Sharon rejects Shas over economic plan
The defeat in the Knesset of the government’s emergency economic plan and Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon’s dismissal of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party ministers for
voting against the plan dominate the front pages of Israel’s newspapers, to the
exclusion of all other news.
Both Yediot Ahronot and Maariv highlight the potentially far-reaching political and
economic impact of the developments, with Yediot Ahronot headlining its story
“Earthquake: Sharon weighs elections,” and Maariv proclaiming “Government
crisis, economic uncertainty.”
Both mass-circulation tabloids point out that the firing of the Shas ministers could be
rescinded, and the political crisis averted, if they change their minds and vote for the
plan in a second vote scheduled for Wednesday night.
News of the assassination in Beirut of Jihad Jibril, the No. 2 man in the PFLP-General
Command after his father Ahmad, is highlighted on the inside pages and Yediot Ahronot and
Maariv list the dead man’s activities against Israel and report that Ahmad Jibril and
sources in the Lebanese capital are blaming Israel for the operation. Defense Minister
Binyamin Ben-Eliezer is quoted as saying that “Israel isn’t responsible for
every bomb that goes off in Beirut.”
Under the headline “Did Israel carry out the assassination?” Maariv military
correspondent Yoav Limor does not answer the question directly, but points out that the
PFLP-GC has been Israel’s bitter enemy for many years. The group is responsible for
numerous terror attacks and Jihad himself had recently been active in smuggling weapons to
the Palestinians and inciting them to escalate the intifada.
On the other hand, Limor stresses that “for the past three years, Israel has
refrained from dispatching terror leaders in Lebanon and if it were to resume, Hizbullah
would be a more likely target. What’s more, the killing could lead to a flare-up on
the Lebanese border and revenge operations, which are not in Israel’s interest.
Moreover, Jihad Jibril had many enemies in his own organization and other Lebanese
terrorist groups.”
Editorials and news analysis in both newspapers are devoted to the political-economic
crisis. In Yediot Ahronot’s leader, economic editor Sever Plotzker writes: “The
government’s dismal failure to push through its emergency plan for reducing the
budget deficit gravely worsens the already teetering state of the Israeli economy and
creates an inestimable danger to the economic future of each one of its citizens. The
markets’ reaction will be immediate and the government coalition that could agree on
nothing apart from fighting Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat seems to be at the end
of its life.”
Outlining the dire consequences for the economy unless the deficit is reduced, Plotzker
states that there is no alternative to “a deep, painful and bloody slash, however
justified the complaints of the critics. The heart of the program is a revolutionary cut
in allocations to the socially disadvantaged. This is a daring, far-reaching inroad into
what has always been socially sensitive and politically sacred territory.”
Plotzker deplores the fact that Sharon and Finance Minister Silvan Shalom “failed to
persuade even their own coalition partners of the necessity to act. The heavy cost of the
military confrontation with the Palestinians has simply not been grasped.”
Nevertheless, Plotzker declares, “there is no justification for the wanton conduct of
Shas in voting in the Knesset against measures adopted by the coalition government of
which it is a part. Sharon was right to decisively move against them and to try to set up
a coalition that will get his program through.”
In a front-page comment in Maariv, economics analyst Moshe Pearl warns that the Knesset
vote could lead to a lowering of Israel’s credit rating. “Something funny
happened to the actors in the Knesset’s theater of the absurd,” he writes.
“The members went on stage for another routine performance and gave their usual
cynical show, with speeches full of pathos and transparent lies about ‘concern for
the weak.’ They know the audience doesn’t believe them and they even allow for
the fact that they will be greeted with boos. But that’s not the end of the world for
them. They are used to the fact that tomorrow there will be another performance.”
But, Pearl adds, “they are so used to this ritual, they forgot to check out the
audience. Not one of them realized that this was no ordinary performance, but an audition
before experts from the world’s biggest credit-rating firms. These experts entered
the auditorium after observing for several months that something is not right. They see
our theater’s debt going up, prices rising and the deficit growing. All this worries
them and, in fact, they had already given notice that they intend to lower our credit
rating.”
But, says Pearl, continuing his theatrical metaphor, “at the 11th hour, the Treasury
persuaded them that things were under control and if they would just give us a few days we
would put on a smash hit, a perfect emergency plan, which would be a box office bonanza.
So they came and yesterday they saw that it was the same old, phony parliamentary
ragbag.”
Now, Pearl warns, “very soon those who voted the plan down in the name of defense of
the weak will see how, with their own hands, they have produced 300,000 unemployed,
soaring inflation and sky-high interest rates.”
Also on Maariv’s front page, political analyst Shalom Yerushalmi says Sharon behaved
“like a midnight cowboy and, it seems, emerged the hero of the hour.”
But Yerushalmi argues that Sharon’s failure in the Knesset “is really the story
of a monumental blunder. Sharon and Shalom failed to adopt a unified and coordinated
strategy for mobilizing the vote, and ended up with both the ultra-Orthodox parties
Shas and United Torah Judaism and the ultra-secular Shinui among the opponents of the
emergency plan. Shalom, who with great skill built the coalition that brought down former
Labor Prime Minister Ehud Barak, failed to bring out the vote for his own flagship plan,
although he had a national unity coalition to call on. In other countries, people pay for
such humiliating defeats with instant resignation.”
Maariv’s unsigned leader maintains that the Knesset failure is the prime
minister’s “moment of truth.” It notes that so far, Sharon has intervened
very little in economic affairs and given his finance minister a broad mandate. But now,
Maariv suggests, he will have to act. “Only after the disgraceful vote in the
Knesset, it seems, the prime minister woke up to the severity of the problem. But
it’s not enough to fire Shas; Sharon himself has to take the plunge into the cold
waters of politics and lead the move to save the economy.”
On Yediot Ahronot’s front page, columnist Nahum Barnea says, “Sharon has
embarked on a high-risk political adventure, like a man who has decided to go out and meet
his destiny. Fearing a rush on the dollar, collapse of the stock exchange, flight of
capital and a collapse in Israel’s credit rating, he decided to insist on getting
this plan through. Immediate, drastic measures were called for to save the economy, but
they would impact on the political system like the bulldozers did in the Jenin refugee
camp.”
The assumption is, Barnea adds, that elections are inevitable, “but that is a long
and tortuous path, with an unpredictable outcome. Arafat could sink Sharon’s campaign
in blood, as he has done in previous Israeli election campaigns.” Copyright © The Daily Star |
