The Israeli Elections: the Parties of the Left

The Knesset elections are not between two rival parties, but between opposing ideological blocs, composed of the big parties and their allies.

The previous article in this series examined the right. Now we turn to the parties of the left:

LABOR. In its various configurations, the Labor Party was the dominant force in Israeli politics from the pre-state era until the political upheaval of 1977, when it was unseated by Premier Menachem Begin’s Likud.

Since then, doggedly led by Shimon Peres, Labor has been trying to recover its former preeminence.

It achieved parity with Likud in 1981 and again in 1984. But it was unable to form a government, because the Orthodox parties aligned with Likud.

This year Labor is running without its ally, Mapam, a party much further to the left. Mapam broke its longtime alignment with Labor in 1984, because it refused to participate in the national unity coalition with Likud.

Peres is now foreign minister and was premier for the first two years of the unity coalition. After him, the top Labor Party leader is Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, also a former premier.

The conventional wisdom is that Peres, and probably Rabin, will have to step down if Labor does badly in the Nov. 1 elections.

Labor’s policies on peace and the administered territories, the central issues of this campaign, suffer in contrast to the Likud program for lack of simplicity.

While Likud categorically rejects territorial compromise, Labor wants Israel to divest itself of large areas of heavily Arab-populated country, while retaining strategic tracts here and there down to the banks of the Jordan River and the environs of Jerusalem.

Labor would demilitarize the areas of withdrawal. The map it suggests looks like a jigsaw puzzle. Likud’s flat No takes little effort to understand.

Labor is officially opposed to a Palestinian state. It is an open secret, however, that some of its members and future Knesset members would support the idea under certain conditions.

There is no such wavering in the Likud bloc.

Labor advocates an international peace conference with Jordanian and Palestinian participation, though not the Palestine Liberation Organization.

King Hussein of Jordan declared last summer he was pulling out of the political process, which threatened to discredit the entire Labor peace plan.

Labor leaders hoped for a public gesture of support from Hussein and they got one in the king’s interview on an American television program Oct. 20. But statements from the PLO favoring a Labor victory could be the kiss of death.

MAPAM. When Mapam split with Labor four years ago, political pundits were ready to bury it.

They considered the veteran Zionist-Socialist party to be without an identity, despite its powerful kibbutz and youth movements: Hakibbutz Haartzi and Hashomer Hatzair.

But a term of high-profile Knesset activism led by Mapam old-timers Chaike Grossman and Elazar Granot surprised everyone and improved the party’s image.

Now, benefiting from an imaginative election campaign and a popular new leader in the person of Yair Tsaban, Mapam seems about to win new lease on life. It hopes for two or three Knesset seats next week.

CENTER MOVEMENT-SHINUI. This is another Labor satellite party, non-Socialist on economic issues, thoroughly moderate on the issues of peace and the territories.

It evolved into its present form through a process of splits and regroupings that began with the breakup of Professor Yigal Yadin’s once promising Democratic Movement for Change, which made the Knesset in the late 1970s.

It also gained from the still-birth last year of the Center Movement, founded by former Jewish Agency Chairman Leon Dulzin and Mayor Shlomo Lehat of Tel Aviv, a Likud man who broke with that party.

Shinui’s leader, Professor Amnon Rubinstein, has weathered all kinds of political struggles. But according to the polls, his party’s prospects are not rosy.

CITIZENS RIGHTS MOVEMENT. This party, founded and still run by the veteran feminist and human rights champion Shulamit Aloni, has been the success story of Israeli politics in the 1980s.

It came seemingly from nowhere to take three seats in the 1984 Knesset. Pollsters believe it can win four or five this time. That would make it a powerful force in the fragmented and polarized Knesset expected to emerge from the next elections.

The CRM’s message has been sharpened and accentuated by the Palestinian uprising. It advocates Israel’s withdrawal from the territories and a dialogue with the Palestinians. Domestically, it focuses on individual freedom, human rights and the rule of law in Israel proper and the territories.

Labor and the CRM have locked horns during the campaign because of Labor’s complaint that Aloni’s party is depriving it of votes.

The CRM argues that a vote for it is a vote for Labor, because ultimately the president will not simply look to the largest single party to form a new government but to the leader with the best prospects of putting together a stable government.

HADASH and PROGRESSIVE LIST FOR PEACE. They are expected to win a combined total of six seats, despite the creation of a new, competing Arab list.

Hadash is a Moscow-oriented Communist party. The Progressive List is ideologically aligned to the moderate wing of the PLO. Both advocate a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Both are considered beyond the political pale by Labor as far as coalition partnership is concerned. But Labor feels it can trust both to help block Likud from forming a narrowly based coalition government.

Hadash is headed by Meir Wilner, the last veteran of the 1948 Knesset. Israeli Arab Knesset member Mohammed Miari heads the Progressive List.