A Future That Is Cloudy

“You represent a portion of the public that is getting smaller and smaller,” crowed Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin last week in a stinging gibe at the opposition Labor Party. Indeed, the party of David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir, the party that led Israel from the nation’s birth in 1948 until Begin’s electoral victory in 1977, was in deep trouble. With polls showing the Prime Minister’s popularity at its highest point since his conservative Likud coalition came to power, small wonder that Begin was threatening to call early elections that could give him an absolute majority in the 120-seat Knesset and keep Labor out of the government for four more years.

Undeterred by Begin’s apparent strength, Labor Party Leader Shimon Peres gamely retorted: “He has thrown down the gauntlet, and we shall pick it up. He wants early elections. Fine. We shall go for early elections.” Labor’s chances of winning them depend largely on Peres, who has lost two elections to Begin in the past five years. A former protege of Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, Peres, 59, has worked at the core of the Labor Party for more than three decades. He was appointed director-general of the Defense Ministry at 29, and for 13 years played a major role in organizing Israel’s defense forces.

From 1974 to 1977, Peres was Defense Minister in the Cabinet of then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a bitter personal and professional rival. Feuding between the two Labor leaders sapped the party’s strength in the 1981 elections, preparing the way for Begin’s victory over Peres. The Peres-Rabin struggle continues to pose a threat to Labor’s electoral chances. Already, polls show the combined support for the two Labor leaders to be far behind Begin’s. Asked who was best suited to be Prime Minister, nearly 2,000 Israelis canvassed by the Jerusalem Post in August gave Begin 54%, Rabin 14.2% and Peres only 3.4%.

In part, Peres’ low rating is due to his weakness on the hustings. A genial, low-keyed campaigner, he exudes great personal charm but has little of Begin’s power to move crowds. Peres acknowledges this shortcoming but insists that the party’s appeal can make up for it. “I am not interested in the public who shout ‘Begin! Begin!’ in the squares,” says Peres. “I believe that our potential was not fully expressed during the 1981 election campaign. We lost some 100,000 votes because of political mistakes. We can win the Arab community, the workers and youth. We are able to capture them and will make it.”

Perhaps the most fundamental threat to Peres’ forces is demographic. Labor’s traditional support has come from the Ashkenazi Jews of European origin, who founded the country and dominated it through its formative years. Their numbers were gradually overtaken by the Sephardic Jews, with roots in socially backward Arab and Mediterranean countries, who now constitute a majority of Israel’s population. Increasingly disillusioned with the foundering Labor governments after the 1973 war, the Sephardim were roused by Begin’s strident, tough-talking style. Fully 75% of them supported the Likud camp in the 1981 election. Although the Labor Party has retained its Ashkenazi support, it has been powerless to overcome that dramatic shift in the makeup of Israeli society.

In the short term, Begin’s success in the Lebanese war has put the left in disarray. Unable to develop a coherent policy on the war, Labor leaders were initially critical or skeptical about the government’s decision to invade. Their ambivalent attitude backfired. Scoffs Hebrew University Professor Sol Kugelmass: “Labor and the other leftist parties attacked the war that the public generally supported.”

Labor leaders, however, feel that they found new unity and momentum as the party closed ranks in endorsing the Reagan peace plan as a starting point for negotiations. Pointing to last week’s Knesset vote on that plan, which was rejected, 50 to 36, but unanimously supported by the Labor deputies, Labor Party Secretary-General Haim Bar-Lev exulted: “For the first time since the war started, without imposing party discipline, the faction voted as one man. These are indications of our ability to recover.” Perhaps. But it will take far more than internal unity for the party that founded Israel to win back control of its government.