Though it sounded frightening, a lot of chareidi politicians
were less than impressed with the prime minister's dramatic
announcement last week of a secular revolution. Though Barak
continues to exude his customary confidence and promises
that, given a little time, everything will be fine, his
record speaks for itself.
This time Barak promised that Israel would have a
constitution in a year. However, in the light of his once-
promised peace with Syria in four months, and an agreement
with the Palestinians in six (at various points), his
deadline for a constitution seems less threatening than
bombastic.
The whole proposal seems just a return to Barak's old
election strategy. A year before the last elections, Barak
made a very public proposal for drafting yeshiva students
which, along with other anti-religious promises such as
stopping or reducing government support of yeshivos, became
the centerpiece of Barak's successful election campaign. At
the head of a group of only 40 MKs with no visible prospect
of assembling a government, Barak does not have to be
especially perceptive to see a strong possibility of early
elections.
Though his anti-religious line worked in the last elections,
Barak largely abandoned it when it became obvious that he
needed Shas to form a government. While he has certainly not
been a friend of religion, neither has he been the crusader
against religion that he made himself out to be. The question
is if the voters will buy used slogans in a new election.
If Barak's cabinet and government have been in tatters since
he left for the Camp David summit that ended in failure, last
week his own personal staff also fell apart. Two senior
members of the Prime Minister's Office, its director Chaim
Mendel Shaked and his deputy Shimon Batat, resigned their
positions. In an interview he gave to a newspaper, Batat said
(referring to Barak), "Look . . . at how he works. Everything
is ad hoc . . . he used to say all the time that we
must not turn into a banana republic. But we have to say the
truth. . . . Yes. We have turned into a banana republic. . .
. It is impossible to make policy based on surveys and
[market] research."
Political analysts say that barely a year since Barak took
over, he seems on the verge of collapse and people are
leaving rather than go down along with him. David Levy, for
example, has a future only in riding someone's coattails.
When he left Netanyahu, it was one of the major signs of the
latter's impending collapse. Now he has left Barak.
Barak began with a lot of credit in his own party and even,
relatively speaking, from his opposition. He was able to form
a government of almost two-thirds of the Knesset and had to
pass a special law to accommodate the ministerial desires of
so many members of the government. Barely one year later, it
is all gone.
In a survey taken after Barak's proposals, less than a third
of the respondents believed that they were the result of
planning. The majority saw them for what they surely are:
just a bunch of campaign promises with virtually no chance of
legislative success.
