which is the problem here. Reports from the ground indicate that the party is having difficulty getting organised, and its presence is not being felt in the neighbourhoods and in the factories.

What matters is what happens after the election. If Netanyahu wins - and this is certainly possible - we are likely to see a rapid deterioration of the situation with a likelihood of war with Syria and the Palestinians. In that situation, the Israeli left will be paralysed, particularly if Syrian tanks cross the 1973 ceasefire lines.

If Barak wins, which currently seems likely (but by no means certain), one can safely be optimistic about the chances for progress in peace talks with the Palestinians and Syria. After all, Barak's mentor, Yitzhak Rabin, went quite far in this direction, apparently agreeing in principle to an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights - something most Israelis would have thought impossible at the time.

But Rabin and Shimon Peres also pursued a social and economic policy of 'modernisation' - meaning adapting Israel's economy to the new reality of globalization. They supported privatisation, 'flexible' labour laws and so on. As the economy boomed, thanks both to the successful peace process and the massive wave of Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union, social inequality and poverty grew as well.

Hundreds of thousands of new immigrants who voted for Rabin in 1992 turned their backs on the Labour Party in 1996, having received nothing in return for their support. And the poor, who had long been supporting the rightist Likud, continued to cast their votes for a party which offered them nothing but demagogy.

If Barak does come to power, he will need a strong left (what Israelis call a 'social left') in the Knesset and in the country to keep him in line and to prevent a repetition of the mistakes of the Rabin-Peres years. If for no other reason than to prevent the Likud from coming to power again, the Labour Party has an interest in at least moderating its own rhetoric about the free market and modernisation. Voices such as those of Professor Shlomo Ben Ami - the most popular leader in the party today - have called for a return to the party's social democratic roots, with more attention paid to issues like unemployment and poverty. Though he would certainly disagree with this, I think that nothing would ensure the success of Ben Ami's vision more than a powerful independent workers' party which has made its election slogan: 'Return Israel to the workers!'

Israel's new two-tier election system allows voters to cast one ballot for the party of their choice (and there are more than 30, the largest number ever) and another for their favoured candidate for Prime Minister. Thus left-wing voters can safely give their support for Ehud Barak, assuming that he will be less likely to lead the country into war, while voting for one of the more openly left-wing parties - including Am Echad, Meretz and the Communists - for the Knesset.

The first round of voting takes place on 17 May - this will be the occasion for the election of the new Knesset, and it will be most interesting to see what happens to the workers party at this stage. The voting for Prime Minister will likely go into a second round, to be held two weeks later, at which point all the internal left bickering about whether a Centre Party candidate would be stronger, or whether an Arab candidate was the most important thing - all that becomes irrelevant. As the polls now show, it will be Barak against Netanyahu in that second round. There will be no third choice. For Israel's left, it should be clear what to do.