The Situation

Monday-Friday mid-day reports from Israel by Robert Rosenberg
Images by Silvia Rosenberg (unless otherwise noted)

The strike that never was

Monday, November 03, 2003

Maybe the bloody land belongs to the cows, acrylic on paper, 70x50 painting by Silvia Rosenberg

A seven-hour Labor Court hearing ended at 5 a.m. this morning with a ruling prohibiting the Histadrut from going ahead with a planned general strike of the entire economy today. Instead, the court allowed the unions four hours of strike today, which mostly led to confusion this morning, each separate union began counting its four hours at a different time. But by mid-day, most of the country was functioning normally. Although the strike was ostensibly over what the unions regard as the government’s anti-worker, and anti-poor economic policies, it had grown into a battle of two enormous political egos: Histadrut leader Amir Peretz and Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who both have ambitions beyond their current positions. As far as Peretz was concerned, the fight was over the finance minister’s credibility, since only a few months ago they penned a new agreement in which for the first time the Histadrut agreed to firings in the public sector as well as wage cuts. Now, a new budget for 2004 calls for the firing of thousands more. As far as Netanyahu was concerned, the battle was nothing less than an epic historical drama about crushing union power in state-owned monopolies he has vowed to privatize or restructure. The court ordered Peretz and Netanyahu to appear before it on Thursday -- a day after the Knesset starts voting on the 2004 budget, including legislation affecting collective wage agreements, which was one of the reasons for the strike. Ironically, one of the other reasons for the strike was the government's plan to shut down the Labor Courts by merging them into the regular courts, but Justice Minister Yosef Lapid announced this morning the Labor Courts would preserve their independence though they would be moved into the overall court system.

Their struggle overshadowed some other significant developments. Prime Minister Sharon was in Russia, meeting with Russian President Putin, ostensibly to discuss Russian help for the Iranian nuclearization program. While in Russia he heard the news that Iranian President Khamani seemed to be backtracking somewhat on Tehran’s agreement, only two weeks old, to sign the additional protocols of the nuclear non proliferation treaty, which enables inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to conduct surprise visits to Iranian nuclear facilities. Sharon was also trying to dissuade Putin from bringing the roadmap to the UN Security Council as a new resolution that would become the UN’s overall Middle East peace plan.

Also while Sharon was in Russia a number of developments indicated that there might be some progress toward him meeting with Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei’, who officially ends his term in office as head of an emergency cabinet today, but is busy forming a new government. Those developments included Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz meeting with Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayyad, Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter meeting with Yasser Arafat’s National Security Advisor Jibril Rajoub, and at noon, reports from Ramallah that if Qurei’ can’t get Arafat and Fatah to accept Gen. Nasser Yusuf as interior minister, Qurei’ might simply take the job himself.

Israeli journalists were viewing the Rajoub-Dichter meeting as highly significant, since it signals the political resurrection of the former head of Palestinian Preventive Security forces in the West Bank. Rajoub has been angry with the Israelis for nearly two years after they bombed his $10 million headquarters outside Ramallah during Operation Defensive Shield, even though Rajoub was the one security chief in the Palestinian Authority who was openly and clearly opposed to the armed intifada. But the Palestinians were also angry with Rajoub for handing over to the Israelis some Hamas men Rajoub was holding in his jail cells. And Arafat was angry at Rajoub for appearing to want to inherit the chairman’s seat. As if all that wasn’t enough, Rajioub, who was once the Palestinian the CIA liked most, has been battling prostrate cancer. But time apparently heals a lot, and now Rajoub’s one of Arafat’s closest advisors, and back in talks directly with the Shin Bet chief, ostensibly his parallel.

Fayyad, who met with Mofaz, is President Bush’s personally favorite Palestinian (Fayyad’s a University of Texas alumnus, and a former World Bank executive who has managed to take control and put order into the Palestinian Authority finances, though Israeli officials say Arafat still has access to several million dollars a month that he dispenses as he always has, in cash to his favored causes and people.

It is not clear what Mofaz and Fayyad had to discuss, though it is known that Mofaz needs something in his resume showing interest in helping the Palestinian civilian population, before he goes to Washington later this year. While U.S. policy is to back Israel’s overall counter-terrorist policies, there is growing dissatisfaction in Washington with Israeli foot-dragging on improving conditions for the Palestinian population, and there is growing concern about the separation fence’s winding route through the West Bank. Haaretz reports today that the heads of the major U.S. intelligence agencies all agree now that it would help mitigate anti-U.S. hostility in the Muslim world, if Washington starts applying some real pressure on Jerusalem against Jewish settlements in the territories. As defense minister, Mofaz is the commander in chief not only of the Israeli armed forces, he is the absolute ruler of the occupied territories, both as regards the quality of life for the Palestinians – and the development of the settlements. With a stroke of a pen he can ‘legalize’ the so-called ‘illegal outposts – more than a hundred of which have gone up since March 2001, when the roadmap sets a date for all new settlement activity to end.

In other developments, a suicide bomber cornered by Israeli troops just over the Green Line near Qalqiliyah, blew himself up, enabling the police to drop a high alert that had been in effect all morning because of intelligence reports about the bomber’s efforts to reach Israel.

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