With demise of talks, attention turns to shaky coalition

By Yossi Verter, HAARETZ

The reality, though, is apparently more complex. Very important officials in Jerusalem this week received authoritative reports from the United States about anger being aimed at Netanyahu. He pushed Abbas into a corner, senior figures in Washington were saying. He did not agree to present a plan and insisted on starting from zero. He demanded that the Palestinian president commit himself to recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, a demand that has not been made of any other Arab leader with whom Israel has held talks. The premier displayed no flexibility on the core issues of Jerusalem and refugees. He wanted a process for its own sake.

It was a fun week for our friends in Israel’s right wing. For the first time in the past nine months their skies were not clouded over by peace talks with the Palestinians. All the fears and apprehensions harbored by settler circles and their emissaries in the Knesset, about a final-status or interim agreement that was supposedly being cooked up clandestinely by Tzipi Livni and Saeb Erekat, vanished into thin air.

The security cabinet’s decision to suspend negotiations in the wake of the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement – and all the pitfalls that preceded that development – showed how pointless the negotiations (if they can even be called that) were. And are. The observation made by MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List-Ta’al) at the start of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s previous term of office was never truer: “The maximum that Bibi is capable of offering doesn’t come close to the minimum that Abu Mazen [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas] can accept.”

The icing on the cake for the right wing was the “fall” of Secretary of State John Kerry, with his warning this week about the danger of Israel’s deteriorating into an apartheid state. The apology he was coerced into making under the pressure of the powerful Jewish lobby was music to the ears of those who have long viewed Kerry as hostile – a latent anti-Semite who hasn’t yet learned what his bruised and scarred predecessors have by now forgotten: You don’t mess with the Jewish people in the Land of Israel.

The narrative that dominated media here was unequivocal: President Abbas had run away, yet again. Most Israelis find it convenient to believe that. The reality, though, is apparently more complex. Very important officials in Jerusalem this week received authoritative reports from the United States about anger being aimed at Netanyahu. He pushed Abbas into a corner, senior figures in Washington were saying. He did not agree to present a plan and insisted on starting from zero. He demanded that the Palestinian president commit himself to recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, a demand that has not been made of any other Arab leader with whom Israel has held talks. The premier displayed no flexibility on the core issues of Jerusalem and refugees. He wanted a process for its own sake.

The bottom line is that the talks were broken off, suspended until the results of the Palestinians’ internal reconciliation efforts become clear. Theoretically, the talks might restart if the engagement between Abbas and Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh doesn’t end in a wedding. But in that case, the sides will have to return to the starting point and concoct a whole new prisoner deal, including renegotiating the release of Israeli Arabs and of poor Jonathan Pollard, along with a partial construction freeze in the West Bank. Except that if in the latest round of talks, that deal threatened to shake up the Netanyahu government and bring about the resignation of Likud’s deputy ministers – what is the chance of a replay in the future, with all the bad blood that continues to flow between the two sides?

Tit for tat

After the blow he took from PLO leader Yasser Arafat at Camp David in summer 2000, Prime Minister Ehud Barak initiated the “civil revolution” – a ridiculous move aimed at making a partial separation between religion and state. The idea was to win back his left-wing voters, who had scattered in all directions. But the initiative exploded in Barak’s face and hastened his dizzying fall, which ended a few months later when he was battered in the elections by Ariel Sharon.

Why rehash this now? Because on Sunday, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni – the now-retired minister of negotiations, who now finds herself in the position of a dairy farmer with no cows to milk – will submit two bills to the Ministerial Committee for Legislation, which she heads. One recognizes the inheritance rights of single-sex couples; the other stipulates that the Jewish National Fund will be subject to oversight by the State Comptroller’s Office.

Both of the bills will be welcomed by anyone who sees himself as liberal, enlightened, law-abiding and supportive of human and civil rights. To the right wing of the coalition, however, they are anathema. Habayit Hayehudi will never allow legal recognition of rights of gay and lesbian couples. And reining in the JNF is also unwelcome to Habayit Hayehudi and to Likud. After all, why should the state comptroller be permitted to meddle in the sacred work of redeeming land and establishing settlements and recruiting donors and wasting prodigious amounts of money on unnecessary jobs and pampering politicians without limits and without oversight?

As with Barak, Livni’s move comes after she was stymied by the Palestinians. It looks more like a search for an alternative agenda, which on the one hand will justify her remaining in the government, and on the other, will prepare the ground for her possible resignation – possibly over a civil rights issue. It’s true that Livni is the only party leader in the coalition who is truly interested in the peace process. Without it, she has no reason to be in the government. But to resign now, after she herself placed the blame on the Palestinians, is problematic.

In any case, in the meantime, she can tell the world that thanks to her, the security cabinet only suspended the talks with the Palestinians and didn’t terminate them for all time, that she is staying on in order “to wield influence from within,” and that leaving the coalition will not be beneficial anyway, because, in any case, Yesh Atid won’t follow suit, etc.

The loss of a justification for Livni and her Hatnuah party to stay in the government is also making Netanyahu uneasy. In private talks, he is expressing concern that she and her friends will go wild in the volatile religion-and-state sphere, and drag Yair Lapid and his pals with them. The possible result? The coalition of multiple contradictions will be reduced to clashes and street fighting that will bring about its premature demise.

Signs of this scenario were visible this week in the battle between Habayit Hayehudi and Yesh Atid in the Knesset Finance Committee, over the transfer of funds to construction in the West Bank. Finance Minister Lapid suddenly remembered that he is against construction “outside the Green Line,” and instructed his ministry not to transfer money to the Housing and Construction Ministry. A little more than a year ago, when Lapid made his entry into the government conditional on the co-option of Habayit Hayehudi, he didn’t think about construction in the territories. Then, too, he apparently didn’t realize the connection between a settler – Uri Ariel, then slated to become housing minister – and the bulldozers and building tenders in the settlements.

The reason for Lapid’s mid-life bout of left-wingedness is the dispute between the two parties over new legislation, concerning surrogate mothers, that is being sponsored by Health Minister Yael German, from Lapid’s party. (She has proposed an amendment to an existing law, so as to allow same-sex couples and singles to have babies through surrogacy.) Ariel submitted an appeal against the legislation with the cabinet, and now it is stuck. In response, Lapid grounded the millions that are slated for construction over the Green Line, in Ma’aleh Adumim, Givat Ze’ev and elsewhere. If Ariel retracts his appeal, Lapid will release the funds, and then there will be no problem with building in the territories.

Discontented contender

There can be only one interpretation of the decision by Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein not to end the investigation against Silvan Shalom: Weinstein wants to prevent Shalom, the energy and water resources minister, from running for president of Israel. Two more weeks, tops, with the status of a suspected sexual offender, and Shalom can say “shalom” to his presidential dream. For all practical purposes, he can already be considered a former contender, or even a former president-designate, since he had been considered to have the best chance of being elected. (The president of Israel is selected by the Knesset.)

What exactly did Weinstein learn from the evidence that was placed on his desk by the investigators, who recommended that the case be closed? And why did he decide to reject their recommendation? It’s clear that the attorney general wants the police to continue to press another woman, or maybe more than one – whose testimonies would not be affected by the statute of limitations – to lodge formal complaints. He will have to explain this, if the case is eventually closed with no indictment.

The vote for president will be held in the second half of June; the registration deadline is the end of this month. At present, the leading candidates are Reuven Rivlin (Likud) and Benjamin Ben-Eliezer (Labor). The prevailing view among veteran Knesset observers is that if Shalom drops out of the race, former MK Dalia Itzik (Kadima) will be one of two candidates who will make it into the second round of voting. The thinking is that anyone who doesn’t want to vote for Rivlin or Ben-Eliezer will opt for Itzik instead.

As for Netanyahu, in a choice between Rivlin, Ben-Eliezer and Itzik, he prefers her. But he won’t dare publicize support for her with Rivlin running on behalf of Likud. At the moment, the prime minister is still trying to drum up enough support for Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky to induce him to run. The former Prisoner of Zion and cabinet minister is hesitant about this, and rightly so. As one party leader noted this week, “Sharansky is a nice guy, but I’d like to see a president who speaks good Hebrew.”

As for Ben-Eliezer, an investigative television program this week reported that he used to visit five casinos in London and had a member’s card for each of them. The program did not say outright that he gambled. For his part, he claimed that he frequented the casinos just to eat in their restaurants. As long as it’s not proved that Ben-Eliezer played poker in those places while he served as defense minister, housing minister, communications minister or deputy prime minister – this cute little story won’t even count as a light tremor on the wing, from his viewpoint.

I asked Ben-Eliezer about this and he guffawed: “I have a big family in London. They’re all Iraqis, and Iraqis like to eat in casinos. When I visit, they take me with.” Did he gamble? “No,” he replied, adding, “Maybe once I lost a few pounds sterling. Besides, the last time I was in London was 15 years ago. You forget that, as defense minister, I gave the order to liquidate Shehadeh [Salah Shehadeh, head of the Hamas military wing in Gaza, who was assassinated by the air force in 2002 together with 14 civilians, 11 of them children]. They [the British] then issued an arrest warrant against me.”

Presidential candidates are having a rough time, I told him. “Listen,” he sighed, “it’s getting disgusting.

“But never mind,” he added, “I’m enjoying it.”