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5763: Articles posted from September 2002-September 2003
Get the real situation in Israel every day.
The Mapi-ization of the Likud
By Robert Rosenberg
December 15,2002
The conventional wisdom is the January 28 elections will give the Likud the kind of political hegemony last enjoyed in Israeli politics by Mapai, the precursor of Labor Party, which ruled Israel for 29 years rom its establishment until the 1977 elections that propelled the Likud into power, as corruption cases proliferated climaxing in the revelation that then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin's wife, Leah, maintained an American checking account for the Rabin family after the Rabin's returned from Washington, where he had been ambassador. In those years, that seemingly innocent matter was a criminal offense in Israel, because of strict foreign currency holding rules that prevented anyone from even taking more than $1,000 out of the country, let alone maintain a foreign checking account.
Public opinion polls have been showing that Likud will win a third of the Knesset's seats, and with its right wing satellites enjoy a 70-seat majority out of the 120-seat parliament, have been the weekly fare for the last three months. Except for a total of less than four years, during two brief periods in the 1990s (Rabin's second term as prime minister, and Ehud Barak's disastrous term that came after an equally disastrous term by Bibi Netanyahu), the Likud has been in power for 25 straight years. Yes, there were two 'unity governments' between Labor and Likud in the 1980s, as well as the 'unity' government that Sharon led until Labor quit it earlier this fall, but those governments, by virtue of the Likud's inclusion, perpetuated the quintessential Likud policy -- more money for settlements and ultra-Orthodox, less for the poor, schools, universities, health and the infrastructure that enables a country to progress.
Anti-intellectualism, combined with a mystic-nationalism that regarded populating the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and Gaza as the absolutely supreme policy of Likud governments (and by the way gave the Arabs to the poor as a scapegoat for their problems), appealed to the underclass that was incited to hate the 'Alignment' -- the Labor-Left alliance as it was known in its final days in power before, during and after the Yom Kippur War -- which was slapped with the accusation that since it was so omni-powerful in the early days of the state, was responsible for poverty and discrimination against 'Sephardim.'
But more than the appeal of the Likud's ideologies, it was Labor Party corruption that brought down Labor in 1977. The scandals seem petty now. The Rabin bank account, Avraham Ofer, then housing minister, committing suicide rather than face charges that he used his influence to get cheap mortgages for relatives, Kupat Holim boss Asher Yadlin diverting $35,000 from the Histadrut-owned Kupat Holim's coffers, to the Labor Party's treasury. But at the time, in a society far more egalitarian than exists now in Israel, it was major headline news.
It took 29 years for Labor to become corrupted by the nearly unnatural power it wielded in Israel. It has now taken almost the same amount of time for the same thing to happen to the Likud. There was nothing surprising about the revelations of allegations of corruption in the Likud nomination process for its Knesset list. The newspapers were full of insinuations and innuendo -- insinuendo, if you'll allow me the coinage -- about what it took to get elected to the party's central committee, and why anyone would want to be. 'Do we want to be in government so we can hand out jobs?' then-MK Limor Livnat asked the party's central committee members a few years ago, a rhetorical question by a woman who expected the committee members to be as ideologically committed as her. 'Yes!' came back the roar of the crowd. At least Mapai's political culture knew enough not to be so blatant about it.
It's too soon to tell if the public will respond to the Likud corruption cases now under investigation, by voting the rascals out. It's important to remember that the Likud itself did not grow in strength in 1977, it was just that Labor lost 17 Knesset seats to a clean government party (the Democratic Movement for Change) that quickly dissolved once its MKs reached the plenum. Menachem Begin put together a coalition with a 61-seat majority (it briefly grew to 70 seats, when some of the DMC joined the government once the peace process with Egypt began). If the Likud were to lose 17 seats from the 40 current predicted it could win on January 28, the Labor-Left and not the Radical Right could form the next government.
Likud will now use all its traditional demagoguery; it will say the police should investigate (but don't expect to see nominated MKs being arraigned en masse), it will say Labor is just as corrupt; and it will keep the faces of its nominees out of the public eye. Only Sharon will be seen, because, as the Likud slogan goes, 'The People Want Sharon. Period.'
But Labor could win by repeating over and over what was said about it in 1977 -- that power corrupts and 29 years of power corrupts 29-fold. Only in 2003, it's 25 years of power that has corrupted, and it has corrupted the Likud, a party that could once claim it was in the opposition, and when given the chance would fix the inequities of the Mapai system, but now has only itself to blame for all that has gone wrong. It's not Oslo that's to blame, nor Arafat, for the situation. It's the party that has been in power since 1977.
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